Home>Course>[CHES5106/CHES3014] Selected Themes on Chinese Anthropology>

This course introduces anthropological perspectives on a range of intimate relationships in contemporary Chinese society. It seeks to denaturalize notions such as family, marriage, and love through contextualization—putting them back in the historical, political, and socio-cultural context in which they are embedded. The questions that will be raised in class include: What factors shape the economic and social formations of intimate relationships in contemporary China? What does it mean to say that romantic love is an ideology? How do Chinese people “do” family today? How have family structures, courtship patterns, and gender relations been changing across different regions and groups in China? And what new ethical configurations and forms of inequality are emerging in the process? Are intimate relationships formed in the virtual world any less authentic than those formed in the real world?

The course approaches various kinds of intimate relationships through an anthropological lens, which means that we will explore people’s intimate life experiences via ethnography. Based on a series of captivating readings, video clips, discussions, and other class activities, this course invites students to pay attention to the interconnectedness between the “private” and the “public”—the everyday practices and the economic and socio-political processes. Moreover, this course aims to show how to conduct ethnographic fieldwork and how to use the data collected during fieldwork for analyzing intimate relationships in Chinese society.

An Anthropological Approach to Intimate Relationships in Contemporary China

Constructing Ideals: Changing Public Discourses Surrounding Family, Love and Sexuality I

Constructing Ideals: Changing Public Discourses Surrounding Family, Love and Sexuality II

Learning Ethnographic Methods for Studying Everyday Intimate Experiences

Courtship, Love and Premarital Sex

The Politics of Conjugal Relationship I (Gender Dynamics)

The Politics of Conjugal Relationship II (Love and Sexuality)

The Politics of Conjugal Relationship III (Economic Aspect)

Intergenerational Relationship I: Parenting

Intergenerational Relationship II: Filial Piety

Beyond Normative Family and Marriage: Sexuality and Performativity