A Space for Laughter in Contemporary China

Su, Aaron

doi:10.1111/an.1277

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“…Anthropologists have documented how Chinese people might stay silent (Kleinman et al 2011;Ning and Palmer 2020) or shrug with a laugh (Steinmuller 2013;Su 2020) when confronting a political state that was too eager to take credit for their social participation. The emerging vocabulary of indifference further indicates that the ambivalence associated with civic participation has slowly but gradually become legitimate and socially legible.…”

Section: The Power Of Mourning and Caringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics of indifference

Sum¹

2021

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

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This article examines the changing sociological meaning of indifference in urban China after the tragic death of a two-year-old girl in a road accident in 2011. My analysis suggests that, in China where the political state had tried to claim credit for all altruistic behaviors, anxiety about indifference allowed citizens to sidestep socialist ethics in conversations about civic mobilization. University students used the language of feeling and mourning to reinvent the protagonist, culprit, and victim in the accident, thereby developing new rationales for committing good deeds without acknowledging the moral leadership of the state. As opposed to the standard association of indifference with civic disengagement and social disintegration, this article suggests that indifference has civic potential to connect. Like skepticism, cynicism, and disappointment that people might develop in response to the genre of socialist heroism, indifference could anchor civic articulation of alternative futures that were yet to take shape.

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Section: The Power Of Mourning and Caringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics of indifference

Sum¹

2021

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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A Space for Laughter in Contemporary China

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Politics of indifference

Politics of indifference

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