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The intimacy of state power: Marriage, liberation, and socialist subjects in southeastern China
Author(s) -
Friedman Sara L.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2005.32.2.312
Subject(s) - politics , china , state (computer science) , openness to experience , power (physics) , normalization (sociology) , political economy , sociology , socialism , institution , political science , gender studies , communism , law , social psychology , psychology , social science , quantum mechanics , physics , algorithm , computer science
Marriage is a powerful institution in which state regulation and sexual normalization converge to link personal desires with state goals. In socialist China, marital reforms have been part of the regime's efforts to cultivate liberated socialist subjects. I focus on a coastal region known for its distinctive marriage customs, arguing that the development of socialist state power there was premised on the forging of female subjects committed to new ideals of conjugal intimacy. Although these ideals were introduced in the high socialist Maoist era, they were only realized in the current post‐Mao era, with its coupling of market reforms and societal openness with family planning policies. This outcome suggests that different configurations of state and economy have had different capacities to define subjectivities at once intimate and political. Even when state actors succeed in shaping their citizens' intimate desires and relationships, they do not necessarily produce political subjects committed to the state's original goals.