Public lecture: The emotional politics of inequality in contemporary China

Title: The emotional politics of inequality in contemporary China

Speaker: Dr Jingyu Mao, University of Edinburgh

Time and date: 14-15:30, Thursday 19 February

Venue: CB-0020 (Confluence Building)

Abstract: This talk draws on my book Intimacy as a Lens to explore the emotional experiences of being an ethnic performer in Southwest China, and how performers’ emotions reveal the broader politics of inequality in contemporary China. Ethnic performers are rural-urban migrants who perform ethnic songs and dances at venues such as restaurants and tourist sites, most of whom come from ethnic minority backgrounds. Based on six months’ ethnographic fieldwork, including 60 in-depth interviews with performers, this talk focuses on the emotions of ethnic performers, including their ambivalence over their ethnic identity, their ‘happiness duty’, and the ways they draw on their emotional reflexivity to navigate an opaque migration regime. By situating these micro-level emotional experiences within the broader emotional regime at the societal level, this talk reveals how the emotions of ethnic performers offer valuable lenses for understanding the politics of inequality related to ethnicity, the rural-urban divide, and gender in contemporary China.

Speaker bio: Jingyu Mao is Lecturer of Sociology at The University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on migration and work, ethnicity and gender, emotions and intimacy, and the politics of care. She is the author of Intimacy as a Lens on Work and Migration (Bristol University Press, 2024). She is the co-author of two forthcoming books about the welfare and labour struggles of migrant workers in China and Vietnam (with UCL Press and Polity Press). She has co-edited special issues for journals including Global Social Policy and Journal of Political Sociology. Her works appear in journals such as The China Quarterly, China Perspectives, Emotions and Society, and Family, Relationships, and Societies.