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Journal ArticleDOI

Technology of Self, Technology of Power. Volunteering as Encounter in Guangzhou, China

08 Jul 2011-Ethnos (Routledge)-Vol. 76, Iss: 3, pp 300-325
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the growing popularity of volunteering in China and delineate several factors that play into the phenomenon, including students' desire to break out of strict routines, to engage in meaningful activities, to meet people, and to contribute to China's development.
Abstract: In this article, I explore the growing popularity of volunteering in China. I delineate several factors that play into the phenomenon, including students' desire to break out of strict routines, to engage in meaningful activities, to meet people, and to contribute to China's development. Linking these issues to the socio-political, economic, and ideological transformations in China, I show that we cannot meaningfully distinguish between altruistic and self-interested motivations to volunteer. For the students volunteering is a means to transform themselves into modern, entrepreneurial, and responsible selves, necessary to meet the challenges of urban life in China today. Yet, volunteering, encouraged and framed by the government, is also a ‘technology of power’, a means to nurture self-reliant and socially responsible individuals. I show that volunteerism is not simply the reflection of a new ‘governmentality’ but an encounter in which the very relationship between state and society is constantly negotiated.
Citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore theories, discourses, and experiences of globalization, drawing on perspectives from history, anthropology, cultural and literary studies, geography, political economy, and sociology.
Abstract: COURSE DESCRIPTION In popular and scholarly discourse, the term \"globalization\" is widely used to put a name to the shape of the contemporary world. In the realms of advertising, a variety of media, policymaking, politics, academia, and everyday talk, \"globalization\" references the sense that we now live in a deeply and everincreasingly interconnected, mobile, and speeded-up world that is unprecedented, fueled by technological innovations and geopolitical and economic transformations. Drawing on perspectives from history, anthropology, cultural and literary studies, geography, political economy, and sociology, this course will explore theories, discourses, and experiences of globalization.

311 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Tang et al. as discussed by the authors explored the nature and origins of mass opinion in urban China through survey research conducted between 1987 and 2000, and examined a wide range of theories and explanations, such as regime legitimacy, the influence of the media on opinion, social capital theory, political participation, and the role of intellectuals.
Abstract: Public Opinion and Political Change in China. By Wenfang Tang. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 237p. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.In this comprehensive book, Wenfang Tang explores the nature and origins of mass opinion in urban China through survey research conducted between 1987 and 2000. The general theme is how some local democratic practices can develop within the People's Republic of China (PRC). However, rather than presenting a single theory or model, Tang examines a series of case studies on public opinion. He draws on a rich data set that consists of 11 large-scale urban surveys conducted by Chinese government and academic institutions, including his own 1999 six-city survey. With this data he examines a wide range of theories and explanations, such as regime legitimacy (Chapter 3), the influence of the media on opinion (Chapter 4), social capital theory (Chapter 5), political participation (Chapters 6 and 7), and the role of intellectuals (Chapter 8). Thus, this book has a broad appeal to those interested in political development as well as contemporary China.

79 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors proposes an alternate perspective that considers new and older forms of public sociality in relation to their cultural formation, where the flourishing of solidarity initiatives in contemporary crisis-ridden Greece is not considered a paradox, but rather the expression of the reconfiguration of the social and its potent political content.
Abstract: Narratives of volunteerism and civil society that emerged in Greece in the beginning of the twenty-first century echoed the modernization and Europeanization visions of Greek society that were proliferating in that era. Public discourses as well as state and EU policies endorsed a model of sociality that included volunteerism and was associated with the production of the new European and Greek citizen. Forms of public sociality, such as voluntary associations, thus constituted laboratories that produced subjects. The reformation of sociality and the invention of volunteerism were embedded in various civilizing projects. At the same time, a certain “lack of volunteerism” was broadly attributed to a general understanding of Greek particularity. This article proposes an alternate perspective that considers new and older forms of public sociality in relation to their cultural formation, where the flourishing of solidarity initiatives in contemporary crisis-ridden Greece is not considered a paradox, but rather the expression of the reconfiguration of the social and its potent political content.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: To deconstruct volunteering, the article utilizes the Latourian notions of “hybridization” and “purification” as simultaneous and entangled mechanisms, and critically review the literature on “volunteering” to problematize the fundamental properties of the “pure” perception of ‘Volunteering,’ their hybridization and eventual purification.
Abstract: The scholarly exploration of “volunteering” has mainly focused on identifying its antecedents or consequences, in order to facilitate the management and promotion of volunteering. In this dominant stream of research, the phenomenon of volunteering thus remains a “black box”—a taken-for-granted and fixed reality. The article sets out to open the black box of “volunteering” by not accepting it as a fixed, unproblematic object, but by exploring volunteering as a constructed phenomenon whose boundaries are managed and utilized by a variety of actors. To deconstruct volunteering, the article utilizes the Latourian notions of “hybridization” and “purification” as simultaneous and entangled mechanisms. We critically review the literature on “volunteering” and problematize the fundamental properties of the “pure” perception of “volunteering,” their hybridization and eventual purification. The article concludes by highlighting how the constant tension between hybridization and purification mechanisms is in fact what makes volunteering proliferate as a phenomenon that has an increasing public significance in contemporary society.

29 citations


Cites background from "Technology of Self, Technology of P..."

  • ...…“volunteering” as resulting from a determination by an autonomous subject, whose calculated interests and motivations can be delineated and researched, while tending to neglect the ways in which individuals navigate between different and sometimes contradictory motivations (e.g., Fleischer, 2011)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the angst of deeply committed volunteers in China, engaging with anthropological debates on ethics under conditions of moral breakdown, is explored, under market socialism, sacrificial v...
Abstract: This article explores the angst of deeply committed volunteers in China, engaging with anthropological debates on ethics under conditions of “moral breakdown.” Under market socialism, sacrificial v...

28 citations


Cites background from "Technology of Self, Technology of P..."

  • ...At least since the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, volunteerism has caught scholars’ attention (e.g., Fleischer 2011, 2013, 2018; Hustinx, Handy, and Cnaan 2012; Rolandsen 2008, 2010)....

    [...]

  • ...Fleischer (2011), on the other hand, proposes amore nuanced approach, examining the tensions between volunteering in China as a “technology of power” deployed by the state and as a “technology of the self” by means of which student volunteers “refashion their identity into functional subjects in…...

    [...]

References
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Book
05 Mar 2003
TL;DR: For seven years in the 1970s, the author lived in a village in northeast China as an ordinary farmer and returned to the village as an anthropologist to begin the unparalleled span of eleven years' fieldwork that has resulted in this book-a comprehensive, vivid, and nuanced account of family change and the transformation of private life in rural China from 1949 to 1999 as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: For seven years in the 1970s, the author lived in a village in northeast China as an ordinary farmer In 1989, he returned to the village as an anthropologist to begin the unparalleled span of eleven years' fieldwork that has resulted in this book-a comprehensive, vivid, and nuanced account of family change and the transformation of private life in rural China from 1949 to 1999 The author's focus on the personal and the emotional sets this book apart from most studies of the Chinese family Yan explores private lives to examine areas of family life that have been largely overlooked, such as emotion, desire, intimacy, privacy, conjugality, and individuality He concludes that the past five decades have witnessed a dual transformation of private life: the rise of the private family, within which the private lives of individual women and men are thriving

262 citations


"Technology of Self, Technology of P..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…have allegedly triggered a dramatic rise of individualization and materialism resulting in a moral vacuum and a lack of solidarity (Wang 2002; Yan 2003b; Zhuo 2001); and where intense competition and the onechild policy produce ‘little emperors’, i.e. spoiled and egotistic youngsters…...

    [...]

  • ...It is often used in the negative, in terms of lack, and tightly connected to the idea of ‘development’ (Yan 2003a: 494–496)....

    [...]

  • ...Yan (2003b), in turn, suggests that the violent experiences under Maoism and the disruptions that have been caused by the reforms have given rise to an ultrautilitarian individualism....

    [...]

  • ...As Yan (2003a) points out, suzhi is not actually a very precise concept....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored collectivistic-rooted volunteerism, conditions under which it transpires, and group and community effects of such giving, based on ethnographic research in a predominantly old immigrant working-class inner-ring suburb.
Abstract: Who in America volunteers what and why? And what impact does volunteering have? It is widely believed that the typical volunteer is middle-aged and middle-class and that volunteerism is rooted in American cultural individualism. Undocumented and unexplored are collectivistic roots of giving, which may have a different social base than individualistic-grounded volunteerism. Characteristics of collectivistic-rooted volunteerism, conditions under which it transpires, and group and community effects of such giving are explored here. The analysis is based on ethnographic research in a predominantly old immigrant working-class inner-ring suburb. Collectivistic-rooted volunteerism is shown to be community-embedded and to have group, community, and class stratifying effects.

201 citations


"Technology of Self, Technology of P..." refers result in this paper

  • ...Other studies examine the overall ‘results’ or ‘revenue’ of volunteer work (e.g. Eckstein 2001; Thoits & Hewitt 2001)....

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Book
19 Dec 2003
TL;DR: Renationalizing the State: Class and Nation and the Party-state 3. Rewriting National History: The 'Zeng Guofan Phenomenon' 4. Reconstructing a Confucian Nation: TheConfucian Revival 5. Repossessing the Mother Tongue: Chinese Characters, Traditional Forms and Cultural Linguistics 6. Reclaiming the 'Othered' China: Nationalist Appropriations of Postcolonialism
Abstract: 1. Rethinking Nation and Nationalism: Concepts, Positions and Approaches 2. Renationalizing the State: Class and Nation and the Party-state 3. Rewriting National History: The 'Zeng Guofan Phenomenon' 4. Reconstructing a Confucian Nation: The Confucian Revival 5. Repossessing the Mother Tongue: Chinese Characters, Traditional Forms and Cultural Linguistics 6. Reclaiming the 'Othered' China: Nationalist Appropriations of Postcolonialism

153 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the shift in Chinese nationalism and national ideology by looking at the rejection of the language of class and the adoption of social strata as the social analysis.
Abstract: Reform era China has witnessed the simultaneous production of a middle class and increasing socioeconomic inequality. The ideological counterpart of this development is a new form of cultural nationalism that stands in striking contrast to Maoist developmentalism and in striking conformity with neoliberal logics. This article explores this shift in Chinese nationalism and national ideology by looking at the rejection of the language of class and the adoption of social strata as the language of social analysis. This shift has produced a new model of citizenship which seeks to manage the newly stratified society by articulating inequality as cultural difference in a hierarchy of national belonging. At the same time this neoliberal ethos is in dialogue with calls for social responsibility by left-liberal intellectuals in the wake of a rising number of popular protests and a growing concern about social inequality. This essay will discuss aspects of middle-class formation in China's economic reforms,...

141 citations

Book
01 Jan 2005

116 citations