Dr. Orna Naftali

Orna Naftali is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies. Her research focuses on childhood, youth, and education; gender, sexuality, and the family; science and subjectivity; national identity, militarism, and the nation-state; as well as youth legal consciousness in modern and contemporary China.
Dr. Naftali obtained a BA in East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; an MA in Culture Research at Tel Aviv University; and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She has published extensively on issues such as the globalization of Chinese education; nationalism and militarism in PRC schools and popular culture; the emergence of new conceptualizations of privacy and subjectivity in China; the rise of child psychology in contemporary urban China; and the development of a new Chinese discourse on children's rights and children's citizenship, a topic which was also the focus of her first book, Children, Rights, and Modernity in China: Raising Self-Governing Citizens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Dr. Naftali's second book, Children in China (China Today series, Polity Press, 2016), provides an extensive overview of the momentous changes that have taken place in the lives of both rural and urban Chinese children since the launch of economic reforms in 1978. Covering schooling, consumption, identity formation processes, family and peer relations among other aspects of children’s lives, the book explores the rise of new ideas of child-care, child-vulnerability and child-agency; the impact of the One-Child Policy; and the emergence of Chinese children as independent consumers in the new market economy.
Dr. Naftali's current research draws on qualitative fieldwork to explore the interface between education, militarization, national identity, and new class formations in urban and rural China. A second project explores "gender equality education" programs in Chinese schools and the construction of gender consciousness among contemporary Chinese youth. Another ongoing project examines recent developments in legal education in PRC schools.

Dr. Naftali welcomes enquiries from prospective MA and doctoral students interested in topics including:
Anthropology of contemporary China
Children, childhood, and youth in the PRC (1949 to present)
Schooling and education in the PRC
Anthropology of gender and sexuality in the PRC
Family and kinship in the PRC
Popular nationalism and militrarization in contemporary China
State-society relations in contemporary China
Youth legal consciousness & legal education in China

Recent Publications

Naftali, Orna. 2021. “Celebrating Violence? Children, Youth, and War Education in Maoist China (1949–1976).” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 14 (2): 254-273. Publisher's Version

naftali-celebrating_violence.pdf

Naftali, Orna. 2020. “Youth Military Training in China: Learning to ‘Love the Army’.” Journal of Youth Studies 24 (9). Publisher's Version Abstract

Schools worldwide have long engaged in various forms of ‘war education’. In China, an extensive ‘Patriotic Education’ campaign and an expanded ‘National Defense Education’ curriculum have led to an increase in youth-oriented military programs in the 2000s. Previous work on the implementation of these programs in Chinese schools has mostly focused on urban elite youth, while overlooking the reception of these programs by non-urban, non-elite populations. The present study addresses this issue by examining youth perceptions and experiences of military training courses in urban and rural high schools. Drawing on the analysis of Chinese publications in the 2000s and on data from field interviews with students of different backgrounds, the study finds that youth military training constitutes a contentious program. Although the Chinese government promotes the program as crucial for military strengthening and the fostering of a patriotic spirit, PRC academic and media writers provide alternative rationales for the program, which at times undermine the logic of government articulations. Meanwhile, interviews with youth document divergent attitudes and even resentment towards the program, especially among city youth. This finding casts doubt on the assumption that military-training courses necessarily contribute to the increased ‘militarization’ of Chinese youth and education.

Schools worldwide have long engaged in various forms of ‘war education.’ In China, an extensive ‘Patriotic Education’ campaign and an expanded ‘National Defense Education’ curriculum have led to an increase in youth-oriented military programs in the 2000s. Previous work on the implementation of these programs in Chinese schools has mostly focused on urban elite youth, while overlooking the reception of these programs by non-urban, non-elite populations. The present study addresses this issue by examining youth perceptions and experiences of military training courses in urban and rural high schools. Drawing on the analysis of Chinese publications in the 2000s and on data from field interviews with students of different backgrounds, the study finds that youth military training constitutes a contentious program. Although the Chinese government promotes the program as crucial for military strengthening and the fostering of a patriotic spirit, PRC academic and media writers provide alternative rationales for the program, which at times undermine the logic of government articulations. Meanwhile, interviews with youth document divergent attitudes and even resentment towards the program, especially among city youth. This finding casts doubt on the assumption that military-training courses necessarily contribute to the increased ‘militarization’ of Chinese youth and education.

Naftali, Orna. 2020. “'Being Chinese means becoming cheap labour': Education, national belonging, and social positionality among youth in contemporary China.” The China Quarterly, Published Onlinefirst, 1-21. Publisher's Version Abstract

Since the 1990s, the Chinese party-state has attempted to teach its youth how to think and speak about the nation through a “patriotic education” campaign waged in schools, the media and on public sites. The reception of these messages by youth of different social backgrounds remains a disputed issue, however. Drawing on a multi-sited field study conducted among rural and urban Han Chinese youth attending different types of schools, this article explores the effects of the patriotic education campaign on youth conceptions of the nation by examining the rhetoric high-school students employ when asked to reflect upon their nation. The study reveals that a majority of youth statements conform to the language and contents of the patriotic education campaign; however, there are significant differences in the discursive stances of urban youth and rural youth and of those attending academic and non-academic, vocational schools. These findings call into question the party-state's current vision of China as a “unified” national collectivity. They highlight the existence of variances in the sense of collective belonging and national identity of Chinese youth, while underscoring the importance of social positioning and perceived life chances in producing these variances.

自上世纪90年代以来，中国共产党一直试图通过在学校、媒体和公共场所开展的“爱国主义教育”活动，教育青少年如何思考和谈论国家。然而，不同社会背景的青年对这些信息的接受仍然是一个有争议的问题。本文对来自不同地域和在不同类型学校就读的城乡汉族青年进行了实地调研，通过考察中学生对国家概念的反思，探讨了 “爱国主义教育” 运动对青年观念的影响。研究表明，大多数青年言论符合 “爱国主义教育” 运动的语言和内容。然而，城市和农村青年以及学术和非学术职业学校学生的态度存在显著差异。这些发现凸显了当代中国青年集体归属感和国家认同感的差异，同时强调了社会地位和所感知的生活机会在产生这些差异方面的重要性。他们进一步质疑党国目前对中国作为 “统一” 的国家集体的看法。

Recent Presentations

China’s 'Gender Equality Education' Program: Local Contestations & Transnational Interactions, at Virtual AAS2021, Annual Conference Association for Asian Studies, Tuesday, March 23, 2021

PLA propaganda and recruitment campaigns in the 21st Century, at Army, Politics, and Society in East Asia International Workshop, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Learning to love the army: The effects of schooling and the Patriotic Education campaign on Chinese youth notions of war and the military, at The 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Leiden, the Netherlands, Thursday, July 18, 2019

Dr. Orna Naftali

Senior Lecturer, Department of Asian Studies

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