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Sex, city, and the maid: between socialist fantasies and neoliberal parables
Sex, City und die Hausangestellte: zwischen sozialistischen Phantasien und neoliberalen Parabeln
[journal article]
Abstract Of the many rural migrant workers who go to Chinese cities as cheap labourers, the one who interacts most intimately with urban residents is the domestic servant. In fact, precisely because of this "intimate stranger" status, the figure of the "maid" has captured the imagination of the urban populat... view more
Of the many rural migrant workers who go to Chinese cities as cheap labourers, the one who interacts most intimately with urban residents is the domestic servant. In fact, precisely because of this "intimate stranger" status, the figure of the "maid" has captured the imagination of the urban population. This fascination is evidenced by the plethora of television narratives centring on the fraught relationships between the rural migrant woman and her male employer. This paper analyses a range of television narratives from the genres of dramas and documentaries. It shows that in these narratives, sex functions as the metaphor of social inequality between two social groups. It shows that if we explore how love, romance and marriage are constructed, we may gain some insight into processes of social and ideological contestation in the domain of cultural production.... view less
Keywords
labor migration; social mobility; large city; love; narrative; social inequality; Far East; labor market; marriage; city-country relationship; employer; television series; neoliberalism; phantasy; capacity to work; socialism; woman; domestic; China; documentation
Classification
Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Studies
Migration, Sociology of Migration
Sociology of Settlements and Housing, Urban Sociology
Media Contents, Content Analysis
Method
qualitative empirical; empirical
Free Keywords
Social sciences; sex; media research; domestic worker; contemporary
Document language
English
Publication Year
2010
Page/Pages
p. 53-69
Journal
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 39 (2010) 4
ISSN
1868-4874
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works