书目名称 | Caring in Times of Precarity | 副标题 | A Study of Single Wo | 编辑 | Chow Yiu Fai | 视频video | http://file.papertrans.cn/223/222097/222097.mp4 | 概述 | Explores how women are living single, creative lives in a Chinese city.Considers the lives of these women holistically, taking into account their professional, social and intimate lives.Engages with t | 丛书名称 | Palgrave Studies in Globalization, Culture and Society | 图书封面 |  | 描述 | .Caring in Times of Precarity .draws together two key cultural observations: the increase in those living a single life, and the growing attraction of creative careers. Straddling this historical juncture, the book focuses on one particular group of ‘precariat’: single women in Shanghai in various forms of creative (self-)employment. While negotiating their share of the uncanny creative work ethos, these women also find themselves interpellated as. shengnü .(‘left-over women’) in a society configured by a mix of Confucian values, heterosexual ideals, and global images of womanhood. Following these women’s professional, social and intimate lives, the book refuses to see their singlehood and creative labour as problematic, and them as victims. It departs from dominant thinking on precarity, which foregrounds and critiques the contemporary need to be flexible, mobile, and spontaneous to the extent of (self-)exploitation, accepting insecurity. The book seeks to understand– empirically and specifically–women’s everyday struggles and pleasures. It highlights the up-close, everyday embodied, affective, and subjective experience in a particular Chinese city, with broader, global resonances | 出版日期 | Book 2019 | 关键词 | Shanghai; Single Women; Creative Careers; Womanhood; Singlehood; Creative Labour; Precarity; Unmarried wome | 版次 | 1 | doi | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76898-4 | isbn_ebook | 978-3-319-76898-4Series ISSN 2730-9282 Series E-ISSN 2730-9290 | issn_series | 2730-9282 | copyright | The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 |
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Front Matter |
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Abstract
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,Living on My Own, Creatively, Precariously, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
This introductory chapter opens with a historical account of single womanhood and creative work in China, followed by theoretical discussions on the two unique trajectories of our globalizing times that the subjects of this book straddle: single womanhood and creative work. While these Chinese women deal with the multiple demands of singlehood and creative jobs, what are their everyday struggles and pleasures? How do they take care of themselves in the midst of everyday precarity? The chapter explicates local modes of precarity implicated in global ideologies and imaginaries pertaining to womanhood and its intersection with creative labour. Ultimately, it holds up the case study of single women in Shanghai to argue for the limits of the politics of precarity, and proposes an ethics of care. The chapter introduces the 25 women who are the subjects of this book, and the methods used to converse with them. It ends by presenting the organizational logic of the book, and the gist of the subsequent chapters.
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,Living with Their Own Images, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
This chapter analyses dominant representations of single women in contemporary China. Informed by the centrality and popularity of single womanhood in popular cultural productions, it offers an overview of their representations across a plethora of genres and platforms. The overview cross-references the popular terms that have emerged and have circulated in the last couple of decades, such as 3S Lady (“single, born in the seventies, stuck”) and . (literally, “leftover woman”). Then, the chapter focuses on a drama series: . (.). Set in Shanghai, the series follows the love and work lives of five single women from different social backgrounds who live in the same building. The chapter examines the latest discursive formations surrounding Chinese single women in an urban setting. Whether disciplinary or emancipatory, stereotyping or interrogating, provocative or prescriptive—or probably all of these—these are the symbolic realities that single women in China have to live with.
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,Living with a Generation—, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
This chapter investigates the experiences of single women in creative work along the generational paradigm, not only as a matter of age in the personal, individual sense, but also as connected to the historical features specific to China—for instance, the post-1990s (.) with their confident earnestness to engage in start-up projects, the post-1980s (.) with the introduction of the one-child policy, and the post-1970s (.) with the intertwining of the lives of their contemporaries with the end of the Cultural Revolution. The chapter engages critically with theories that seek to employ social generations as an important way to analyse people’s relationships with their life courses, examining their usefulness and limitations. This chapter outlines the genealogies of Chinese generational terms and reviews a collection of popular generational publications. Meanwhile, as cued by the subjects, historical features will be documented to configure a wider context to understand their subjective accounts as single women doing creative work.
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,Balancing Work/Life?, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
This chapter considers the subjective experiences of single women in Shanghai against the globalized conceptual backdrop of creative work. It departs from existing scholarship on creative work in two ways. First, it chooses to suspend the concerns surrounding exploitation and alienation in lieu of an empirical investigation of what Hesmondhalgh and Baker call “good work.” It recuperates what these women have to say about good work, and how they get it done, especially concerning . (setting up a business). Second, this investigation seeks not only to look at their creative work, but also to examine its intricate connections with single life. Three scenarios are identified: first, some report mutual constitution of creative work and singlehood; second, some choose creative work to capitalize on its flexibility and autonomy in order to lead their single lives; and finally, some are wrestling with the success of their creative work, finding it difficult to find compatible life partners.
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,To Love, to Live, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
This chapter situates itself in studies on single women in China, which report similar marginalization as reported in Western contexts. These women have to endure the demand to become a “full” woman through matrimony and maternity, coerced by Confucian values, state propaganda, and parental pressure. Their lived experiences point to a three-pronged approach. First, there are negative accounts of anxiety and feelings of crisis, when they are under pressure to get married, often being pressurized to meet potential husbands by family and peers (.). Second, some women articulate their wish to be romantically involved and the tactics they use to find “the right one.” These include attending courses offered by the so-called Love Club, joining interest groups, and engaging in cultural activities. Third, there are also more positive articulations of freedom and autonomy, lifestyle, and social support, underwriting single lives’ potentials to open up spaces for alternative forms of relationships and co-habitation beyond the heteronormative.
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,Living with Us—The Case of Kunqu, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
Quite a number of single women in Shanghai’s creative industries are active in the Kunqu scene. Originating in the late Yuan dynasty, Kunqu is generally considered to be one of the oldest forms of operatic arts in China. These women engage with Kunqu as fans, apprentices, teachers, organizers, or promoters. And very often, they know one another. This chapter seeks to map out what exactly they do regarding Kunqu, how and why this community of informal sociality came into being, and what the passion, friendships, and contacts they share with regard to its creative practice mean to these single women. In so doing, it engages with three lines of scholarship: deliberations on (imagined) community and citizenship, creative labour studies that often frame “sociality” among creative workers in professional terms, and fandom studies as well as audience research, which attempt to redefine what fans and audiences are in our time.
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,Living with the City, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
Informed by the “spatial turn” in humanities—the increasing interest in the interaction between place and human beings, this chapter uses methods of mapping to recuperate mobile narratives of such interactions, to collect data on subjects’ geographical presence in, and spatial experiences of, the city. Questions concerning sense of belonging, security, convenience, choice, and freedom are addressed. Why do these women doing creative work move to Shanghai? Why do they stay? And where? Once in Shanghai, how do they make a home? Where do they go? And how? While cities, with their potentials for the three T’s—talent, technology, and tolerance—have been put forward as the ideal place to attract and keep creative workers, this inquiry intervenes in this line of thought on creative class mobility with empirical insights from Shanghai, to offer one reply to the fundamental issue of how people make a place of their own, of who owns the city.
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,Living with Themselves, Creating Themselves, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
This chapter is an attempt at self-representation. More empirically, since the women in this inquiry are working in the creative fields and have a vested interest in creative practices, it seems to be an opportune occasion whereby their creativity can be mobilized as part of the inquiry. Inspired by visual methodology in general, and image-elicitation techniques in particular, the subjects were invited to produce visual materials that best represent themselves as single women in Shanghai. These “cultural probing” materials are used in two ways. First, they are documented as materials generated directly by the subjects. They offer readers immediate glimpses of the worlds they are living in. Second, the materials are used for discussions between the subjects and the investigator. The self-generated images lend themselves to opening up areas for examination otherwise unexamined, overlooked, and finally, erased from any understanding of their lives.
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,Epilogue, |
Chow Yiu Fai |
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Abstract
The final chapter draws together the empirical accents of the book to argue that perhaps, for the Chinese women included in this inquiry, precarity is a human condition known to them, suitable for them, and available to them. If the question of whether “precarity” is a male-centric and Western-centric notion is posited, it is not intended to ignore the down sides of all these precarious lives of our time, but to foreground the gender and culture specificities of the notion. This epilogue reiterates the proposal to revitalize the politics of recognition alongside the politics of redistribution, to recognize what the women have done, and are capable of. It inspires an ethics of care, a plea for more people to refuse what is expected of them, to live differently, to be more sure of their capacity to take care of themselves, despite and because of all the struggles. After all, they love ..
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Back Matter |
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Abstract
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