Books by gil hizi
Amsterdam University Press , 2024
Papers by gil hizi
China Perspectives, 2024
The notion of happiness has been extended in recent decades from a quality of well-being to a va... more The notion of happiness has been extended in recent decades from a quality of well-being to a value-laden concept employed in political campaigns, development plans, commercial advertising, and transnational psychology. In China, the term xingfu has extended through this tendency, articulated as an equivalent of deep-seated individualised “happiness,” while also carrying elements of livelihood and social welfare. Drawing on fieldwork in psychological workshops and diverse academic and political texts, this article conceptualises the semiotic and communicative attributes of xingfu in Chinese society today. I define xingfu as a contemporary dao, in the sense that it emerges as a consensual priority that alludes to seeming universal humanity, which may be employed to validate other political agendas, while it also activates diverse interactions and imaginaries that extend beyond preexisting or fixed priorities.
American Ethnologist, 2024
There was a moment in my fieldwork in China when I was prompted to rethink my position in relation... more There was a moment in my fieldwork in China when I was prompted to rethink my position in relation to my interlocutors and the values they brought into play. More specifically, I became aware that their image of Western foreigners matched my profile as a wandering anthropologist with incoherent life trajectories. This was so even though, to some degree, they had difficulty translating their image of me into their social reality. Through my research on practices of self-improvement, I came to see how, in expressing concerns about their personhood and ways of living, my interlocutors moved beyond the telos of business-driven success. Analytically, I came to better understand how my interaction with them had productively constituted new discursive spaces of the imagination—spaces in which some of our worries were likely to unravel.
Emotions and Society, 2024
Psychological expertise has developed in market economies along with the priority of individualis... more Psychological expertise has developed in market economies along with the priority of individualised, self-responsible and productive citizenship, thus directing people’s evaluative glance inwards. Yet psychology, as a field of knowledge production, also interprets and classifies wider socioeconomic processes, including defining the emotional experience of different structural conditions. Extending the concept ‘the psychological imagination’ (Nehring and Frawley, 2020), which highlights how globalised psychological expertise induces perceptions of individualised self-accountability, I propose the ‘psychological imagination of the social’, illustrating how this expertise configures socioeconomic factors. I draw on texts and commentaries by mainland Chinese psychologists in the popular media, state-run press, self-help literature and academic writing, as well as interviews with practitioners in Jinan, delineating how psychologists address economic reforms, commodification, digitalisation and social competition. This imagination buttresses the positivist trajectory of market expansion as a ‘civilising’ and ‘emotionally emancipating’ process, while also stressing the emotional toll of contemporary urban lifestyles. Thus, this expertise advertises its unique contribution to elevating immaterial ingredients in the Chinese social experience through ongoing negotiation between market ideologies and the party-state’s agenda.
Hau, 2021
This article spotlights the role of affect in paths of “self-development,” focusing on young adul... more This article spotlights the role of affect in paths of “self-development,” focusing on young adults in China who engage in various training programs. Informed by market-driven expertise, individuals configure their feelings as central for their ability to execute their tasks and enhance their socioeconomic competence. Thus, they seek to induce and manage affect while combating the purposeless attitudes that they ascribe to Chinese everyday life. However, young adults are also frequently confronted with their inability to convert affect to palpable endpoints, leading them to frequent deflation and self-examination. Drawing on the works of Sara Ahmed and Lauren Berlant, I delineate this dialectic of high and low affect. I argue that rather than undermining productivity, low affect and its perceived negative valence are integral to a trajectory of self-development where individuals shift between projects and renew their commitment to an underlying ethos, notwithstanding the prevailing impasses of the Chinese socioeconomic landscape.
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 2021
The requirement for “self-development” through the ceaseless acquisition of skills and credential... more The requirement for “self-development” through the ceaseless acquisition of skills and credentials has long been central for young adults in China. However, due to the multiple and unpredictable demands of social institutions, many social actors also prime the cultivation of a self that does not succumb to immediate occupational and material impositions. In this article, I describe how young adults in a second-tier city pursue a model of personhood that brings together socio-economic competence and singular individuality. These individuals aspire to expand their range of experiences and their spatial mobility, thereby reifying an image of a self that transcends narrow social roles and networks. Drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre's dualistic philosophy, I analyse young adults’ attempts to realise individualised selves by destabilising their ontological ground. I argue that this phenomenon is magnified in China through widespread notions of a “moral crisis” and its supposable suppression of social actors’ agency.
Ethos, 2021
This article looks at the market-driven globalization of pedagogies of interpersonal “soft” skill... more This article looks at the market-driven globalization of pedagogies of interpersonal “soft” skills by depicting these practices’ microdynamics and phenomenological attributes. My case study is located in urban China, where expertise and practices of soft skills have recently become accessible to people of different social backgrounds. Drawing on participant observations in relevant workshops in a second-tier city, I describe interactive dynamics where participants express themselves in new ways and, in turn, envision possibilities for changing their personalities and social standing. This process characterizes a globally expansive apparatus, which in China takes the particular form of role-modeling interactions where participants transition from learners to “exemplars.” “Self-improvement” through these pedagogies tends to emerge as moments of perceived affordances for self-transformation, activated through the synergy of seemingly accessible bodily capacities and the configuration of valuable “skills.”
Social Analysis, 2021
This article examines the role of affect in market-driven self-cultivation. Drawing on a study of... more This article examines the role of affect in market-driven self-cultivation. Drawing on a study of extracurricular workshops for interpersonal skills in urban China, I describe programs that prioritize momentary excitement, associated with the state-endorsed colloquialism zheng nengliang (positive energy), while distinguishing this experience from the common registers of the exterior world. I define these settings as ‘pedagogies of affect’, activities that bring to the fore the short-lived and indeterminant attributes of affect without coherently serving discursive ideologies in trajectories of social engineering or neoliberal governmentality. This phenomenon demonstrates how the expansion of market-driven expertise for ‘person-making’ to new social groups globally reinforces ethical disjunctures between different social domains, as well as between individuals’ practical and aspirational pursuits.
Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 2021
Despite recent socioeconomic transformations, young adults in China construe local social norms a... more Despite recent socioeconomic transformations, young adults in China construe local social norms as inhibiting their individualized selfhood. Based on a study of pedagogies of interpersonal “soft” skills, this article describes an apparatus of self‐improvement where self‐ and social critique play a pivotal role. Through comparison with Foucault’s “technologies of the self,” I illustrate that self‐improvement in China is largely oriented toward performative expressions that counteract the “local” rather than the habituation of virtues or skills.
Asian Studies Review, 2019
In recent years, higher education in China has experienced drastic transformations along with the... more In recent years, higher education in China has experienced drastic transformations along with the expansion of university enrolments and the ongoing privatisation of the job market. Students today increasingly engage with extra-curricular activities due to the uncertain value of university diplomas and in preparation for their future socioeconomic challenges. I explore this phenomenon through an ethnographic study of a group of student entrepreneurs on a prestigious university campus. These students heralded an image of market-oriented self-improvement that has become widespread throughout Chinese university campuses via state policies. My analysis considers the theoretical perspectives on the self-responsible “enterprising self” that characterises neoliberal societies and the culturally embedded “educational desire” that regards the moral prestige of education in China as being independent of market calculations. I argue that while the ethic of self-improvement indicates the changing meanings of higher education, it is through their student identities and lifestyles, separated from the job market, that students experiment with self-improvement and can sustain their positive image of the market economy. Higher education is hence reproduced as a distinct moral life-stage that precedes one’s entrance into “society”.
Continuum, 2019
One of the key impacts of the ‘China Dream‘ campaign, along with the promulgation of patriotic va... more One of the key impacts of the ‘China Dream‘ campaign, along with the promulgation of patriotic values, has been the proliferation of the discourse of ’dreams’ across Chinese society. While the language of dreams alludes to individualistic values, in accord with recent socioeconomic transformations in China, state-promoted practices meticulously foster associations between the self-realization of individuals and their nationalistic sentiments. In this article, I look at a new genre of reality TV shows in China that has played an intriguing role in this process – public-speaking shows. Young contestants in these shows bring forth personal stories in a highly pedagogic fashion, becoming both role models for individualistic pursuits and messengers of state propaganda. Through speech performances, these shows both enhance and mitigate tensions between self-realization and nationalism that have extended through the China Dream campaign. These shows exemplify a discursive apparatus that reconfigures self-centred values through a vision of social stability and citizens’ affiliation to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2018
How does gender shape the experience and imaginaries of self-realisation? This article explores p... more How does gender shape the experience and imaginaries of self-realisation? This article explores practices of self-improvement among young women in China, namely workshops for interpersonal skills. These practices direct participants to express themselves as autonomous persons, disembedded from social hierarchies and familial responsibilities. Unmarried women who attend workshops conceive of marriage as an unavoidable impediment to their self-realisation. This is due to a prevailing gender inequality in marriage, as well as the ongoing expansion of an ideal of individual autonomy in China through economic reforms. In this article, I do not centre my analysis on a cultural clash between this ideal and local cultural practices. Instead, it is the possibility of this ideal, which is always shaped and restricted by socio-economic imperatives, that induces women’s frustration with their local culture. The fact that this ideal promises universal attainment highlights for women the gender roles that limit their autonomy.
China: An International Journal, 2017
Psychological counselling has experienced a substantial surge in China over the last two decades.... more Psychological counselling has experienced a substantial surge in China over the last two decades. Based on an ethnographic study of psychological counselling centres in the city of Jinan, the author explores how social discourses of psychology extend to the level of practice, and how this process is facilitated by recent political and economic changes. As psychological services not only promote, but are also predicated on a new mode of self-responsible citizenship, psychological centres are inclined to address problems of groups who embody high "potential" and who are seen to carry an important role in the modernisation of Chinese society.
Asian Anthropology, 2016
In this report, I discuss the expansion of psychological counseling in China, while considering s... more In this report, I discuss the expansion of psychological counseling in China, while considering sociocultural factors that shape the construction of this field. Based on interviews with counselors and patients, I describe therapeutic encounters that are laden with suspicion, and that are in turn interpreted by counselors as a reflection of social conservativeness and the cultural perception of “face” (mian zi). The proliferation of short-term counseling, along with the success of self-help literature, is to a large extent an institutional adaptation to these conditions. Nevertheless, this process is never limited to an intentional “culturalization” of foreign therapeutic methods, but rather involves constant negotiations between counselors and patients. I contend that while deep-rooted cultural tendencies do influence social approaches to psychology in China, local concerns about counseling may also spotlight problematic aspects in psychotherapeutic mechanisms worldwide.
Book chapters by gil hizi
Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today: A Keyword Approach, Amsterdam University Press , 2024
This chapter discusses the application of xinshang (appreciation) in Chinese young adults’ attemp... more This chapter discusses the application of xinshang (appreciation) in Chinese young adults’ attempt to foster good taste and aesthetic sensibilities, which in turn elevates their moral competence. Based on ethnographic data from workshops for extracurricular self-improvement in Jinan, along with additional textual data from popular media and intellectual discourse, this chapter analyzes xinshang as a subtle, yet seemingly fundamental aspect of self-development, which seems to evade the impulsive and crude mechanical reproduction of the market economy. Xinshang both underlines modernist agendas of social development while seeking to identify room for more moral and singular ways of being.
The Anthropology of Ambiguity: Theory, Praxis and Critique, 2024
This chapter describes shifting ethical standpoints within pursuits of person-making. It highligh... more This chapter describes shifting ethical standpoints within pursuits of person-making. It highlights the centrality of indeterminacy, as a state of ambiguity, in people’s attempt to achieve moral and economic competency and how this phenomenon is heightened by the market economy. This is particularly evident in individuals’ engagement with self-cultivation practices, where they seek to alter and evaluate their behaviours. Drawing on my study of young adults who attend workshops for interpersonal skills in urban China, and in particular, one woman interlocutor, I delineate how technologies for self-cultivation juxtapose workplace demands, familial values and changing life circumstances. Under global capitalism, these practices illuminate and reinforce people’s multiplicity of ethical priorities and their challenge of achieving existential mastery across social life. This indeterminacy reveals the limits of Foucault-inspired paradigms of neoliberal subject-making when describing processes of person-making.
Self-Alteration: How People Change Themselves across Cultures, 2023
This chapter looks at the properties of self-alteration in market-driven self-improvement program... more This chapter looks at the properties of self-alteration in market-driven self-improvement programs in urban China, specifically pedagogical practices inspired by positive psychology. I treat positive psychology as a set of principles that promote individual autonomy, proactive behavioral transformations, heightened emotional expression, and the pursuit of happiness, evident in the field championed by Martin Seligman (2002). The application of positive psychology in China shows how contemporary therapeutic doctrines are co-constituted with capitalist ideologies and their models of the individualized and entrepreneurial person. Intriguingly, in pedagogical practice itself, positive psychology is also premised on intersubjective experiences, where individuals are encouraged to let go of their habitual behavior and self-image and instead become mutually shaped by the presence of supportive others. As this chapter describes, here is a process of self-alteration that is characterized by temporary and space-bounded subject positions within everyday life. This is rarely a [long-term] disciplined process of self-transformation, but rather a dynamic that emanates through the affordances of distinct practices and the energetic interactions that they induce.
Special Issues and Thematic Sections by gil hizi
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021
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Book Reviews by gil hizi
Anthropological Quarterly , 2024
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Books by gil hizi
Papers by gil hizi
Book chapters by gil hizi
Special Issues and Thematic Sections by gil hizi
Book Reviews by gil hizi
Gil completed his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2018 under the supervision of Terry Woronov, auxiliary supervisors Jadran Mimica and Yasmine Musharbash. His project explores contemporary forms of self-improvement in urban China. Focusing on pedagogic activities in interpersonal ‘soft’ skills, Gil describes self-improvement as an engagement with ideals of personhood. Through affective moments in workshops for self-improvement, participants perceive transient transcendence above local norms and in turn realise their 'non-ordinary' ideals. Gil's perspective prioritises an understanding of self-improvement as a practice that reifies some of the contradictions in Chinese society’s distinct experience of modernity. Gil will use the AAS honorarium to compose a book manuscript while enjoying the continuous moral and intellectual support of the Anthropology department at USYD.
Congratulations and happy writing Gil!