Pub Date : 2022-09-26DOI: 10.1177/00977004221123511
Dayton Lekner
From 1953 to 1991, speaker installations on the coasts of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan sent audio signals back and forth between the two Cold War foes. This opposed amplification and diffusion of sound continued for nearly four decades, employed thousands of “callers,” technicians, station managers, scriptwriters, and other staff, and was heard by successive generations of troops and civilians on both sides. Previous research on the use of sound for mobilization and subjectification in China during this era has focused on the authoritarian, revolutionary, or even totalitarian nature of sonic statecraft. This article, drawing on state archives, memoirs, and interviews, compares the goals, infrastructure, and voices of the two sides to suggest a broader and more transnational framework for understanding acts of sonic propaganda and control, representative not of “communist” or “free” China, but as a diffusion of the state voice into acts of listening between states. It also explores how the opposed initiatives of both sides interacted and influenced each other over years of call and response. Finally, it examines the civilian response to the broadcasts, revealing plural modes of listening, and of apprehending both oneself and one’s enemy. I offer the metaphor of “diffusion” not only to describe the process by which states and individuals positioned themselves through the transmission and reception of sonic impulses, but as a way to do social history that focuses on the multiple receptions and reverberations of an event.
{"title":"States of Diffusion: Ideology, Text, Voice, and Sound in Cold War Chinas","authors":"Dayton Lekner","doi":"10.1177/00977004221123511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221123511","url":null,"abstract":"From 1953 to 1991, speaker installations on the coasts of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan sent audio signals back and forth between the two Cold War foes. This opposed amplification and diffusion of sound continued for nearly four decades, employed thousands of “callers,” technicians, station managers, scriptwriters, and other staff, and was heard by successive generations of troops and civilians on both sides. Previous research on the use of sound for mobilization and subjectification in China during this era has focused on the authoritarian, revolutionary, or even totalitarian nature of sonic statecraft. This article, drawing on state archives, memoirs, and interviews, compares the goals, infrastructure, and voices of the two sides to suggest a broader and more transnational framework for understanding acts of sonic propaganda and control, representative not of “communist” or “free” China, but as a diffusion of the state voice into acts of listening between states. It also explores how the opposed initiatives of both sides interacted and influenced each other over years of call and response. Finally, it examines the civilian response to the broadcasts, revealing plural modes of listening, and of apprehending both oneself and one’s enemy. I offer the metaphor of “diffusion” not only to describe the process by which states and individuals positioned themselves through the transmission and reception of sonic impulses, but as a way to do social history that focuses on the multiple receptions and reverberations of an event.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45215836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1177/00977004221118573
Zhengyang Jiang
Max Weber came to see his “rational bureaucracy” as also something of an “iron cage.” The reliance on regularized paperwork can result in a separation of the administrative procedure from actual substance, and the level-by-level transmission of documents can result in the resolution of problems on paper only. The complex specialized and standardized procedures of the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy are therefore often ineffective because they have lost touch with reality. In China, the problem of the “involution” of public power found by central inspection teams 中央巡视组 during the course of their inspections is in essence the “formalist” 形式主义 response of bureaucracy when supervised and reviewed. Weber believed that the iron cage of bureaucracy, or the irrationality of rationality, needs an outside “charismatic” authority to check and counterbalance it. The practice of the central inspection teams, however, shows how bureaucratic organizations only further intensify formalism to preserve themselves in the face of such outside authority. That is to say, if the charismatic authority does not break through the trap of bureaucratized patterns of thought and behavior, the iron cage will only be further strengthened and perpetuated.
{"title":"Understanding Bureaucratic Involution through Weber’s Bureaucracy: China’s Central Inspection Teams in Practice","authors":"Zhengyang Jiang","doi":"10.1177/00977004221118573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221118573","url":null,"abstract":"Max Weber came to see his “rational bureaucracy” as also something of an “iron cage.” The reliance on regularized paperwork can result in a separation of the administrative procedure from actual substance, and the level-by-level transmission of documents can result in the resolution of problems on paper only. The complex specialized and standardized procedures of the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy are therefore often ineffective because they have lost touch with reality. In China, the problem of the “involution” of public power found by central inspection teams 中央巡视组 during the course of their inspections is in essence the “formalist” 形式主义 response of bureaucracy when supervised and reviewed. Weber believed that the iron cage of bureaucracy, or the irrationality of rationality, needs an outside “charismatic” authority to check and counterbalance it. The practice of the central inspection teams, however, shows how bureaucratic organizations only further intensify formalism to preserve themselves in the face of such outside authority. That is to say, if the charismatic authority does not break through the trap of bureaucratized patterns of thought and behavior, the iron cage will only be further strengthened and perpetuated.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42006705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-22DOI: 10.1177/00977004221120181
Philip C. C. Huang
This article reviews the theory of practice that the author has employed for many years, including a discussion of my understanding of the ideas of its original founder Pierre Bourdieu, and my borrowing, expanding, and reinterpreting of his theory. I have long advocated the development of a new “social science of practice,” which is to say, to begin our research from the study of actual practice, on that basis re-examine and reformulate existing theories or generate new concepts, and then return once more to practice to test those. In hindsight, my own research into the biculturality of late-developing China from Western invasion and influence as well as from indigenous tradition, especially as manifested in its changing justice system, has been crucially important to my rethinking of the theory of practice. This article summarizes the key issues and major points involved.
{"title":"Theory of Practice and China Research: Legal and Social Science Studies","authors":"Philip C. C. Huang","doi":"10.1177/00977004221120181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221120181","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews the theory of practice that the author has employed for many years, including a discussion of my understanding of the ideas of its original founder Pierre Bourdieu, and my borrowing, expanding, and reinterpreting of his theory. I have long advocated the development of a new “social science of practice,” which is to say, to begin our research from the study of actual practice, on that basis re-examine and reformulate existing theories or generate new concepts, and then return once more to practice to test those. In hindsight, my own research into the biculturality of late-developing China from Western invasion and influence as well as from indigenous tradition, especially as manifested in its changing justice system, has been crucially important to my rethinking of the theory of practice. This article summarizes the key issues and major points involved.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48239041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-22DOI: 10.1177/00977004221117773
Christina Maags
China is one of the most rapidly aging societies worldwide. As eldercare services have only been developed over the last two decades, the party-state has increased its efforts by promoting the marketization of eldercare services. Drawing on Vaittinen, Hoppania, and Karsio’s “political economy of care” framework, this study conducts a comparative analysis of marketization processes in Hangzhou and Nanjing to examine local government marketization strategies, their effects on service development, and their socioeconomic implications. I argue that local governments have pursued a “dual-track marketization” strategy. On the one hand, the means-tested public eldercare service infrastructure, which has existed since the Mao Zedong era, has been made subject to the kinds of neoliberal market reforms also found in, for example, European countries, while on the other hand, an entirely new private eldercare service infrastructure is being set up. As the market logic takes over, however, income- and gender-based social inequalities are enhanced.
{"title":"Marketization of Eldercare in Urban China: Processes, Effects, and Implications","authors":"Christina Maags","doi":"10.1177/00977004221117773","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221117773","url":null,"abstract":"China is one of the most rapidly aging societies worldwide. As eldercare services have only been developed over the last two decades, the party-state has increased its efforts by promoting the marketization of eldercare services. Drawing on Vaittinen, Hoppania, and Karsio’s “political economy of care” framework, this study conducts a comparative analysis of marketization processes in Hangzhou and Nanjing to examine local government marketization strategies, their effects on service development, and their socioeconomic implications. I argue that local governments have pursued a “dual-track marketization” strategy. On the one hand, the means-tested public eldercare service infrastructure, which has existed since the Mao Zedong era, has been made subject to the kinds of neoliberal market reforms also found in, for example, European countries, while on the other hand, an entirely new private eldercare service infrastructure is being set up. As the market logic takes over, however, income- and gender-based social inequalities are enhanced.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47311551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-05DOI: 10.1177/00977004221107932
Burak Gürel
This article contributes to the study of the collectivist legacy in Chinese agriculture after 1978 by making five main arguments. First, it demonstrates that the construction of a robust agricultural infrastructure in the collective era enabled the government of the reform era to reduce its infrastructural spending without harming agricultural productivity in the 1980s. Second, village administrations were heavily involved in farm organization in the same period. Third, the collective-era legacy of labor mobilization was relatively strong until the early 2000s. Fourth, the degree of local self-financing remained significant until the abolition of the agricultural tax in 2006. Finally, although the “one project, one discussion” 一事一议 reform of 2008 has failed to raise a significant amount of labor and funds from villagers on a voluntary basis, it nevertheless shows that collective mobilization of labor and financial resources has not been entirely forgotten and continues to inform Chinese agrarian policy to a certain extent.
{"title":"The Collectivist Legacy and Agrarian Development in China since 1978","authors":"Burak Gürel","doi":"10.1177/00977004221107932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221107932","url":null,"abstract":"This article contributes to the study of the collectivist legacy in Chinese agriculture after 1978 by making five main arguments. First, it demonstrates that the construction of a robust agricultural infrastructure in the collective era enabled the government of the reform era to reduce its infrastructural spending without harming agricultural productivity in the 1980s. Second, village administrations were heavily involved in farm organization in the same period. Third, the collective-era legacy of labor mobilization was relatively strong until the early 2000s. Fourth, the degree of local self-financing remained significant until the abolition of the agricultural tax in 2006. Finally, although the “one project, one discussion” 一事一议 reform of 2008 has failed to raise a significant amount of labor and funds from villagers on a voluntary basis, it nevertheless shows that collective mobilization of labor and financial resources has not been entirely forgotten and continues to inform Chinese agrarian policy to a certain extent.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41324387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-04DOI: 10.1177/00977004221106101
Yifan Shi
During the Cultural Revolution, many young people in Beijing exited the revolution by engaging in alternative ways of life. Echoing the fledgling tendency of reassessing the underlying meaning of youth subcultures in the Eastern Bloc, this article discusses the diverse mentalities behind these alternative lifestyles and challenges the traditional wisdom that regards youth subcultures as an easy form of everyday resistance to the regime. It also challenges the traditional landscape of Cultural Revolution literature that mainly focuses on youth activism as a means of mass participation. Young people could make political but not subversive choices by exiting the revolution. While some people exited simply to entertain and socialize, others exited to obtain a better political position during the Cultural Revolution, and others to pursue a meaningful way of life influenced by orthodox ideology. Exiting the revolution was not an easy option as well and, on many occasions, the ability to live alternatively reflected certain young people’s privileged access to resources that others could not access in the People’s Republic of China.
{"title":"Exiting the Revolution: Alternative Ways of Life in Beijing, 1966–1976","authors":"Yifan Shi","doi":"10.1177/00977004221106101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221106101","url":null,"abstract":"During the Cultural Revolution, many young people in Beijing exited the revolution by engaging in alternative ways of life. Echoing the fledgling tendency of reassessing the underlying meaning of youth subcultures in the Eastern Bloc, this article discusses the diverse mentalities behind these alternative lifestyles and challenges the traditional wisdom that regards youth subcultures as an easy form of everyday resistance to the regime. It also challenges the traditional landscape of Cultural Revolution literature that mainly focuses on youth activism as a means of mass participation. Young people could make political but not subversive choices by exiting the revolution. While some people exited simply to entertain and socialize, others exited to obtain a better political position during the Cultural Revolution, and others to pursue a meaningful way of life influenced by orthodox ideology. Exiting the revolution was not an easy option as well and, on many occasions, the ability to live alternatively reflected certain young people’s privileged access to resources that others could not access in the People’s Republic of China.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43861798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-04DOI: 10.1177/00977004221108324
Shuge Wei
On June 1, 1923, Japanese soldiers in Changsha, Hunan, opened fire on and killed two anti-Japanese protesters seeking to prevent the landing of Japanese goods. Through a comprehensive review of the “Changsha Incident,” this article explores the interplay between local and central diplomatic power during the high tide of provincialism. The incident demonstrates how the autonomous Hunan government, faced with the rise of anti-imperialism in local societies and the central government’s inability to fend off foreign coercion, mediated between the local parliament, the central diplomatic office, and Japanese authorities for a solution to the case. By unpacking the multilayered power dimensions of the time, this article demonstrates that the interactions between local and central diplomatic offices were characterized by both cooperation and distrust. Meanwhile, attempts to reach a negotiated settlement over the incident hinged more on competing domestic agendas than on diplomacy. Conflicts between Hunan provincial authorities, a lack of coordination between diplomatic officials in Hunan and Beijing, civilian elites’ distrust of military officials, and rivalry between regional warlords all combined to hinder progress in negotiations.
{"title":"Stalemate within Stalemate: The 1923 Changsha Incident","authors":"Shuge Wei","doi":"10.1177/00977004221108324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221108324","url":null,"abstract":"On June 1, 1923, Japanese soldiers in Changsha, Hunan, opened fire on and killed two anti-Japanese protesters seeking to prevent the landing of Japanese goods. Through a comprehensive review of the “Changsha Incident,” this article explores the interplay between local and central diplomatic power during the high tide of provincialism. The incident demonstrates how the autonomous Hunan government, faced with the rise of anti-imperialism in local societies and the central government’s inability to fend off foreign coercion, mediated between the local parliament, the central diplomatic office, and Japanese authorities for a solution to the case. By unpacking the multilayered power dimensions of the time, this article demonstrates that the interactions between local and central diplomatic offices were characterized by both cooperation and distrust. Meanwhile, attempts to reach a negotiated settlement over the incident hinged more on competing domestic agendas than on diplomacy. Conflicts between Hunan provincial authorities, a lack of coordination between diplomatic officials in Hunan and Beijing, civilian elites’ distrust of military officials, and rivalry between regional warlords all combined to hinder progress in negotiations.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42004337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-04DOI: 10.1177/00977004221090927
Jane Hayward
China’s development strategies have long been premised on an institutionalized urban-rural divide, on the basis of which the population is governed. This urban-rural divide is being reconfigured as China’s relationship to the global economy transforms. As China’s leaders seek to upgrade the economy from one focused on export production to one based on urban middle-class consumers, China’s population is being reorganized. China’s largest cities are pivotal to this strategy. Branded “world cities,” as they further integrate into the global economy, they are becoming exclusive zones, their populations carefully managed and selected. In Beijing, urban villages are key sites for enacting such strategies. Under a controversial program known as “sealed management,” inhabitants are subjected to various forms of surveillance and monitoring. This constitutes a dual strategy both to control local villager populations during land expropriations and to “upgrade” the migrant labor force in keeping with the government’s global city plans.
{"title":"Building City Walls: Reordering the Population through Beijing’s Upside-Down Villages","authors":"Jane Hayward","doi":"10.1177/00977004221090927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221090927","url":null,"abstract":"China’s development strategies have long been premised on an institutionalized urban-rural divide, on the basis of which the population is governed. This urban-rural divide is being reconfigured as China’s relationship to the global economy transforms. As China’s leaders seek to upgrade the economy from one focused on export production to one based on urban middle-class consumers, China’s population is being reorganized. China’s largest cities are pivotal to this strategy. Branded “world cities,” as they further integrate into the global economy, they are becoming exclusive zones, their populations carefully managed and selected. In Beijing, urban villages are key sites for enacting such strategies. Under a controversial program known as “sealed management,” inhabitants are subjected to various forms of surveillance and monitoring. This constitutes a dual strategy both to control local villager populations during land expropriations and to “upgrade” the migrant labor force in keeping with the government’s global city plans.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48366954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-29DOI: 10.1177/00977004221091924
L. Pan
Taking the radical youth magazine The 70’s Biweekly (hereafter The 70s) as the main thread, this article investigates how the content of the magazine in tandem with its activism created an “in-between” subjectivity and a “dissent space” by and in which were broken down the binaries in the grand narratives of the Cold War and Left–Right politics in Hong Kong. The article first offers an overview of the magazine’s content. Next, it elaborates on the two most historically important protest campaigns that The 70s was involved in: the “Chinese as an Official Language Movement” (1970–1971) and the “Defend Diaoyutai Movement” (1971). Both campaigns illustrate The 70s’s significant role in the history of Hong Kong’s social activism. In the generally politically apathetic social atmosphere of the 1970s, The 70s illustrates an alternative “New Left” approach of social thought and activism that complicated relations between Hong Kong and its colonizer and understandings of the nation, imperialism, and the Global South.
{"title":"New Left without Old Left: The 70’s Biweekly and Youth Activism in 1970s Hong Kong","authors":"L. Pan","doi":"10.1177/00977004221091924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221091924","url":null,"abstract":"Taking the radical youth magazine The 70’s Biweekly (hereafter The 70s) as the main thread, this article investigates how the content of the magazine in tandem with its activism created an “in-between” subjectivity and a “dissent space” by and in which were broken down the binaries in the grand narratives of the Cold War and Left–Right politics in Hong Kong. The article first offers an overview of the magazine’s content. Next, it elaborates on the two most historically important protest campaigns that The 70s was involved in: the “Chinese as an Official Language Movement” (1970–1971) and the “Defend Diaoyutai Movement” (1971). Both campaigns illustrate The 70s’s significant role in the history of Hong Kong’s social activism. In the generally politically apathetic social atmosphere of the 1970s, The 70s illustrates an alternative “New Left” approach of social thought and activism that complicated relations between Hong Kong and its colonizer and understandings of the nation, imperialism, and the Global South.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45075417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-27DOI: 10.1177/00977004221100151
Xinyan Peng
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the form of immersive research in corporate Shanghai, this article demonstrates how white-collar women in urban China crafted relatedness in the interstitial times and spaces of and beyond the workplace. It brings to light how the precarious nature of work and the workplace environment shaped the precarious nature of relatedness established by those women who worked together. Though aware of the assumed lack of sociability and interpersonal trust as well as the fleeting and momentary ties formed in urban and corporate spaces defined by mobility and instability, white-collar women who worked together developed ties of relatedness to express their own desired understanding of the self and familial and gender roles. Forms of relatedness produced among white-collar women in and beyond the workplace occupy a space between home and work, reconceptualize women’s roles and places in family life, and reconfigure kinship and gender.
{"title":"“You Cannot Make Friends at Work”? Relatedness in and beyond the Workplace and the Reconfiguration of Kinship and Gender in Urban China","authors":"Xinyan Peng","doi":"10.1177/00977004221100151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004221100151","url":null,"abstract":"Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the form of immersive research in corporate Shanghai, this article demonstrates how white-collar women in urban China crafted relatedness in the interstitial times and spaces of and beyond the workplace. It brings to light how the precarious nature of work and the workplace environment shaped the precarious nature of relatedness established by those women who worked together. Though aware of the assumed lack of sociability and interpersonal trust as well as the fleeting and momentary ties formed in urban and corporate spaces defined by mobility and instability, white-collar women who worked together developed ties of relatedness to express their own desired understanding of the self and familial and gender roles. Forms of relatedness produced among white-collar women in and beyond the workplace occupy a space between home and work, reconceptualize women’s roles and places in family life, and reconfigure kinship and gender.","PeriodicalId":47030,"journal":{"name":"Modern China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43299043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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