<!-- Don't mess with this line! --><!-- Write your article below this line --> {{Infobox person | name = Yunxiang Yan | image = | alt = | caption = | birth_date = | birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | nationality = | other_names = | known_for = Anthropological studies in China | occupation = anthropologist }} {{family name hatnote|Yan|lang=Chinese}} {{Infobox Chinese |t=閻雲翔 |s= 阎云翔 |p=Yán Yúnxiáng |w=Yen<sup>2</sup> Yün<sup>2</sup>-hsiang<sup>2</sup> }}
'''Yunxiang Yan''' is a Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.anthro.ucla.edu/faculty/yunxiang-yan|title = Yunxiang Yan 阎云翔}}</ref> He is known for his field work studies in Xiajia Village, Heilongjiang Province, which locates in the northeastern part of China.
== Significant views == Yan's 2003 ''Private Life Under Socialism'' is an influential anthropology text which addresses the development of the individual as a central social category in rural and community life in China, tying these changes to broader structural forces of individualization during the country's rapid modernization process.<ref name=":53">{{Cite book |last=Santos |first=Gonçalo |title=Chinese Village Life Today: Building Families in an Age of Transition |date=2021 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=978-0-295-74738-5 |location=Seattle |pages=}}</ref>{{Rp|page=12}} ''Private Life Under Socialism'' traces China's macro-structural forces of individualization to the May Fourth Movement.<ref name=":53" />{{Rp|page=12}} The text focuses on changes occurring after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, particularly during the first two decades of reform and opening up.<ref name=":53" />{{Rp|page=12}} The text addresses decline of family hierarchies and extended family ties, decline in collectivist ideologies, and the development of smaller, child-centered families and new forms of intergenerational solidarity.<ref name=":53" />{{Rp|page=12}}
Yan noticed fewer violations of China's One-Child policy among rural populations in the 1990s who were historically resistant. He believes this change is because these rural parents, having grown up with birth planning, placed a higher value on material comforts and individual happiness compared to earlier generations.<ref name=":14">{{Cite book |last=Rodriguez |first=Sarah Mellors |url= |title=Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021 |date=2023 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-009-02733-5 |location=Cambridge, United Kingdom |pages=193 |oclc=1366057905}}</ref>
== In media == Yunxiang Yan is also a featured subject, together with Tianjian Shi and Emily Wu, in Chris Billing's 2005 documentary ''[http://www.uptothemountain.com Up to the Mountain, Down to the Village]''.<ref>{{Citation |last=Billing |first=Chris |title=Up to the Mountain, Down to the Village |date=2005-01-02 |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3768920/ |type=Documentary |access-date=2023-12-14 |others=Shi Tianjian, Yunxiang Yan, Emily Yimao}}</ref> From 1968 onwards more than 17 million high school students and young adults were sent "up to the mountain, down to the village" (上山下乡 shang shan, xia xiang) to "learn from the peasants." In the documentary three of those youngsters revisit the remote villages to which they were sent thirty years ago.
==Career landmarks== ===Publications=== * ''The Flow of Gifts''. Stanford: University Press, 1996 * ''Private Life under Socialism''. Stanford University Press, 2003 * ''The Individualization of Chinese Society''. Oxford & NY: Berg, 2009
===Awards=== * 2010: The Guggenheim Fellowship of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Yan, Yunxiang}} Category:University of California, Los Angeles faculty Category:Chinese anthropologists Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people)