The Regional Coloring of Imagination: How Social Categories Shape Marital Partner Selection

Despite its omnipresence in daily interaction, the role of regional background in the development of social relations remains marginal in sociological research. This article examines how regional background shapes marital partner selection in urban China through a mental imagery model that draws on the sociology of imagined futures and culture and cognition. This new theoretical model helps integrate insights from direct selection and by-product models of marital homogamy. Drawing on 37 in-depth interviews and map color-coding exercises with never-married college graduates in Shanghai, I find that people construct strategies of action based on emotionally charged mental imageries of future life with potential partners in the early stages of partner selection. These imageries are constituted by cultural concepts developed from past regional engagements and structured by dominant institutional scripts of marriage, encompassing not only the candidate but also parents on both sides. That people picture their parents’ reactions to potential partners despite their own preferences reveals an indirect model of parental influence over adult children’s marital choice. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical potential of the mental imagery model beyond marital choice.