Description

This project follows my previous research concerning the phenomenon of marriage markets in present-day China, the importance granted to love in the Chinese political context, and my theoretical work on the importance of affect in the ethnographic understanding of society (Pettier 2016). It is based on a long-term ethnographic research carried out in the cities of Beijing and Chengdu between 2006 and 2010, and will examine the affective dynamics of the Chinese society and the notion that it may be undergoing “moral crisis.” The project’s ambition is to provide a sensitive ethnography of the affective economy behind the social competition for economic success operating amongst today’s Chinese new generations. In particular, it will focus on questions of intimacy, sexuality, social pressures to attain success, self-sacrifice, and individual engagement in professional careers. Allying a long-term ethnography of China with the most recent theories of affective economy and politics, this research will focus on the affective drive, which I will refer to here as a “desire economics,” behind the extreme level of socio-economic competition experienced by Chinese new generations.

Project Details

Project Type

Post-Doc Project

Subject Group

Law, Economics and Social Sciences

Subject Classification

Social and Cultural Anthropology

Start

2017

End

2019

Organization

Faculty/Central Institute

Political and Social Sciences

Institute/Seminar

Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Field/Work Area

SFB Project Affective Societies

Project Team

Director

Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pettier (Post-Doc)

Researchers

• Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pettier (Post-Doc)

  Former