This talk discusses Chinese preschool-kindergarten children’s moral education and development, based on fieldwork research in Shanghai. Placing Chinese children, alternately seen as China's greatest hope and derided as self-centered "little emperors," at the center of its analysis, this talk traces how Chinese socialization beliefs and methods influence young children’s construction of a moral world. The combination of anthropological and psychological theories and methods illuminates how socio-cultural environment shapes the development of morality at its earliest stage.

Jing Xu is a cultural anthropologist whose research examines morality, child-rearing and cultural transmission in contemporary China. After receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014, she has completed postdoctoral research at the University of Washington. She received her M.A. and B.A. from Tsinghua University.