Intimacy and Intergenerational Relations in Rural China

This article applies the concept of intimacy to examine relationships between adult children and their parents in rural China – an area which has been predominantly located in an obligatory framework. I reveal a qualitative difference in support between relationships built on intimate ties and those bound by duty and obligation. A unilateral emphasis on obligation-based relationships can deprive both the parent and adult child generations of agency and autonomy, which can be disempowering for both. The complex relations between intimacy and obligation are the product of local socio-economic circumstances and gender norms. Although traditional patrilineal and patrilocal culture excludes married daughters from the filial discourse surrounding their own parents, they are often considered to have the most intimate relationship with their parents. Paradoxically, the practices of intimacy between aged parents and their married daughters strengthen the natal ties that facilitate modifications to patrilocal and patrilineal customs

Making Transnational Intimacies: Intergenerational Relationships in Chinese-Western Families in Beijing

In this study, we explore intergenerational relationships in Chinese-Western transnational families. Our argument draws on 28 life story interviews with Chinese middle-class professionals and their Western partners in Beijing. In the context of their living arrangements in Beijing, many of these couples had close ties with their Chinese parents or in-laws, in some cases living together under the same roof. We draw on our participants' interview narratives to ask how their culturally situated, sometimes disparate, understandings of intimacy shaped their relationships with their parents or in-laws. In this context, our analysis focuses on the ways in which our participants negotiated understandings and practices in their families. We conceptualise our participants' transnational families as an individualised intimate space, within which meanings of family, filial piety, and marriage cannot be taken for granted and require an ongoing process of reflexive negotiation to become and remain mutually acceptable. With this study, we seek to add to academic debates about parent-child relationships and filial piety in Chinese society. While there is a sizeable literature on this subject matter, the ways in which the quickly growing number of transnational marriages in China may rework intergenerational relationships remain poorly understood

A História da Alimentação: balizas historiográficas

Os M. pretenderam traçar um quadro da História da Alimentação, não como um novo ramo epistemológico da disciplina, mas como um campo em desenvolvimento de práticas e atividades especializadas, incluindo pesquisa, formação, publicações, associações, encontros acadêmicos, etc. Um breve relato das condições em que tal campo se assentou faz-se preceder de um panorama dos estudos de alimentação e temas correia tos, em geral, segundo cinco abardagens Ia biológica, a econômica, a social, a cultural e a filosófica!, assim como da identificação das contribuições mais relevantes da Antropologia, Arqueologia, Sociologia e Geografia. A fim de comentar a multiforme e volumosa bibliografia histórica, foi ela organizada segundo critérios morfológicos. A seguir, alguns tópicos importantes mereceram tratamento à parte: a fome, o alimento e o domínio religioso, as descobertas européias e a difusão mundial de alimentos, gosto e gastronomia. O artigo se encerra com um rápido balanço crítico da historiografia brasileira sobre o tema

Interpreting untouchability - The performance of caste in Andhra Pradesh, South India

The performance of a living caste purana is outlined for the light it throws on its 'Untouchable' owners' placing in the world of their own caste identity as Madigas. This is shown as taking the form of a confrontation between the Madiga and the Brahman, the former seeking to undermine the claimed superiority of the latter. Going beyond this, it calls on cosmogonic traditions emphasizing the female Shakti and making secondary and junior the great male gods of contemporary Hinduism. Madigas' practical importance to others in relation to leather and to performing, and the relationships resulting, are emphasized. An embraceable caste identity at odds with sheerly negative conceptions of 'the Untouchable' is constructed. The problematic aspects of Madiga identity are not ignored; exclusion, Untouchability and poverty are accounted for, but contextualized within powerfully positive elements. It is suggested that this should not be seen immediately as an answer to outsiders' questions but, in a Geertzian spirit, as a chance to analyse a complex and changing story that people tell themselves about themselve

Interpreting untouchability - The performance of caste in Andhra Pradesh, South India

The performance of a living caste purana is outlined for the light it throws on its 'Untouchable' owners' placing in the world of their own caste identity as Madigas. This is shown as taking the form of a confrontation between the Madiga and the Brahman, the former seeking to undermine the claimed superiority of the latter. Going beyond this, it calls on cosmogonic traditions emphasizing the female Shakti and making secondary and junior the great male gods of contemporary Hinduism. Madigas' practical importance to others in relation to leather and to performing, and the relationships resulting, are emphasized. An embraceable caste identity at odds with sheerly negative conceptions of 'the Untouchable' is constructed. The problematic aspects of Madiga identity are not ignored; exclusion, Untouchability and poverty are accounted for, but contextualized within powerfully positive elements. It is suggested that this should not be seen immediately as an answer to outsiders' questions but, in a Geertzian spirit, as a chance to analyse a complex and changing story that people tell themselves about themselve

Reframing ‘integration’: Acknowledging and addressing five core critiques

Empirical and theoretical insights from the rich body of research on ‘integration’ in migration studies have led to increasing recognition of its complexity. Among European scholars, however, there remains no consensus on how integration should be defined nor what the processes entail. Integration has, moreover, been the subject of powerful academic critiques, some decrying any further use of the concept. In this paper we argue that it is both necessary and possible to address each of the five core critiques on which recent criticism has focused: normativity; negative objectification of migrants as ‘other’; outdated imaginary of society; methodological nationalism; and a narrow focus on migrants in the factors shaping integration processes. We provide a definition of integration, and a revised heuristic model of integration processes and the ‘effectors’ that have been shown to shape them, as a contribution to a constructive debate on the ways in which these challenges for empirical research can be overcome