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

doi:10.1080/00141844.2011.565126

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

Journal Article•DOI•

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

Friederike Fleischer¹•Institutions (1)

University of Los Andes¹

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.

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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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Journal Article•DOI•

Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture

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Caroline Grillot¹•Institutions (1)

Macquarie University¹

01 Apr 2010-The Australian Journal of Anthropology

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.

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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.

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311 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Public Opinion and Political Change in China

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John James Kennedy¹•Institutions (1)

University of Kansas¹

01 Mar 2007-Perspectives on Politics

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.

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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.

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79 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Crafting the Volunteer: Voluntary Associations and the Reformation of Sociality

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Katerina Rozakou

01 May 2016-Journal of Modern Greek Studies

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.

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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.

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40 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Opening up the 'black box' of 'volunteering' : on hybridization and purification in volunteering research and promotion

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Itamar Shachar¹, Johan von Essen, Lesley Hustinx²•Institutions (2)

University of Amsterdam¹, Ghent University²

13 Jun 2019-Administrative Theory & Praxis

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.

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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.

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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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Journal Article•DOI•

Ethics of the heart: Moral breakdown and the aporia of chinese volunteers

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Rundong Ning, David A. Palmer

13 Aug 2020-Current Anthropology

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...

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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...

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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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Journal Article•DOI•

A Collective of Their Own: Young Volunteers at the Fringes of the Party Realm

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Unn Malfrid H. Rolandsen¹•Institutions (1)

University of Oslo¹

01 Jan 2008-European Journal of East Asian Studies

TL;DR: This article conducted fieldwork in an urban branch of the China Youth Volunteers' Association and found that young volunteers use the party-linked volunteers' association not merely instrumentally to support their own personal ambitions, but also as a social space where the individual may find room to "give and share beyond the family".

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Abstract: Based on fieldwork in an urban branch of the China Youth Volunteers' Association this article discusses how individual motivation for volunteering among young middle-class students plays a role in the internal reforming of one of the few officially authorised associations available for young people. Whereas Chinese volunteering was once a Party-driven effort supported by Maoist calls to 'Serve the people', contemporary Chinese volunteering is promoted with a focus on the volunteer's own experience and commitment. Interviews and participant observation demonstrate how young volunteers use the Party-linked Volunteers' Association not merely instrumentally to support their own personal ambitions, but also as a social space where the individual may find room to 'give and share beyond the family'. The analysis shows that volunteering is perceived differently by volunteers' families, the local media, the local community and the volunteers themselves. The article concludes that what attracts youth to the volunteer movement is the opportunity to be part of a collective where they can contribute to society while at the same time being recognised as individuals.

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21 citations

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

...It is for this reason also that volunteers today are assured that they can leave at any time and, even more, that it is natural to take breaks from volunteering (Rolandsen 2008)....
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...The government transfers more and more responsibilities to ‘popular’ (minjian shetuan)(19) and community-based welfare providers where volunteers play a growing role in carrying out services (Rolandsen 2008)....
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...Volunteering is officially promoted as a means to develop the self, i.e. to gain cultural capital (Rolandsen 2008:125)....
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...The government transfers more and more responsibilities to ‘popular’ (minjian shetuan)19 and community-based welfare providers where volunteers play a growing role in carrying out services (Rolandsen 2008)....
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...Further, volunteers are called ‘one who volunteers’ (zhiyuanzhe) and their work is considered a ‘service’ (zhiyuan fuwu) (see Rolandsen 2008)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Civil society and healing: Theorizing women's social activism in post-soviet Ukraine

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Sarah D. Phillips¹•Institutions (1)

Indiana University¹

01 Dec 2005-Ethnos

TL;DR: In this paper, a dialogue between medical anthropological theories and the existing literature on postsocialist civil societies is set up, by integrating recent critiques of civil society discourses with an ethnographic investigation of the ambiguous personal transformations that social activism has generated for some women NGO leaders.

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Abstract: This article suggests a new tack on ‘NGO-graphy’ by setting up a dialogue between medical anthropological theories and the existing literature on postsocialist civil societies. Using data from Ukraine, I integrate recent critiques of ‘civil society’ discourses with an ethnographic investigation of the ambiguous personal transformations that social activism has generated for some women NGO leaders. The article asserts that, by applying the insights of critical-interpretive medical anthropology to the study of postsocialism, we can better track the dynamics of political, social, and personal change through which institutions are created, meaning-making surrounding self and society is negotiated, and powerful discourses are wielded to assert and contest the social worth of persons and groups.

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20 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Introduction: Understanding the Rise of the Individual in China

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Yunxiang Yan¹•Institutions (1)

University of California, Los Angeles¹

01 Jan 2008-European Journal of East Asian Studies

16 citations

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

...…strangers and even neighbors due to their experience of punishment and betrayal (Tang 2005).9 Since 1978, economic reforms have led to growing socio-economic stratifications, individualization, residential separation of families into nuclear entities, and emerging generational gaps (Yan 2008)....
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...Since 1978, economic reforms have led to growing socio-economic stratifications, individualization, residential separation of families into nuclear entities, and emerging generational gaps (Yan 2008 )....
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Book•

The Little Emperors

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Alfred Leo Duggan

01 Jan 1951

13 citations

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

...spoiled and egotistic youngsters (Chandler 2004), this is all the more intriguing....
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...…2002; Yan 2003b; Zhuo 2001); and where intense competition and the onechild policy produce ‘little emperors’, i.e. spoiled and egotistic youngsters (Chandler 2004), this is all the more intriguing.2 Moreover, studies in postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe have suggested that the rise of…...
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Book Chapter•DOI•

Negotiating with the state

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Deborah B. Gewertz, Frederick Errington

01 Jan 1991

9 citations

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

...Social organizations are welcomed for their potential to take on social security and welfare responsibilities from the state (Saich 2002)....
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