‘Unruly’ Children

Jing Xu is an anthropologist at the University of Washington and the author of The Good Child: Moral Development in a Chinese Preschool (Stanford University Press, 2017). She pursues interdisciplinary research, bringing together humanistic and scientific perspectives to study how humans become moral persons.

• Introduction: learning morality in a Taiwan village; 1. Fieldwork beyond fieldwork: reconstructing an ethnography of children through historical fieldnotes; 2. Crime and punishment: parenting and the disobedient child; 3. Playful creatures: learning morality in peer play; 4. Gendered morality: naughty boys and fierce girls; 5. Care and rivalry: an untold tale of a sibling dyad; Epilogue: taking children seriously; Afterword.

'A unique book where Jing Xu gains access to a vast collection of observations concerning children's behavior in Taiwan. As a renowned specialist in childhood and morality, she is uniquely qualified to explore this treasure trove of evidence and document the historical and psychological processes that inform young children's moral behavior.' Pascal Boyer, Washington University in St. Louis