School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemModest expectations: masculinity, marriage, and the good life in urban China( 2022)There is a sense that there is a crisis unfolding in China. Marriage rates are dropping, divorce rates are rising, the birth rate is in decline, and a new population of rural ‘bachelors’ and urban ‘leftover women’ has surfaced. This new culture of singlehood is perceived as a ‘crisis of marriage’, precipitating a moral panic over how to address a problem that is often described by the state as a threat to social stability and order, as well as the advancement of the nation. This thesis explores the intersection of these so-called ‘crises’ facing Chinese society: a crisis of marriage, a crisis of masculinity, and a crisis of mobility. Since China’s ‘opening up and reform’ in 1978, extraordinary social, economic, and political change have occurred. Gender and sexual relations have also undergone significant transformation, subsequently contributing to this ‘marriage crisis’ in China today. How single rural men living in the city respond to this marriage crisis is a core concern of this thesis. In the gendered aspects of this crisis and the associated moral panic, single rural men have become a flash point in China for discussions about marriage, social organisation, the rural–urban divide, gender relations, class, and mobility. The demise of the rural economy and the rapid transformation of the urban economy have produced significant changes in gender roles and institutions in contemporary China. This thesis focuses on the impact of these socio-economic shifts on rural men who migrate to cities. Rural to urban migration has a long and well-documented history in China. The most recent wave of migration has been accompanied by changes in the nature of work and social organisation that have exacerbated the ‘marriage crisis’ particularly for rural men in urban settings. For rural men living in urban China, marriage represents a modest aspiration for a good life, expressed through the concept guo rizi (passing the days). The desire to marry and have children is however constrained by rural men’s experiences in the city. Their occupations, lack of social networks, new forms of dating and matchmaking and increasingly unattainable ‘bride-price’ demands, work together to undermine their desirability as potential husbands and fathers and entrench inequalities of wealth and power between rural and urban men. The ways rural men struggle with, negotiate, and imagine their futures is the subject of this thesis. I argue that the increasing socio-economic precarity of rural men and their largely unrealised desires to marry and have children demonstrate a fundamental reconfiguration of Chinese masculinity and mobility in urban China today and the social impact on central Chinese institutions. This thesis explores the lives of migrant delivery drivers (kuaidi and waimai) and tertiary-educated professionals who have migrated from the countryside to the city. In this thesis, I endeavour to make these men visible by investigating how they navigate the urban marriage market and avoid becoming ‘leftover’. What I have found is that their shared struggles in the marriage market and efforts to fulfill the ideals of manhood are indicative of how rurality continues to be experienced as an inhibiting factor for single rural men in Chinese cities, regardless of their education, income, or material assets. The nature of these men’s lives led me to question how such men are affected by changing social, cultural, and economic structures within the marriage market and the broader context of crisis that currently pervades Chinese society.
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ItemA comparative analysis of the normative power of the EU and China( 2020)This thesis examines how the normative power of China compares to that of the European Union (EU). It seeks to contribute to the literature on normative power through the incorporation of interests in the analysis of normative power, the systematic examination of China’s normative power, and case studies of multilateral institutions in which multiple actors exercise normative power. This thesis examines normative power through an analytical framework comprising three core components: norms, diffusion mechanisms, and outcomes of norm diffusion. It applies this framework to the EU and China to assess whether these two actors possess normative power in global governance. It studies the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Paris Agreement (PA) to investigate how the EU and China exercise normative power in multilateral institutions. It also examines how these two actors address their norm divergence through compromise in the AIIB and the PA and the outcomes of their compromises in these two institutions. In addition to comparing the norms, diffusion mechanisms, and outcomes of norm diffusion of the EU and China, this thesis compares the two case studies of the AIIB and the PA. It argues that both the EU and China are predominantly driven by their own interests in their exercise of normative power. It demonstrates the centrality of interests in all three core components of normative power, namely norms, diffusion mechanisms, and outcomes.