Humour and TikTok memes during the 2020 pandemic lockdown: Tensions of gender and care faced by Chinese mothers working from home

2021 ◽  
pp. 0920203X2110496
Author(s):  
Xiao Han ◽  
Giselinde Kuipers
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Product Placement ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
Temporary Relief ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This article examines a humorous meme that emerged on Chinese TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Using #workfromhomewithchildcare, Chinese working mothers shared humorous clips of their experience of working from home with their children who were also at home during the pandemic lockdown. By analysing the themes, protagonists, and humour techniques of a sample of 85 videos, we ask why the mood of these clips is so strongly marked by humour, and what this tells us about contemporary Chinese society, particularly about the position of women and mothers. We show that these memetic clips consist of three distinct genres of mothers working from home: (1) ‘balancing mothers’ who balance between work and childcare, (2) ‘pedagogic mothers’ who give childcare tips, and (3) ‘commercially oriented’ mothers who offer tutorials by means of product placement and advertisement. While these memes express what Mary Douglas called ‘a joke in the social structure’ without offering either relief or critique, they do create an online joking culture that offers temporary relief as well as awareness that others are in the same position. Our analysis tempers enthusiastic claims about both the critical potential of humour and the new ‘liberating’ affordances offered by digital platforms to produce liberating female spaces.

The Politics of Hsia-hsiang Youth

1974 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 491-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Gordon White
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Ideological And Political Education ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Transitional Stage ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This paper sets out to examine various aspects of the contemporary Chinese social system and their political implications by studying the social and political attitudes of a subgroup of Chinese society. The general area of interest is social stratification in China: the bases of social differentiation in the new society and how these are perceived by its citizens; the extent to which changes in the structure of society have been accompanied by changes in social attitudes; the extent to which ideological campaigns to change attitudes have been successful; the limitations placed by the stratified nature of society in its transitional stage of socialism on the effectiveness of ideological and political education.

scholarly journals Towards a Theory of Constrained Relativism: Comparing and Combining the Work of Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, and Alan Fiske

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 173-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Verweij
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Relational Models ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relational Models Theory

In this article, I seek to compare Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, the cultural theory developed by Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, and the relational models theory pioneered by Alan Fiske, and attempt to sketch how these theories could possibly be combined. I argue that the three theories are among the most interesting conceptual enterprises in the social sciences of the last few decades, as they all represent –quite similar– syntheses of long-standing social-science dualisms, such as objectivism vs. subjectivism, social structure vs. free will, functionalism vs. social conflict, etc. Besides these commonalities, I spell out the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches. This allows me to conclude by considering whether, and how, it might be possible to synthesise these syntheses by picking the most interesting features of the three theories, and avoiding their less appealing ones.

scholarly journals Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 212
Author(s):  
Ngar-sze Lau
Keyword(s):  
Mainland China ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Buddhist Meditation ◽  
Open Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meditation Retreat ◽  
Vipassana Meditation ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast Asia and globalization. Despite the revival of traditional Chan school meditation practices since the Open Policy, various transnational lay meditation practices, such as vipassanā and mindfulness, have been popularized in monastic and lay communities as a trendy way to heal physical and mental suffering in mainland China. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in South China, this paper examines how Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness and psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression in lay people. With analysis of the teaching and approach of the retreat guided by well-educated Chinese meditation monastics, I argue that some young generation Buddhist communities have contributed to giving active responses towards the recent yearning for individualized bodily practices and the social trend of the “subjective turn” and self-reflexivity in contemporary Chinese society. The hybrid inclusion of mindfulness exercises from secular programs and psychoanalytic exercises into a vipassanā meditation retreat may reflect an attempt to re-contextualize meditation in Chinese Buddhism.

scholarly journals Travellers, Easter Witches and Cunning Folk: Regulators of Fortune and Misfortune in Ostrobothnian Folklore in Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Karolina Kouvola
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Finite Amount ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Detailed Picture

AbstractThis article* is about the distinct groups that practised malevolent and benevolent witchcraft in Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia in late-modern Finland according to belief legends and memorates. Placing belief legends and memorates in Mary Douglas’ tripartite classification of powers that regulate fortune and misfortune illuminates the social structure of agents who posed a threat or regulated it by means of their supranormal powers. Powers that bring misfortune dwell outside or within the community, whereas powers that bring fortune live within it but nevertheless may be ambivalent and pose a threat to its members as well. Threat towards the community was based on the concept of limited good, in other words the belief that there was a finite amount of prosperity in the world. The aim is to paint a detailed picture of the complex social structure and approaches to witchcraft in late-modern Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia.

Villains, Victims and Morals in Contemporary Chinese Literature

1971 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 331-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe C. Huang
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Romanticism ◽  
Social Conduct ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Source Materials

Novels reflect social realities at given times and under given conditions. When the direct survey method cannot be applied to the study of Chinese society, novels constitute one of the available sources from which useful information concerning the structure, order and conditions of society and interpersonal relations may be inferred. However, the difficulty of reconstructing the social conduct of Chinese people from such elusive source materials is enhanced since Communist novels reflect less the realities as they are than the realities as they should be. The theory of the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism demands that the plots and characters must be “romanticized” to give a picture of the society corresponding to the needs of ideology. Even if this is so, the stories still have to be based on social realities for the readers to appreciate them. A somewhat modified interpretation holds that romanticization is based on the foundation of realism. It is from the discernment of this element of realism in Chinese Communist fiction that we may attempt to reconstruct the nature of Chinese society.

scholarly journals A Behavioural Study on the Influences of Confucianism in Chinese Society

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-132
Author(s):  
Helal Uddin Ahmed ◽  
Zhang Jielin
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Population ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
World History ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Chinese Culture ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Confucius (551-479 BC) is considered to be a great philosopher and educator in Chinese society and one of the greatest scholars ever in world history. He was the founder of Confucianism, which constitutes a major part of traditional Chinese culture and made tremendous contribution to the unfolding of Chinese civilization over the centuries. In this study, the authors have presented a comprehensive outline of Confucianism and have attempted to gauge the attitude of contemporary Chinese people towards Confucian concepts, values and attributes as well as their influences on the social lives of present-day Chinese population. The Likert Scale was applied in the study to assess the attitude of the Chinese educated class belonging to the educational institutions like the universities in Beijing towards Confucianism. It was found from the survey that the Confucian concepts still wield substantial influence on the social outlook of the modern-day Chinese people and these attributes are still relevant in the day to day lives of the Chinese society. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#61-62; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2017 P 109-132

Lay Buddhists and Moral Activism in Contemporary China (当代中国的佛教居士与道德能动主义)

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Society ◽  
Religious Activity ◽  
Grassroots Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economically Marginalized ◽  
Lay Buddhists ◽  
Organizational Cohesiveness ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

The last few decades have seen the rise of grassroots groups of lay Buddhists in post-Mao China who, through the composition, exchange, and discussion of Buddhist-themed media, foster moral discourses that critique what they perceive as the materialistic direction of contemporary Chinese society. Disseminated at legal but unregulated spaces within Buddhist temples, these discourses empower the economically marginalized lay practitioners who gather there and provide them with new purpose in life. Practitioners are also able to transmit these moral discourses through networks to other temple spaces. However, they do not yet possess the means to use them to influence the social direction of Chinese society at large. This is due to (1) political restrictions against the circulation of religious-themed materials outside of approved religious activity sites; (2) economic obstacles faced by the practitioners who seek to spread anti-materialistic messages; (3) a lack of organizational cohesiveness among the practitioners; and (4) the influence on practitioners of doctrines within Buddhism that caution against proselytizing to those who do not already possess a pre-fated bond with the Buddha and his teachings. As a result, lay Buddhists do not as yet constitute a social movement in the way the term is conventionally used by sociologists.佛教居士组成的草根社会团体在毛时代之后的几十年快速发展。通过书写、交流与讨论与佛教主题相关的文献，他们促进形成了一套批判当前中国社会拜金主义倾向的道德话语。这套话语在合法且相对自由的佛教寺院中传播，鼓励了经济窘迫的信徒，帮助他们获得新的生活目的。这一道德话语也借由信徒进一步传播给其他的寺院。但是因为以下原因，这些草根团体无力影响中国社会的整体方向：1)宗教政策限制了宗教思想在寺庙以外的传播；2)信徒的经济地位较低，难以宣传反对拜金主义的话语；3)信徒中间缺乏组织凝聚力；4)反对向那些与佛陀无缘的人宣传佛家思想的信条。因此到目前为止，佛教居士团体还没有形成社会学意义上的社会运动。

Silence and Sound in Black Girl Utopia

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 90-97
Author(s):  
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Tone Deaf ◽  
At Home

Ladeedah is an audio novella that takes place in a Black utopic space after “the improvised revolution.” Ladeedah is a tone-deaf, rhythm-lacking Black girl in a world where everyone dances and sings at all times. What is Ladeedah's destiny as a quiet, clumsy genius in a society where movement and sound are the basis of the social structure and the definition of freedom? This excerpt from Ladeedah focuses on Ladeedah's attempts to understand the meaning of revolution from her own perspectives—at home, at school, and in her own mind and body.

Making Sense of Religion and Food

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Pedagogical Approaches

When looking at eating beyond physical nourishment, British anthropologist Mary Douglas (1921-2007) defined food as a cultural system, or code that communicates not only biological information, but social structure and meaning. What can a study of food and faith teach us, as scholars of religion, that we might not otherwise know? This article outlines thematic and pedagogical approaches to teaching food and religion through the lens of five semesters of teaching this course to undergraduate and graduate students. In it, I explore the topics of Food memory and community; Food and scripture; Food, gender and race; and Stewardship and Charity, thinking about spiritual and physical nourishment in the world's major religious traditions.

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