Dr. Orna Naftali

Orna Naftali is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Department of Asian Studies. Her research focuses on childhood, youth, and education; gender 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.
Her current research explores the interface between education, militarization, national identity, and new class formations in China. A recently completed project, "Education and the Formation of National Identity in China: The Effects of Schooling and ‘Patriotic Education’ on Youth of Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds” (sponsored by the ISF and the Harry S. Truman Research Insitute for the Advancement of Peace, 2012-2016), examined the effects of schooling, the Chinese government's 'patriotic education' campaign, and consumption of foreign popular culture products on the attitudes of urban and rural Han-Chinese youths of various class backgrounds toward their nation-state and foreign 'Others'.
Dr. Naftali is currently engaged in a new ethnographic project on War and the Military in Contemporary Chinese Education: The Effects of Schooling and the 'Patriotic Education' Campaign on the Attitudes of Middle-School Students toward Armed Conflict (supported by a Spencer Foundation Small Grant, 2016-2019). In addition, she is working on a historical study on constructions of gender, war, and political violence in PRC children and youth culture and education (1949-present).

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 (1949 to present)
Anthropology of gender and the family in the PRC (1949 to present)
Popular nationalism in contemporary China
State-society relations in contemporary China
Youth legal consciousness and legal education in China

Recent Publications

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。

2018. “'These War Dramas are like Cartoons': Education, Media Consumption, and Chinese Youth Attitudes towards Japan.” Journal of Contemporary China, 1-16. Publisher's Version Abstract

The growing prevalence of foreign media consumption, including from Japan, among young Chinese has received considerable notice in recent work on PRC youth culture. To date however, few studies have considered how youth of different social backgrounds perceive their consumption of Japanese popular culture in the context of the Party-state's 'patriotic education' campaign waged in schools and in the mass media since the 1990s. Studies have also overlooked the question of how rural and urban youth in China currently juxtapose the images and themes conveyed in the Japanese popular culture that they consume with school and domestic media messages about Japan. Drawing on interviews among senior middle school students in China, the present study addresses this issue. It finds that a majority of youth of different backgrounds profess animosity towards Japan, but readily separate these feelings from their passion for Japanese media. In some cases, consumption of Japanese popular culture allows youth to feel that they 'know' - or even appreciate - the other country better. Amid the anti-Japanese messages youth currently receive at school and through domestic media, consumption of Japanese popular culture products therefore manifests a form of 'expressive individualism' on the part of some Chinese youth, who creatively construct their own notions of patriotism, national memory, and Sino-Japanese relations.

2016. Children in China. Cambridge: Polity Press, 192. Publisher's Version Abstract

This book explores the dramatic transformation of Chinese childhood in the post-socialist era. It examines how government policies introduced in China over the last few decades and processes of social and economic change are reshaping the lives of individual children and the conceptions of Chinese childhood in complex, contradictory ways. Drawing on a broad range of literature and original ethnographic research, Naftali discusses the rise of new ideas of child-care, child-vulnerability and child-agency; the impact of the One-Child Policy; and the emergence of children as independent consumers in the new market economy. She shows that Chinese boys and increasingly girls too are enjoying a new empowerment, a development that has met with ambiguity from both caregivers and the state. She also demonstrates how economic restructuring and the recent waves of rural/urban migration have produced starkly unequal conditions for children's education and development both in the countryside and in the cities. Children in China is essential reading for students and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to be a child in contemporary China, as well as for those concerned with the changing relationship between children, the state and the family in the global era.

Recent Presentations

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

"'Don’t Get Soft!': Military-Style Methods in Children’s Care and Education in China", at The Fourteenth Biennial Conference of Asian Studies in Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Wednesday, May 23, 2018

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Dr. Orna Naftali

Chair, Department of Asian Studies

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