Chinese-Western Intimacy and Marriage

Chinese-Western Intimacy and Marriage

Author: Bo Qin

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2014-02-21

Total Pages: 550

ISBN-13: 3867418969

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In the era of the global village, intercultural marriage between different races and nationalities is frequent. The existence of intercultural marriages and intimacy between Chinese and Westerners is evident and expanding in societies throughout both China and the Western world. Although marriage is a very private affair for the individuals who participate in it, it also reflects and connects with many complex factors such as economic development, culture differences, political backgrounds and transition of traditions, in both China and the Western world. As a result, an ordinary marriage between a Chinese person and a Westerner is actually an episode in a sociological grand narrative. By employing a three-dimensional, multi-level theoretical framework based on an integration of theories of migration, sociology and gender and adopting a qualitative research paradigm, this book aims to present a true picture of Chinese-Western Intercultural Marriage with a focus on the Chinese perspective, and the main body of this study combines three theoretical approaches in order to explore the intercultural marriage fully using a panoramic view. By examining the history, reality and the conflicts of Chinese-Western intercultural marriage, this books tries to find the connections between the micro private affairs and the macro national power, and seeks the possibilities to construct the explanatory mechanism from macro reality (nation, state & race) to micro variables (intercultural marriage). It provides an academic perspective of producing the general knowledge on the basis of constructing a local knowledge. In this way this study will provide more than an anecdotal description of Chinese-Western Intercultural marriage, but will present a profound analysis of the forces underpinning this cross-cultural phenomenon. Dr. Qin Bo obtained his PhD in Sociology from the University College Cork, National University of Ireland in 2012. He is a lecturer at the Party School of Sichuan Committee of the Communist Party of China in Chengdu and a Post-doctoral Fellow of Fudan University in Shanghai.


Arranged Companions

Arranged Companions

Author: Weijing Lu

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2021-07-22

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 029574913X

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Although commonly associated with patriarchal oppression, arranged marriages have adapted over the centuries to changing cultural norms and the lived experiences of men and women. In Arranged Companions, historian Weijing Lu chronicles how marital behaviors during the early and High Qing (mid-seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries) were informed by rich and complex traditions and mediated by the historical conditions of the period, during which marital affection was celebrated as a basic ingredient of an ideal marriage. Lu finds public representation and private communication of marital affection in personal records, including poetry, biographies, letters, and memoirs. During this unique historical moment, ideals of marital companionship and love came to fruition while social changes also created new tensions for couples and extended families. Offering surprising revelations about conjugal relations during this time of change, Arranged Companions raises provocative questions about the cultural construction of intimacy and the meaning of a “happy marriage.”


History, Reality and Conflicts of Sino-Western Intercultural Marriages

History, Reality and Conflicts of Sino-Western Intercultural Marriages

Author: Bo Qin

Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing

Published: 2012-05

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9783848441679

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Intimate relationships between two people from different cultures generate a degree of excitement and intrigue within the couple due to that very difference, however this also brings its own challenges. Intercultural marriage adds an extra set of dynamics to relationships. Although the Chinese culture is very different from Western culture, individuals from both nevertheless meet and fall in love with each other. The existence of intercultural marriages and intimacy between Chinese and Westerners is evident and expanding in societies throughout both China and the Western world. This interesting book aims to present a true picture of Chinese Western Intercultural Marriage (CWIM) with a focus on the Chinese perspective. By employing a three-dimensional, multi-level theoretical framework based on an integration of theories of migration, sociology and gender and adopting a qualitative research paradigm, the main body of this study combines three theoretical approaches in order to explore CWIM fully using a panoramic view. This study will provide more than an anecdotal description of CWIM, but will present a profound analysis of the forces underpinning this cross-cultural phenomenon.


Intimate Relationships in China in the Light of Depth Psychology

Intimate Relationships in China in the Light of Depth Psychology

Author: Huan Wang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-03

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1000055728

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In Intimate Relationships in China in the Light of Depth Psychology: A Study of Gender and Integrity, Huan Wang presents an overview of Jungian ideas as they apply to gender roles and relationships in contemporary Chinese culture. Moving beyond a Western interpretation of key concepts, Wang attempts to understand and deal with the difficulties of contemporary marriages in a rapidly changing society, investigating how young Chinese couples have been affected by traditional values, Westernisation, and the one-child policy. Wang also discusses how depth psychology has developed and been applied in China, highlighting how it differs in Chinese and Western settings and the problems and achievements Chinese people have faced. She concludes that the Chinese psyche today is experiencing a transition from the compliance of collectivism to the awareness of individuation, and that the rediscovery of the notion of integrity will help Chinese therapists to find their way, make young Chinese people independent individuals, and bring a new approach to their marriages. This is the first time such issues have been profoundly and comprehensively discussed in a Chinese context. It will be an invaluable resource for analytical psychologists, psychotherapists, and marriage and family and couple therapists working in China or with Chinese clients. It will also be of great interest to academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies and to anyone interested in the psyche of contemporary China.


Intimate Relationships Across Boundaries

Intimate Relationships Across Boundaries

Author: Julia Moses

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-17

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 100038683X

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This collection investigates intermarriage and related relationships around the world since the eighteenth century. The contributors explore how romantic relationships challenged boundary crossings of various kinds – social, geographic, religious, ethnic. To this end, the volume considers a range of related issues: Who participated in these unions? How common were they, and in which circumstances were they practised (or banned)? Taking a global view, the book also questions some of the categories behind these relationships. For example, how did geographical boundaries – across national lines, distinctions between colonies and metropoles or metaphors of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ – shape the treatment of intermarriage? What role have social and symbolic boundaries, such as presumed racial, religious or socio-economic divides, played? To what extent and how were those boundaries blurred in the eyes of contemporaries? Not least, how have bureaucracies and law contributed to the creation of boundaries preventing romantic unions? Romantic relationships, the contributors suggest, brought into sharp relief assumptions not only about community and culture, but also about the sanctity of the intimate sphere of love and family. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The History of the Family.


Seeking Western Men

Seeking Western Men

Author: Monica Liu

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2022-11-22

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1503633748

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Commercial dating agencies that facilitate marriages across national borders comprise a $2.5 billion global industry. Ideas about the industry are rife with stereotypes—younger, more physically attractive brides from non-Western countries being paired with older Western men. These ideas are more myth than fact, Monica Liu finds in Seeking Western Men. Her study of China's email-order bride industry offers stories of Chinese women who are primarily middle-aged, divorced, and proactively seeking spouses to fulfill their material and sexual needs. What they seek in their Western partners is tied to what they believe they've lost in the shifting global economy around them. Ranging from multimillionaire entrepreneurs or ex-wives and mistresses of wealthy Chinese businessmen, to contingent sector workers and struggling single mothers, these women, along with their translators and potential husbands from the US, Canada, and Australia, make up the actors in this multifaceted story. Set against the backdrop of China's global economic ascendance and a relative decline of the West, this book asks: How does this reshape Chinese women's perception of Western masculinity? Through the unique window of global internet dating, this book reveals the shifting relationships of race, class, gender, sex, and intimacy across borders.


Conjugal Relationships in Chinese Culture

Conjugal Relationships in Chinese Culture

Author: Chi Sum Garfield Lau

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-04-16

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9811998418

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This book reviews the presentation of conjugal relationships in Chinese culture and their perception in the West. It explores the ways in which the act of marriage is represented/misrepresented in different literary genres, as well as in cultural adaptations. It looks at the gendered characteristics at play that affect conjugal relationships in Chinese societal practices more widely. It also distinguishes between the essential features that give rise to nuptial arrangements from the Chinese perspective, looking at what in which Sino and/or Western mentalities differ in terms of notions of autonomy in marriage. It excavates the extent to which marriage is constituted in forms of transaction between female and male bodies and asks under what circumstances wedding ceremonies constitute archetypal or counter-archetypal notions in pre-modern and modern society. Authors cover a range of fascinating cultural topics, such as posthumous marriage (necrogamy) as an ancient and popular folk culture from the perspective of Confucian ideology, as well as looking at marriage from ancient to present times, duty and rights in conjugal relations, inter-racial and inter-cultural marriage, widowhood in Confucian ideology, issues of legitimacy in marriage and concubinage, the taboos surrounding divorce and re-marriage, and conjugal violence. The book serves to revisit the cultural connections between marriage and various art forms, including literature, film, theatre, and other adaptations. It is a rich intellectual resource for scholars and students researching the historical roots, cultural interpretations, and evolving aspects of marriage as shown in literature, art, and culture.


Wives, Husbands, and Lovers

Wives, Husbands, and Lovers

Author: Deborah S. Davis

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2014-07-09

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0804791856

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What is the state of intimate romantic relationships and marriage in urban China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan? Since the 1980's, the character of intimate life in these urban settings has changed dramatically. While many speculate about the 21st century as Asia's century, this book turns to the more intimate territory of sexuality and marriage—and observes the unprecedented changes in the law and popular expectations for romantic bonds and the creation of new families. Wives, Husbands, and Lovers examines how sexual relationships and marriage are perceived and practiced under new developments within each urban location, including the establishment of no fault divorce laws, lower rates of childbearing within marriage, and the increased tolerance for non-marital and non-heterosexual intimate relationships. The authors also chronicle what happens when states remove themselves from direct involvement in some features of marriage but not others. Tracing how the marital "rules of the game" have changed substantially across the region, this book challenges long-standing assumptions that marriage is the universally preferred status for all men and women, that extramarital sexuality is incompatible with marriage, or that marriage necessarily unites a man and a woman. This book illustrates the wide range of potential futures for marriage, sexuality, and family across these societies.


Unhitched

Unhitched

Author: Judith Stacey

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012-03-25

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0814737854

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In The Dialectic of Structure and History, Volume Two of Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, István Mészáros brings the comprehension of our condition and the possibility of emancipatory social action beyond the highest point reached to date. Building on the indicatory flashes of conceptual lightning in the Grundrisse and other works of Karl Marx, Mészáros sets out the relations of structure and agency, individual and society, base and superstructure, nature and history, in a dialectical totality open to the future. The project is brought to its conclusion by means of critique, an analysis that shows not only the inadequacies of the thought critiqued but at the same time their social historical cause. The crucial questions are addressed through critique of the highest point of honest and brilliant thought in capital’s ascending phase, that of Adam Smith, Kant, and Hegel, as well as the irrationalities and dishonesty of the apologists of the capital system’s descending phase, such as Hayek and Popper. The dead ends of both Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism and post-modernism, arising from their denial of history, are placed in their context as capital-apologetics. What Mészáros, the leading Marxist philosopher of our times, has achieved is of world historical importance. He has cleared the philosophical ground to permit the illumination of a path to transcend the destructive death spiral of the capital system.