Beijing's Red Guard Movement: The Cultural Revolution in Retrospect

Professor Andrew Walder will describe the main findings of his forthcoming book, Fractured Crusade: The Beijing Red Guard Movement.

Friday, April 25, 2008
4:00 PM
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Professor Andrew Walder, who has taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Hong Kong University, and is now a member of the Sociology Department of Stanford University, will describe the main findings of his forthcoming book, Fractured Crusade: The Beijing Red Guard Movement. He will focus on the surprises that he encountered about the Red Guard movement; what he expected to find and how his understanding changed in the course of his research. The Red Guard movement was a form of "bureaucratic politics with mass participation" -- manipulated but not controlled by elite sponsors, driven by the divergent interests of student groups but heavily shaped by Chinese institutions even as they were thrown into disarray. Three UC Berkeley faculty will act as discussants: Hong Yung Lee in Political Science, author of a definitive book on the Cultural Revolution; Xin Liu in Anthropology, and Kevin O’Brien in Political Science, both experts on protests in China and the formation of the modern individual. The event will be moderated by UC Berkeley History Professor Wen-hsin Yeh, who will present a forum not only on the subject of the Cultural Revolution but also on the question of how scholars form their views on large historical questions.