“Manage marriage”: State, gender, and class in urban China

The main goal of this research is to examine the intertwined relations between class formation and gender subjectivities through the lens of marriage in contemporary urban China. Two salient social phenomena have been observed in scholarship on China: first, the emerging middle-class as “the backbone” of the nation’s rejuvenation and the decline of the working-class, seen to be the heroic protagonist under the Maoist regime. Second, different kinds of gender subjectivities co-exist. The scholarship on gender and class in China has developed distinctive bodies of literature, yet they have failed to tell us about the subject position of each class with respect to particular gender subjectivities. Using ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews, this article examines the discourse on managing marriage, which reflects complexities regarding the state’s strategic solution for domesticating the social sphere, gender politics, and class formations. I argue that differences in managing marriage between middle-class and working-class women not only help to understand the material conditions of their lives, but are also extremely pertinent for an analysis of subject positions that characterize their respective classes.