An Ethnographic Account of Chinese “Global Citizens” Doing Development at Home

In this project, I aim to provide a sustained ethnographic account of how students from China attending US universities approach a global citizenship initiative in rural Henan, China. I ask: how do Chinese students in America come to understand their engagement in development projects in China using both their Chinese cultural concepts and values and those they have learned in the US? What are the converging and competing logics of their development practices, and how are these logics negotiated, practiced, and contested on the ground? Through this project, I hope to construct a critical global citizenship sensitive to cultural differences of its audiences. Moreover, I aim at moving beyond critiques on development and offer an alternative understanding on development from a Chinese rationale.