Between ‘sense’ and ‘sensibility’: High school girls’ other-sex relations in China and Norway compared to their mothers and grandmothers

Author(s):

Fengshu Liu(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

28. Sociologies of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

28 SES 11 A, Investigating the Fabrication of Habitus

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

17:15-18:45

Room:

106.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Roberto Serpieri

Contribution

This study explores how young women relate to the other sex (with special reference to ‘pairing off’ experiences, attitudes towards marriage and attitudes towards sexuality) in China and Norway over three generations in the context of ‘global modernity’ (Dirlik, 2003; Appadurai, 1996). The study draws on life history interviews with girls in their last year of upper secondary school in Beijing and Oslo, and with their mothers and maternal grandmothers. For the youngest generation, the school is the main social arena for their other-sex relations, and the rise of schooling as such an arena is one of the trends distinguishing generations (it occurred earlier in Norway than in China).

Both countries have been part of the processes of global modernization. A concomitant change with modernization is an ‘expressive revolution’ (Parsons, 1973)—a trend ‘from cognitive rationalism to an affective-expressive culture’ (Turner, 2005), or the increasing predominance of ‘expressive individualism’ in opposition to ‘utilitarian individualism’ (Bellah, et al., 2008), or an ‘intimate turn’ (Jamieson, 1998; Beck and Beck-Gersheim, 1995;Giddens, 1992). From a convergence perspective on modernization, that societies experience similar socio-economic development and cultural change (Inglehart, 1997; Inkeles and Smith, 1997), one would expect similar generational trends in the two countries.

However, since China and Norway are also two highly disparate countries, it seems simplistic to expect mere ‘convergence’ because the paths will differ due to ideological and cultural diversity (Eisenstadt, 1999; Robertson, 1995). Although the West remains the major clearinghouse of global modernity, the ‘global’ is constantly redefined and altered through the local (Dirlik, 2003; Gaonkar, 1999; Robertson, 1995; Tsing, 2000). The two countries differ not merely in geographical size, population, affluence, political system and social policies; distinct histories, social institutions and cultures (e.g., kinship, gender, generational hierarchies, labor relations, and consumption patterns) may interact differently and shape (and be shaped by) the prevailing cultures of modernity. The objectives of this study are:

To explore how young women in the two societies relate to the other sex in negotiating ‘modern’ identities.
To analyze stability and change in their other-sex relationships over the three generations in each society.
To identify differences and similarities between the two societies in young women’s changing other-sex relationships.

By comparing contrasting societies (a European small society, and an East Asian giant society), the findings may shed light on how local socio-cultural modernization dynamics interact with global forces to shape emerging other-sex relationships in locally specific ways. Besides, the findings will enable us to assess the extent of globalization’s homogenizing effect upon the identity processes in two contrasting societies. In both these countries, the upper secondary ‘high school’ stage is now the dominant arena for teen age social life, with teenagers’ other-sex relations conditioning their school work—or in the Chinese case, also very clearly the other way around.

Method

This study is part of a larger project on three generations of young men and women in China and Norway (2011-2015). The project adopts a life-history approach emphasizing the importance of making connections between individual life stories and wider frameworks of understanding (Dollard, 1935; Goodson and Sikes, 2001). The fieldwork was conducted in Beijing and Oslo. The main reason for this choice was that, as capitals of the countries and cosmopolitan centers, their current exposure to modernization and globalization forces might be more comparable than in less urbanized places. They serve as a useful starting point for a project with a comparative focus on the changing gender identities within the context of ‘global modernity’. We adopted purposive sampling. In each of the capital cities we started with 12 girls in their last year of upper secondary school, then tracing their mothers and maternal grandmothers. To remain open to the effects of social background, they were recruited from both a ‘prestigious’ school and ‘mediocre’ school in each of the two cases. These included both daughters of parents with higher education and children of parents with a lower educational profile and both highly performing students and those who were not doing well at school and those in-between. Another criterion is the girl should have mothers and maternal grandmothers still alive and available for interview. We accessed the young participants through personal contacts with teachers who introduced our project to their classes and asked for volunteers. (Similar procedures were followed for boys, their fathers, and paternal grandfathers, but these will not be analyzed in the present paper). The interviews lasted 1.5-2.5 hours. They were taped and transcribed in respectively Chinese and Norwegian. This paper will focus on one of the many aspects of life about which we interviewed the three generations in China and Norway, namely young people’s opposite sex relationships. For the youngest generation, this will refer to their current or recent life. For their mothers and grandmothers it will be retrospective and based on recall of ‘when they were young’.

Expected Outcomes

I have so far analyzed the Chinese case. The narratives show dramatic changes from the 1950s to the 2010s: shifts from ‘simple-mindedness/simple-heartedness’ to ‘pure-heartedness’ and most recently to ‘sophistication of the heart and mind’ with an emphasis on individual choice—little less than an ‘expressive revolution’ with distinctly Chinese characteristics. Individual emotional expressivity has replaced the traditional and the Maoist forms of emotional asceticism. But with the rise of ‘romantic love’ for the middle, and especially the youngest generation, there is also an increasing emphasis on using ‘reason’ in young women’s relations with males, particularly for choosing a marriage partner. Young women of the current generation have become simultaneously more ‘romantic’ and more ‘means-ends rational’ than their grandmothers and mothers. This exemplifies ‘dual individualism’ of contemporary Chinese youth. In keeping with the traditional appreciation of ‘harmony’ between apparent opposites, it could reflect the openness in traditional Chinese philosophy and in present Chinese society for accepting as compatible concepts which in the Western tradition would seem polar opposites. The findings also contradict the argument that the more individualistic a society becomes, the more people tend unconditionally to embrace the ideal of romantic love and to deny the legitimacy of any instrumental consideration. A preliminary comparison with the Norwegian case show less dramatic generational change, especially between the ‘mothers’ and the youngest generation of women. So far in the data analysis, a more complete ‘expressive turn’ seems to have occurred across the Norwegian generations: a more unconditional embrace of the romantic ideal accompanied by a ‘no problems’ attitude towards teenage romance at school, and to teen and pre-marital sex. It remains to be seen, however, if there also in Norway for the youngest generation is any sign of an ‘instrumental turn’ concerning other-sex relations.

References

Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota: Minnepolis. Beck, U. and Beck-Gersheim, E. (1995) The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bellah, R., et al. (2008) Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. California: University of California Press. Dirlik, A. (2003) Global modernity?: Modernity in an age of global capitalism. European Journal of Social Theory, 6 (3): 275-292. Dollard, J. (1935). Criteria for the life history: With analysis of six notable documents. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Eisenstadt, S.N. (1999). Multiple modernities in an age of globalization. Canadian Journal of Sociology 24(2): 283-295. Gaonkar, D. P. (1999) On Alternative Modernities. Public Culture, 11(1): 1-18. Giddens, A. (1992). The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge, Polity Press. Goodson, I. F. and Sikes, P. (2001). Life history research in educational settings: Learning from lives. Buckingham: Open University Press Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and Postmodernization. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Inkeles, A, and Smith, D. H. (1997). Becoming modern: Individual change in six developing countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jamieson, L. (1998). Intimacy: Personal Relationships in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Parsons, T., et al. (1973). The American University. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Robertson, R. (1995). Glocalization. Time-space and Homogeneity–Heterogeneity. In Global Modernities, eds. M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson, 25–44. Calif.: Sage. Tsing, A. (2000). The global situation. Cultural Anthroplogy. 15 (3): 327-360. Turner, B. (2005). “Talcott Parsons’s sociology of religion and the expressive revolution.” Journal of classical sociology 5, 3: 303-318.

Author Information

Fengshu Liu (presenting / submitting)

University of Oslo

Department of Education

Oslo

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