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The radical transformation of Chinese society in the previous decades has greatly improved the material lives of most people, but has also led to skyrocketing levels of inequality, and has subjected Chinese youths to unprecedented levels of socio-economic competition. Helping them to succeed in this competitive world necessitates both care and control from their families. This is evident in their scholarly education, but also in the pressure they receive to marry early and well. Both the pressure on their education and on their path towards marriage is imposed on them in the name of support. While many analyses of this situation tie it predominantly to a Confucian ethos imbued into Chinese culture, this article suggests an alternative way to analyze this situation: The revolutionary opposition to inherited privilege paradoxically transformed higher education and marriage into ultra-competitive open markets. Rather than imputing a culturally bounded explanation for this phenomenon, I maintain that the authoritarian-caring parenting style observable in present-day China reflects a situation which finds parallels in other late post-revolutionary societies: the intensification of the educational pressure put on the haves in order to distinguish themselves from the have-nots.

Where is the political located? Since the early 2000s, the phenomenon of 'marriage corners' has mushroomed in city parks all over China. It consists of public gatherings attended by middle- to upper-middle-class parents attempting to find a partner for their child. The competitiveness of these gatherings and the vocabulary used by the participants when evaluating each other reflect political tensions of Chinese society without articulating them. Exploring this tension, the article argues for attending to the political ramifications of spaces where politics are silenced and denied. Hence, these marriage corners are examined as 'paradoxical agoras', that is, as constrained public spaces where politics are neither discussed nor decided, but rather embodied and practiced.

AbstractChinese practices of matchmaking have been controversial for over a century. Their continued transformations reveal a complex nexus of sentimental and material dimensions in the marriage-decision process at the heart of the negotiations between families and in their selections of proper candidates. This interplay between personal sentiments, concrete considerations, and the desire for success makes marriage controversial, as "love" is claimed and proclaimed at the same time. Moral debates around materialism, which have reverberated through the public sphere over the last decade, show how "love" acts as a tool of social reproduction while it also expresses sincere aspirations for an emotionally satisfying life. In comparative perspective, the complex of romantic love examined here reveals a recent, original synthesis of the tradition of parental arrangement and the political question of the place of love in modernity. The paper elucidates one of the contradictions within Chinese society today: the family remains central, but wider trends of individualization continue to unfold. A multifaceted understanding of love clarifies how it can bind families together while it also discourages others from pursuing romance.

Chinese practices of matchmaking have been controversial for over a century. Their continued transformations reveal a complex nexus of sentimental and material dimensions in the marriage-decision process at the heart of the negotiations between families and in their selections of proper candidates. This interplay between personal sentiments, concrete considerations, and the desire for success makes marriage controversial, as "love" is claimed and proclaimed at the same time. Moral debates around materialism, which have reverberated through the public sphere over the last decade, show how "love" acts as a tool of social reproduction while it also expresses sincere aspirations for an emotionally satisfying life. In comparative perspective, the complex of romantic love examined here reveals a recent, original synthesis of the tradition of parental arrangement and the political question of the place of love in modernity. The paper elucidates one of the contradictions within Chinese society today: the family remains central, but wider trends of individualization continue to unfold. A multifaceted understanding of love clarifies how it can bind families together while it also discourages others from pursuing romance.

To be considered worthy of society's protection is not the objective consequence of an inherent quality but the result of a social process. This article examines this observation through the case of canine welfare in China. Popular defense of dogs against brutalization and consumption, as well as state regulations, have become common in China in recent years, generating conflicts over the value attributed to dogs. To understand the circumstances behind and broader implications of activists' support for protecting dogs, this article identifies elements that are determinant: framing; prioritization; the relationship between protectors and protected; and the socio-political background of these campaigns. (Crit Asian Stud / GIGA)

From an outsider's perspective, today's Popular China might appear as a self-confident and triumphant country. However, a large-scale examination of the country's recent moral controversies reveals a very different picture, one that has much to do with the widespread local public perception of an ongoing moral crisis (Kleinman et al., 2011), whose examination requires careful attention placed on the ethical and affective aspects of the everyday lives of today's Chinese people. In this article, I propose to examine the anguish that Chinese bachelor youths and their concerned parents undergo and express, as they are confronted with the difficult process of finding a suitable mate for marriage. I examine the fears their celibacy generates, the mutual distrust that participants taking part in bachelors' parents gatherings demonstrate, and the disputes these encounters engage. I analyze the moral world of today's urban China from the perspective of the very feelings and affects that pervade it. Highlighting the ways in which my interlocutors shared their emotions with me along the course of my fieldwork, carried out in the cities of Beijing and Chengdu, I will insist on the importance of these affects within an anthropological approach. The moral sensitivities contained in the maintenance of the economic and social situations of one's family reveal themselves as an exceptional resource for knowledge. By examining the political economy of sentiments within which parents and their children find themselves entrapped, I argue that we can gain a deeper understanding of the concrete consequences of today's societal transformations.

Le rapport de soutenance de la thèse est téléchargé en annexe. ; This ethnographic study, based on fieldwork research carried out in Beijing and Chengdu between 2006 and 2010, explores the transformation of the urban marriage market in China. It does so through the prism of one social institution : the xiāngqīn, a traditional form of marriage intermediation, which is presently undergoing a reinvention. Through a series of places (marriage agencies, parental and bachelors' gatherings), this study examines a number of twentieth century key issues (the opposition to arranged marriages, the political place of love, the importance of social ties (guānxì), the role of traditional thoughts like "confucianism", etc.) The study examines this phenomenon in its actuality and its transversality, giving accounts of its social, economic, and historical dimensions, and awarding a particular importance to what I name the "affective scope" of the research. The study reveals the "sentimental politics" behind it, as they are helpful to think the social and cultural discriminations it holds. It pays careful attention to the intellectual debates concerning the place awarded to love in the Chinese society, which have been particularly relevant through the modernization process. Furthermore, it elaborates a critical analysis of their present uses. Through them, and through the omnipresent moral debates on today's China's public stage, the transformation of the Chinese subject is observed. The study of this phenomenon therefore allows an exploration of the social and personal consequences of the political, economic, and demographic changes experienced by Chinese society from thirty years onward and the pressure it induced on the younger generations. ; Cette étude ethnographique, conduite à Pékin et à Chengdu entre 2006 et 2010, examine les transformations du marché matrimonial en Chine urbaine à travers le prisme d'une institution sociale : le xiāngqīn, une forme d'intermédiation traditionnelle, aujourd'hui réinventée. ...

International audience ; This article questions the relevance of the use of the expression "sexual revolution" when talking about the transformations of the sexual practices of the young Chinese girls and boys who grew up with the economic reforms initiated in the 1980s. The article also suggests an historical perspective for the changes in the social monitoring of sexuality in China during the twentieth century. Far from being a "liberation" against the repression of sexuality by the state, the strong re-sexuation of the present Chinese social world is actually right in line with the liberal economic opening and the competition for individual success it create. ; Cet article questionne la pertinence de l'emploi du terme de « révolution sexuelle » à propos des évolutions des pratiques sexuelles des jeunes Chinois-es ayant grandis dans la Chine des réformes économiques lancées dans les années 1980. Il propose une perspective historique sur les évolutions de l'encadrement social de la sexualité en Chine au cours du vingtième siècle. Puis il s'attache à montrer la façon dont, loin de constituer une « libération » contre la répression étatique de la sexualité, la forte resexuation du monde social chinois contemporain s'inscrit, de fait, dans le cadre de l'ouverture économique libérale et de la compétition pour la réussite individuelle que celle-ci a engendrée.