Market Economy Lives, Socialist Death: Contemporary Commemorations in Urban China

Modern China ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 009770041987912
Author(s):  
Huwy-min Lucia Liu
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
Contemporary Context

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in funeral parlors in Shanghai in 2010 and 2011, this article finds that regardless of how they lived, urban Chinese in Shanghai today are mainly commemorated in “memorial meetings” 追悼会. By analyzing what memorial meetings are through examining the modernist emotional expression and bodily movements as well as socialist narratives in these rituals, this article shows that memorial meetings transform dead bodies into proper persons—socialist citizen subjects—posthumously. This is possible because of the rehabilitating power that this ritual acquired during the Cultural Revolution. However, the Chinese government has been discouraging people from having memorial meetings since the beginning of its economic reforms. Consequently, performing memorial meetings in this contemporary context creates a moment of disjuncture by providing people with a chance to reflect on what being a citizen in China means today. Such dissonance allows people to momentarily recognize alternatives to their market-driven daily life.

scholarly journals ‘The tiger’s leap’: The role of history in legitimating the authority of modern Chinese planners

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (13) ◽  
pp. 2681-2696
Author(s):  
Xin Feng ◽  
Kiera Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Professional Authority ◽  
Equivalent State ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
Contemporary Context

Much has been written about the ways in which recent economic reforms have changed Chinese cities. Chinese planning is often discussed as a profession in an equivalent state of flux, as urban planners struggle to develop a new concept of their role that can find a coherent middle course between conflicting priorities: the pursuit of market-driven growth; the demands of a centralised and relatively authoritarian state; and the need to maintain a participative openness to local communities. This paper questions this emphasis on coherence within professionalism, arguing that planners in modern China define their role by sliding between very different sets of values and priorities. The term ‘public interest’ acts as a pivot in this negotiation, allowing the tensions between competing rationales to be downplayed. Furthermore, the challenges of the contemporary context do not entail leaving history behind but rather using it as a creative resource for ideas of legitimacy, authority and professionalism. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s reflections on history, we argue that earlier models of professional authority from the Confucian and socialist traditions are mined and reinvented to cope with the uncertainties of professional decision-making in a highly conflicted present.

scholarly journals Taking Watsuji online: betweenness and expression in online spaces

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Osler ◽  
Joel Krueger
Keyword(s):  
Communication Technology ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
Contemporary Context

AbstractIn this paper, we introduce the Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji’s phenomenology of aidagara (“betweenness”) and use his analysis in the contemporary context of online space. We argue that Watsuji develops a prescient analysis anticipating modern technologically-mediated forms of expression and engagement. More precisely, we show that instead of adopting a traditional phenomenological focus on face-to-face interaction, Watsuji argues that communication technologies—which now include Internet-enabled technologies and spaces—are expressive vehicles enabling new forms of emotional expression, shared experiences, and modes of betweenness that would be otherwise inaccessible. Using Watsuji’s phenomenological analysis, we argue that the Internet is not simply a sophisticated form of communication technology that expresses our subjective spatiality (although it is), but that it actually gives rise to new forms of subjective spatiality itself. We conclude with an exploration of how certain aspects of our online interconnections are hidden from lay users in ways that have significant political and ethical implications.

From ‘Leading the Masses’ to ‘Serving the Consumers’? Newspaper Reporting in Contemporary Urban China

10.1068/a3563 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (9) ◽  
pp. 1635-1660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J Smith
Keyword(s):  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
Newspaper Reporting ◽  
Study Support ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Communications System ◽  
Party State

This paper examines and evaluates the content of news items reported in a sample of daily newspapers in China's biggest cities. Using three ‘Western’ media sources, an inventory of news items directly or indirectly related to the ‘downside’ of the economic reforms was generated. A simultaneous analysis of mainland newspapers finds that many of the same themes were reported, although the coverage tends to be thinner and less detailed. Some China scholars have suggested that the Party/state is losing control of the communications system in contemporary China, and the results of this study support such arguments; city-level newspapers are now publishing what is most interesting to their consumers and likely to win them a larger share of the market. The regime still manages the dissemination of sensitive political information, but the parallel dictates of commercialization result in the disorderly and unpredictable circulation of communications messages. Mainland newspapers still steer clear of stories considered too politically ‘sensitive’, but the margins of acceptability have been expanded to include news items that only a few years ago would have been excised. The state maintains control over what is included in the daily news as well as what is excluded, although it is unclear to what extent publishing decisions result from a process of state cooptation and self-censorship, as opposed to specific directives from Beijing.

scholarly journals The Presentation of Self in Emigration

2012 ◽  
Vol 642 (1) ◽  
pp. 186-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Cvajner
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
The Self ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Presentation Of Self ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Eastern European Immigrant

This article, based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, describes the strategies for the presentation of the Self employed by Eastern European immigrant women in the Italian northeast. These middle-aged women migrated alone, are employed as live-in care workers, and often lack legal status. For them, migration is a deeply felt trauma, which they narrate as being forced upon them by the collapse of the USSR and the failures of the transition to a market economy. They perceive their life in Italy as degrading, their work is stressful and undignified, they miss their children, and they are often seen as poor mothers with questionable morals. Consequently, they seek to dilute the social stigma, presenting positive images of their selves and claiming respect from a variety of audiences. The women continuously endeavor to define their current condition as accidental and temporary and to assert their right to a better future.

Who are the Asset-Poor in China: A Comprehensive Description and Policy Implications

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 765-787
Author(s):  
YUANYUAN YANG ◽  
JUN-HONG CHEN ◽  
MINCHAO JIN
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Income Poverty ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Household Asset ◽  
Asset Poverty

AbstractThere is a large body of literature asserting that household asset holdings play a critical role in prospects of economic and social well-being. This study examines asset-poverty rates in China using the 2013 survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP). The results indicate that asset-poverty rates in urban China were lower than those of developed countries, whereas rural and migrant households experienced more serious asset poverty than their counterparts in urban China. In addition, the asset-poverty rates were at least twice the income-poverty rates in China according to the different poverty lines used in the study. Several demographic characteristics were found associated with asset poverty. To assist the Chinese government in reaching its goal of eradicating absolute poverty by 2020 through targeted poverty alleviation, this study suggests including assets in the description and alleviation of poverty.

scholarly journals Naked in the Face of Contamination

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Normal Forms ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Chemical Exposures ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Ecuadorian Amazon ◽  
The Face ◽  
Material Process

While chemicals are often described and acted upon in technoscientific forums as isolated, discrete entities, vernacular experience points to possibilities of experiencing, speaking about, and imagining chemical exposures that have otherwise been rendered politically obsolete. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this article invokes accounts of daily life in order to argue that vernacular experience is necessary for understanding what it means to live in a place of environmental hazard, and for building a more inclusive politics of knowledge production in models and assessments of toxicity. Descriptions such as “naked in the face of contamination,” “swimming in oil,” “smoke thick like marmalade,” or exclamations of pain re-lived “tsaac!” refuse hegemonic assumptions about how chemicals alter and enable life. To take these descriptions of life seriously is to recognize the ways that chemical concentrations often far exceed the ‘normal’ forms and quantities modeled in risk assessments of standard oil operations. The chemically saturated present demands a reconfiguration of toxicity – as a socio-material process, epistemic concept, and embodied experience – in order to work towards political and environmental, as well as epistemological, justice.

scholarly journals Media Ethnography in Diasporic Communities

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 124
Author(s):  
Putut Widjanarko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Media Ethnography ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Diasporic Communities

Media and communication technology plays a crucial role in diasporic communities by helping members to maintain complex connections with their places of origin, and at the same time to live their life in the diaspora. The social interactions, belief systems, identity struggles, and the daily life of diasporic communities are indeed reflected in their media consumption and production. A researcher can apply media ethnography to uncover some of the deeper meanings of diasporic experiences. However, a researcher should not take media ethnographic methods lightly since a variety of issues must be addressed to justify its use as a legitimate approach. This article examines various forms of media ethnographic fieldwork (multi-sited ethnography), issues related to researching one’s own community (native ethnography), and the debates surrounding duration of immersion in ethnography research within the context of diasporic communities. Careful consideration of such issues is also necessary to establish the “ethnographic authority” of the researcher.

“You’ve got to have core muscles”: Cultivating hardworking bodies among white-collar women in urban China

Ethnography ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146613812093999
Author(s):  
Xinyan Peng
Keyword(s):  
White Collar ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
The Body ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
Work Ethics ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on young white-collar women training bodies after work in Shanghai, I demonstrate that core muscles serve as visual indexes of discipline and hard-work, and that women create social spaces to collectively cultivate such dispositions. The socially sanctioned value of core muscles is connected to the discourse of ‘having it all’ increasingly popular among professional women in corporate, urban China. This paper elaborates on how bodily training transposes dispositions of work ethics beyond the workplace and on women’s anxieties about their bodies at the intersection of productive and reproductive demands from the society. This paper builds on and critiques existing approaches to the body, and attends not only to the woman’s body at the intersection of production and reproduction but also to the social aspect of bodily training in spaces between home and work.

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