ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors argue that individualism among the young people they studied—reflected in their life choices, behaviour, and personal narratives of freedom, free love, and independence—remains entangled with their perceptions of the family as a collective of indisputable economic, social, and emotional importance. The authors focus on Yunxiang Yan’s research by continuing with a discussion of how younger people born and socialised in rural families in China account for their own roles as individuals who relate to the family as a collective, to other collectives. In China, changes in the legal, social, and economic fields during the period of decollectivisation have had a particularly strong influence on the rate at which the process of individualisation has occurred. The authors conclude with a discussion of how and why young people from rural areas do not simply resort to self-indulgence and a destructive loss of solidarity as a response to the process of individualisation.
