Technology of Self, Technology of Power. Volunteering as Encounter in Guangzhou, China
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.
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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
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
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
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)....
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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)....
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...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…...
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References
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TL;DR: This paper explored what has happened to this vaunted emphasis on family obligations and filial piety in contemporary China, using survey data collected in the city of Baoding, Hebei province, in 1994.
Abstract: Many family sociology textbooks in the West include a chapter or two describing the Chinese family. The reason is simple ? the 'traditional' or 'Confucian' norms of family life in Chinese society are usually seen as offering sharp contrasts with the patterns of family life in Western societies. Many such accounts place primary emphasis upon the overwhelming Chinese emphasis on obligations to the family and the use of the cult of filial piety to reinforce these obligations in the younger generation. In the words of one (non-textbook) account, 'family loyalty has been an overriding motive in Chinese life at every social level to an extent generally considered to have few if any parallels'.1 The result was a general propensity among even grown Chinese children to follow parental decisions, to reside in extended households with aging parents, and to show marked deference and respect toward their elders. The contrasts of these patterns with a Western socialization supportive of independence, a preference for nuclear families, and a lack of deference toward elders could hardly be sharper.2 The purpose of this paper is to explore what has happened to this vaunted emphasis on family obligations and filial piety in contemporary China, using survey data collected in the city of Baoding, Hebei province, in 1994.
77 citations
"Technology of Self, Technology of P..." refers background in this paper
...This process was encouraged by a revival of Confucianism through the government to support/justify the state sector reforms and the proclaimed ‘return to the family’ as a source of support (Whyte 1997)....
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TL;DR: Guo et al. as mentioned in this paper described Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity Under Reform, by Yingjie Guo, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xvi + 192 pp. 65.00 (hardcover).
Abstract: Publishers details for: Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity Under Reform, by Yingjie Guo, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xvi + 192 pp. 65.00 (hardcover).
68 citations
TL;DR: This article found that self-serving and altruistic motivations tend to be positively linked in higher-income countries with uncomfortably cold or hot climates, unrelated in higher and lower income countries with comfortable climates, and negatively linked in lower-income regions with cold climates.
Abstract: A voluntary worker may have both self-serving and altruistic motivations for helping, which may be positively or negatively linked together. Multilevel analyses of World Values Survey data, representatively sampled from 13, 584 inhabitants of 33 countries, uncover a pattern of cross-cultural differences in balancing these self-and other-directed helping motivations. A voluntary worker’s self-serving and altruistic motivations tend to be positively linked in higher income countries with uncomfortably cold or hot climates, unrelated in higher and lower income countries with comfortable climates and in lower income countries with uncomfortably hot climates, and negatively linked in lower income countries with uncomfortably cold climates. The findings are integrated into existing demands—resources theories as well as past research of helping and altruism on all six inhabited continents.
63 citations
"Technology of Self, Technology of P..." refers background in this paper
...Volunteering is frequently examined in terms of altruistic versus selfinterested motivations (e.g. Van de Vliert et al. 2004)....
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TL;DR: This paper examined youth culture in a socialist society and found that the young rejected the harsh and irrelevant values promoted in the ideal youth culture the government packaged for their consumption, and instead they created their own subsulture adopting what they deemed most pertinent and desirable from the official ideology and from the conditions they encountered.
Abstract: This article examines youth culture in a socialist society. Pragmatism, consumerism, individual accomplishment, admiration for the West, and dissatisfaction with the Party, but support for the political system, stand out as the majorbeliefs of young Chinese in the 1980s. The young rejected the harsh and irrelevant values promoted in the ideal youth culture the government packaged for their consumption. Instead they created their own subsulture adopting what they deemed most pertinent and desirable from the official ideology and from the conditions they encountered. In light of these orientations, it is likely that the present policies will continue when this generation takes over political control.
48 citations
Additional excerpts
...See also Kwong 1994....
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01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Voluntary associations are the basic components of the civil society as mentioned in this paper, and participation in voluntary associations such as political parties, religious organizations, trade unions, self-help groups, sports clubs, and other interest organizations is regarded as a very important factor integrating society as a whole.
Abstract: Active involvement in social actions and movements is widely recognized as a precondition for truly democratic society. Voluntary associations are the basic components of the civil society. Participation in voluntary associations such as political parties, religious organizations, trade unions, self-help groups, sports clubs, and other interest organizations is regarded as a very important factor integrating society as a whole and an important element of the participatory democracy.
28 citations
"Technology of Self, Technology of P..." refers background in this paper
...…is all the more intriguing.2 Moreover, studies in postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe have suggested that the rise of volunteerism is crucially linked to processes of democratization and the establishment of civil society (Juknevičius & Savicka 2003; Ślęzak 2005; see also Philips 2005)....
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