A County of Culture: Twentieth Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong. By Stig ThØgersen. [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. 310 pp. £37.50. ISBN 0-472-11283-X.]
Keyword(s):
This empirically rich and analytically engaging book draws on archives and oral history in Zouping county, Shandong province, and devotes each chapter to a distinctive period in the building of China's modern educational institutions. The study reveals how macro-level historical shifts interact with educational reforms to impact on the lives of rural individuals, and how their responses shape community-level policy formulation and implementation. Educational reforms therefore form the basis for a wider study of cultural, socio-economic and political processes in 20th-century China.