"This book follows Chinese students on their journey to becoming fully-fledged archeologists in a bureaucracy-saturated environment. The analysis of China's complex social system, through the experience of these students, reveals how hierarchy, reciprocity, compatibility, and authority are construed and how obedient autonomy is fostered in the teacher-student relationship. Moreover, it demonstrates how this form of autonomy enables individuals to order and control their future careers in a seemingly disorderly and uncertain world." "A contextualization of archeology in China, Obedient Autonomy shows how the discipline has accommodated itself to a Chinese social structure, and uncovers the moral, ethical, political, and economic underpinnings of that context. It will be accessible to students of anthropology even as it will provoke Euro-American archeologists and interest social theorists of science, philosophers, gender theorists, and students of Chinese society."--BOOK JACKET.