Amir Hampel

Amir Hampel is an anthropologist of mental health, traditional medicine, and popular culture in China. He has conducted extensive ethnographic research on self-help psychology in China, focusing on social skills training programs that are popular with young urban professionals. As people in self-help groups try to become confident, extroverted, and interesting, they reveal how they want to be perceived. By analyzing the way that youth perform their desired identity, this research has yielded insights into moral values, social class, and mental health in contemporary China. This research also analyzes the transnational flow of psychological expertise, including how therapeutic ideals of empathy, self-awareness, and personal autonomy are taken up in popular culture.

Amir is now investigating the rise of ADHD and autism awareness in China, and the use of Chinese medicine to treat children diagnosed with developmental disorders. This work is analyzing parental anxieties in China; the way that therapies are shaped by economic, political, and social pressures; and debates about clinical research, integrative medicine, and the place of Chinese medicine in evidence-based practice. Amir is also involved in transnational initiatives to consider the role of Chinese medicine and culture in mental health care, maintaining dialogues with scholars, clinicians, and public health professionals.

At NYU Shanghai, Amir teaches about qualitative methods, Chinese youth culture, and about the anthropology of China, medicine, and mental health. 

Select Publications

• 2024 Practical Daydreams: Self-optimization through Consumer Lifestyles in China. Historical Social Research 49 (3): 238-268.

• 2023 “Performance Management: Western Universities, Chinese Entrepreneurs, and Students on Stage.” Affective Capitalism in Academia. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

• 2021 “Shameless Modernity: Reflexivity and Social Class in Chinese Personal Growth Groups.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 11 (3): 928–941.

• 2020 “Globalising Personality: A View from China.” The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures. London: Routledge.

• 2017 “Equal Temperament: Autonomy and Identity in Chinese Public Speaking Clubs.” Ethos 45 (4): 441-461.

Education

• PhD, Department of Comparative Human Development
  University of Chicago
• BA, Majors in English Literature, and Philosophy, minor in Asian Studies
  Lehigh University