Jing XU 许晶

Anthropologist & Author

人类学者，作者

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Jing Xu, PhD

I am an anthropologist at the University of Washington, Seattle. I hold a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis (2014, supervisor: Pascal Boyer), and M.A. and B.A. from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. I conducted postdoctoral research in Developmental Psychology (Early Childhood Cognition Lab) at the University of Washington (2014-2016).

My scholarship seeks to answer this central question: How do we become moral persons? Interested in culture-mind interaction, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach to examine this question, by putting anthropological and psychological theories in conversation, by combining ethnography and quantitative methods, and by drawing from the broad field of Chinese studies. Specifically, my research pursues three inter-related themes: 1) moral development in familial and educational settings in contemporary China; 2) Continuity and change in morality, childhood, family and education in culturally Chinese communities across time and space; and 3) cross-cultural comparison of socio-moral cognition and development.

My first monograph, The Good Child (Stanford University Press, 2017), tells a story of moral development in an urban middle-class preschool in the early 2010s Shanghai, China. The book cover features my son, the youngest research participant in the preschool (read cover story here). The Chinese edition was published in 2021, by the influential ethnography brand "Mint-Lab Series" (“薄荷实验”).

My second monograph, "Unruly" Children (Cambridge University Press, 2024), traces how rural Han Taiwanese children learn morality at the height of Taiwan's Martial-Law era. It is an unconventional ethnography, a re-analysis of a unique set of historical fieldnotes combining qualitative and computational approaches. Writing through and about fieldnotes, I connect the two themes of this book, learning morality and making ethnography, in light of human social cognition and invite all of us to take children seriously.

Recently I have grown interested in reflective work on knowledge production in order to make anthropology more relevant, not only to other disciplines but also to the people we study. I do so through experimental writing on ethnography, organizing discussions on China anthropology, working as an Associate Editor of American Anthropologist, and engaging the public.

"Unruly" Children, Cambridge University Press, 2024

How do we become moral persons? What about children's active learning in contrast to parenting? What can children teach us about knowledge-making more broadly? Answer these questions by delving into the groundbreaking ethnographic fieldwork conducted by anthropologists Arthur and Margery Wolf in a martial law era Taiwanese village (1958-60), marking the first-ever study of ethnic Han children. Jing Xu skillfully reinterprets the Wolfs' extensive fieldnotes, employing a unique blend of humanistic interpretation, natural language processing, and machine-learning techniques. Through a lens of social cognition, this book unravels the complexities of children's moral growth, exposing instances of disobedience, negotiation, and peer dynamics. Writing through and about fieldnotes, the author connects the two themes, learning morality and making ethnography, in light of social cognition, and invites all of us to take children seriously.

Table of Contents:

Foreword (Stevan Harrell)

Preface

Introduction: learning morality in a Taiwan village

1. Fieldwork beyond fieldwork: reconstructing an ethnography of children through historical fieldnotes

2. Crime and punishment: parenting and the disobedient child

3. Playful creatures: learning morality in peer play

4. Gendered morality: naughty boys and fierce girls

5. Care and rivalry: an untold tale of a sibling dyad

Epilogue: taking children seriously

Afterword (Hill Gates)

You can get the book here: Amazon, Google Books, CUP

Cambridge University Press Discount Code: XU2024 (valid until 09/30/2025)

The Good Child

Chinese academic traditions take zuo ren—self-fulfillment in terms of moral cultivation—as the ultimate goal of education. To many in contemporary China, however, the nation seems gripped by moral decay, the result of rapid and profound social change over the course of the twentieth century. Placing Chinese children, alternately seen as China's greatest hope and derided as self-centered "little emperors," at the center of her analysis, Jing Xu investigates the effects of these transformations on the moral development of the nation's youngest generation.

The Good Child examines preschool-aged children in Shanghai, tracing how Chinese socialization beliefs and methods influence their construction of a moral world. Delving into the growing pains of an increasingly competitive and changing educational environment, Xu documents the confusion, struggles, and anxieties of today's parents, educators, and grandparents, as well as the striking creativity of their children in shaping their own moral practices. Her innovative blend of anthropology and psychology reveals the interplay of their dialogues and debates, illuminating how young children's nascent moral dispositions are selected, expressed or repressed, and modulated in daily experiences.