Li Zhang

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology, Cornell University, 1998 M.A., Social Relations, UC Irvine, 1993 M.A., B.A., Chinese Literature and Literary Theory, Peking University, 1990, 1987
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University, 1998-1999

About

Li Zhang's research concerns the social, political, spatial, and psychological repercussions of market reforms and postsocialist transformations in China. Her earlier work traces the profound reconfigurations of space, power, and social networks within China's "floating population." Her second book examines the privatization of homeownership, city planning, and the remaking of the new middle classes. Her recent book explores how an unfolding "inner revolution" brought by an emergent psychotherapy movement reconfigures selfhood, family dynamics, and modes of governing in an anxious China. Currently she is working on a new project on the ethical and technological challenges of massive aging and eldercare by focusing on the problem of the increasing age-based digital divide.

She served as Interim Dean of the Division of Social Sciences (2015-17), Chair of Anthropology Department (2011-15), and Director of East Asian Studies Program (2003-06) at UCD, and President of the Society for East Asian Anthropology (2013-15). She is a co-editor for the Issues of Globalization book series by Oxford University Press.

Research Focus

Aging and Digital Divide, Well-Being and Ethics of Care; Mental Health, Psychotherapy; Medical Anthropology; Science and Technology Studies; Urban Studies; Global Middle-Classes; Migration; Postsocialism; East Asia (especially China).

Publications

Books

• Zhang, L. (2020) Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy. University of California Press (Honorable Mention, 2021 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association). 中文版 《心灵的呵护》Forthcoming.
• Zhang, L. (2010) In Search of Paradise: Middle Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis, Cornell University Press (Winner of the 2011 Francis L. Hsu Book Prize by the Society of East Asian Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association; Winner of the 2012 Robert E. Park Award by the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association). 中文版《大房子,小天堂》Forthcoming。
• Zhang, L. (2001) Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population. Stanford University Press (Winner of the 2002 Robert E. Park Award by the Community & Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association). 中文版《城市里的陌生人》江苏人民出版社 2013。
• Susan Greenhalgh and Zhang, L. (Eds) (2020) Can Science and Technology Save China? Cornell University Press.
• Zhang, L. and Aihwa Ong (Eds.) (2008) Privatizing China, Socialism from Afar. Cornell University Press.

Special Issues

• Zhang, L. and Elizabeth Davis (Eds) (2018) Special Issue: Global Side Effects: Precarity, Responsibility, and Mental Health, Medical Anthropology 37 (1).
• Zhang, L. and Amy Borovoy (Eds) (2016) Special Issue: Between Biopolitical Governance and Care, Medical Anthropology 36 (1).

Recent Selected Articles and Book Chapters

• Zhang, L. (2024) What Good Life and Why Now? Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 32 (1): 209-216.
• Zhang, L. and Zhiying Ma. (2024) An Ascending Society in Distress, in Anthropology of Ascendant China: Histories, Attainments, and Tribulations, ed. by Mayfair Yang. Routledge.
• Zhang, L. (2021) Of Visceral/Somatic Practices in Healing, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 57 (3): 251-256.
• Zhang, L. (2020) Embracing Psychological Science for the Good Life? in Can Science and Technology Save China? eds. by Susan Greenhalgh and Li Zhang, 50-68, University of California Press.
• Zhang, L. (2018) Cultivating the Therapeutic Self in China, Medical Anthropology 37 (1): 45-58.
• Zhang, L. (2018) Convergence and Divergence among the Rich and the Poor, in Polarized Cities: Portraits of the Rich and Poor in Urban China, ad by Dorothy Solinger, Rowman & Littlefield.
• Zhang, L. (2017) Battle Over Green Space: Land Disputes, Rights Activism, and Emerging Publics in Urban China, in Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China, ads by Brandtstadter & Steinmuller, 18-33. Routledge.
• Zhang, L. (2016) The Rise of Therapeutic Governing in Postsocialist China, Medical Anthropology 36 (1): 6-18.
• Zhang, L. and Amy Borovoy. (2016) Between Biopolitical Governance and Care: Rethinking Health, Selfhood, and Social Welfare in East Asia, Medical Anthropology 36 (1): 1-5.
• Zhang, L. (2015) Cultivating Happiness: Psychotherapy, Spirituality, and Well-being in a Transforming Urban China, in Handbook of Religion and the Asian City, ed by Peter van der Veer, 315-332. UC Press.
• Zhang, L. (2014) Bentuhua: Culturing Psychotherapy in Postsocialist China, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 38 (2): 283-305.

Teaching

Li Zhang teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of anthropological theories, urban studies, medical and psychological anthropology, consumer culture, migration, development, and Chinese culture and political economy.

Awards

Li Zhang was a 2008-09 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2004-05 UC Davis Chancellor's Fellow. She has won numerous awards throughout her career, including three prestigious book prizes: Winner of the 2012 Robert E. Park Book Award for In Search of Paradise, Winner of the 2001 Robert E. Park Book Award for Strangers in the City, and Winner of the 2011 Francis L. Hsu Book Prize for In Search of Paradise. Her latest book, Anxious China, was awarded Honorable Mention for 2021 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing. Her research projects were supported by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, and Social Science Research Council among others.