Title: Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture
Abstract: Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture Andrew F. Jones Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Contents, notes, appendix, glossary of terms, index, images. 259 pp. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780674047952Andrew F. Jones's fascinating and beautifully written book should be read by all those interested in childhood, toys, fairy tales, and discourse of and its vernacularization in specific cul tural contexts. A specialist in modern Chinese culture, Jones's earlier book, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in Chinese Jazz Age, was study of popular music and media culture in Shanghai during first decades of twentieth century (Jones 2001). In Developmental Fairly Tales, Jones again weaves together study of Chinese modernity- this time using one of its most important intellectuals, Lu Xun. This book is as much monograph on Lu Xun as it is dynamic examination of his generation's evolutionary thinking. An emphasis on pedagogical function of culture in its vernacular forms-newspaper article, popular magazine, children's premier, film, and fairy tale-supplies intellectual link between Jones's earlier work and current book.The author's effort to restore child and beast to central place in narration of Chinese modernity is not without precedents. For Lu Xun and his generation, writing about child and beast was writing about endangered nation. Chinese intellectuals and educators used child and beast as instruments to think through issue of development. Jones joins long tradition of intellectual inquiry into underprivileged and disadvantaged, move that simultaneously confirms and challenges evolutionary thinking prevalent in history and historiography of modern Chinese culture. Jones's consistent attention to the folk is another manifestation of such interest, as he points out in recent interview which appeared in November 30, 2011, issue of New Books in East Asian Studies about his next project, return to popular music and media culture in Maindesire land China and Taiwan in 1960s.In defining development as a way of knowing, narrating, and attempting to manage processes of radical historical change (p. 3) and situating child and beast at center of such processes, Jones radically revises our understanding of modern Chinese cultural by highlighting vernacular materials (such as children's literature) and their complex engagement with dilemmas of colonial modernity in China. The crisis of agency, as Jones points out, runs through Lu Xun and his generation's grappling with developmentalist thought (p. …
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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