From the fraught world of geopolitics to business and the academy, it’s more vital than ever that Westerners and East Asians understand how each other thinks. As Jin Li shows in this groundbreaking work, the differences run deep. Li explores the philosophical origins of the concept of self in both cultures and synthesizes her findings with cutting-edge psychological research to reveal a fundamental contrast.

Westerners tend to think of the self as being, as a stable entity fixed in time and place. East Asians think of the self as relational and embedded in a process of becoming. The differences show in our intellectual traditions, our vocabulary, and our grammar. They are even apparent in our politics: the West is more interested in individual rights and East Asians in collective wellbeing. Deepening global exchanges may lead to some blurring and even integration of these cultural tendencies, but research suggests that the basic self-models, rooted in long-standing philosophies, are likely to endure.

The Self in the West and East Asia is an enriching and enlightening account of a crucial subject at a time when relations between East and West have moved center-stage in international affairs.

Jin Li is Professor of Education and Human Development at Brown University. Originally from China, she studied German literature and language before moving to the United States, where she has lived since the late 1980s. Her research focuses on East Asian virtue-oriented and Western mind-oriented learning models and how these shape children’s learning beliefs, parental socialization, and achievement. She is the author of Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West (2012).