How do ideas of gendered ‘ideal personhood’ differ between China and Norway and change from generation to generation? This paper analyses 144 life history interviews with three generations of young men (sons-fathers-grandfathers) and women (daughters-mothers-grandmothers) in China and Norway conducted during 2011- 2012. The larger project, of which this paper is a part, examines generational changes and continuities as well as cross-cultural differences and similarities in youth’s identity construction against the backdrop of the dynamic interaction between the local and the global cultural forces. The daughters and sons in this project were boys and girls in their last year of upper secondary school at the time of data collection.

The paper examines the notions of (ideal) womanhood and manhood within the context of the gender cultures (Pfau-Effinger, 1998) in each historical period coinciding with ‘youth’ for the three generations’ in the two societies (Aarseth, 2009; Brownell S. and Wasserstrom, J. N. (2002) ; Croll, 1995; Louie, 2002; Nielsen and Rudberg, 2006). Gender cultures are examined alongside an analysis of ideas of self-cultivation in the two countries, e.g., the notion of ‘human quality’ (suzhi) in China (Anagnost, A., 2004; Kipnis, 2006) and the notion of ‘dannelse’/ ‘danning’ (Bildung) or self-cultivation, in Norway (Rise, 2010). It draws on Nicolas Rose’s (1996a, 1996b) theory of ‘genealogy of subjectification’ and Mannheim’s (1952/1923) concepts of ‘generational location’ and ‘generational units’ to make sense of the findings. It also draws on discussions of identity in social theory, cultural studies and feminist research which see the formation of personhood as emerging from individuals’ interaction with their historical, social, cultural and material milieu.

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