Performative family: homosexuality,marriage and intergenerational dynamics in China

Using in‐depth interview data on nominal marriages – legal marriages between a gay man and a lesbian to give the appearance of heterosexuality – this paper develops the concept of performative family to explain the processes through which parents and their adult children negotiate and resolve disagreements in relation to marriage decisions in post‐socialist China. We identify three mechanisms – network pressure, a revised discourse of filial piety and resource leverage – through which parents influence their gay offspring's decision to turn to nominal marriage. We also delineate six strategies, namely minimizing network participation, changing expectations, making partial concessions, drawing the line, delaying decisions and ending the marriage, by which gay people in nominal marriages attempt to meet parental expectations while simultaneously retaining a degree of autonomy. Through these interactions, we argue that Chinese parents and their gay adult children implicitly and explicitly collaborate to perform family, emphasizing the importance of formally meeting society's expectations about marriage rather than substantively yielding to its demands. We also argue that the performative family is a pragmatic response to the tension between the persistent centrality of family and marriage and the rising tide of individualism in post‐socialist China. We believe that our findings highlight the specific predicament of homosexual people. They also shed light on the more general dynamics of intergenerational negotiation because there is evidence that the mechanisms used by parents to exert influence may well be similar between gay and non‐gay people.     

Division of Labor,Gender Ideology,and Marital Satisfaction in East Asia

Using data from the 2006 Family Module of the East Asian Social Survey (N = 3,096), this article examines associations of marital satisfaction with divisions of housework and gender ideology in four East Asian societies: urban China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Compared with Japanese and Korean married women and men, Chinese and Taiwanese spouses were more satisfied with their marriage and had more egalitarian divisions of housework, but simultaneously they held less egalitarian gender ideologies. Multivariate analyses showed that relative share of housework was negatively associated with marital satisfaction for Japanese and Korean men and for Korean and Taiwanese women. Egalitarian gender ideology was significantly associated with lower marital satisfaction only among Taiwanese women. In addition, the negative association between housework and marital satisfaction was more pronounced for Taiwanese women who espoused more egalitarian gender ideologies. The authors discuss how differences in macro‐level social contexts explain these cross‐society variations.     

Father's Migration and Leaving the Parental Home in Rural Mozambique

Migration is an increasingly common global phenomenon and has important implications for the well‐being of family members left behind. Although extensive research has examined the impact of parental labor migration on school‐age children, less is known about its effect on adolescents. In this study, the authors used longitudinal survey data collected in rural Mozambique (N = 515) to assess the association between father's migration and adolescent children's leaving the parental home, an important component of the transition to adulthood. The results showed that father's migration delays home‐leaving for adolescent girls and that these effects are not mediated by school enrollment. The results for boys were inconclusive. The authors also found that remittances and longer durations of paternal migration were negatively associated with the transition out of the home. On the basis of the findings, they argue that father's migration delays girls' marriage.     

The gendered contours of North Korean Migration: sexualized bodies and the violence of phenotypical normalization in South Korea

This article examines the gendered and sexualized contours of North Korean experiences in South Korea at a time when nearly 70% of the North Korean emigrants are women. South Korean television shows – e.g. reality programs – and marriage matchmaking organizations seek to portray North Korean women in a ‘positive’ way to the South Korean public, although, as this article will illustrate, these representations are of a very particular, sexualized kind. These representations are sometimes negative, and there is stigma attached to North Korean women, in which South Koreans assume, for example, that they are victims of human trafficking or that they have had relations with Chinese men during their migration. Furthermore, poor nutrition and other forms of structural violence in North Korea have molded North Korean bodies; there are often physical disparities between North and South Koreans. In South Korean society where short height is viewed as undesirable and where idealized, surgical notions of beauty dominate, the violence of gendered phenotypical normalization mark North Korean bodies as smaller, foreign, and strange. Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article argues that these gendered contours of North Korean migration amount to a different sort of structural violence in South Korea.     

和谐与构建和谐社会

和谐历来是中国传统文化的主流思想.以"和"安邦、以"和"治国、以"和"齐家、以"和"平天下,乃中国先人从社会实践中总结出来的重要经验.胡锦涛同志提出构建社会主义和谐社会,就是强调创造性地运用中国传统文化来建设国家,按照和平、和睦、和合、和谐的精神办事,以加速推进全面建设小康社会.     

"和谐与发展"应成为当今社会的核心价值观

主要阐述了"和谐与发展"的涵义及其作为核心价值观的重要现实意义,把"和谐与发展"看成是一个不可分割的整体。"和谐与发展"作为一个有机的整体,成为人们评价或判断事物的一种价值尺度,应该具有如下的基本内涵:即,和谐中的发展,发展中的和谐;和谐促进发展,发展促进和谐;和谐依赖发展,发展依赖和谐;发展为了和谐,和谐为了发展。     

和谐社会与和谐住区建设规划——邯郸市凤凰花苑规划

关心城市弱势群体,解决特定社会群体需要,由政府和社会组织开发的适合于城市中低家庭收入群体的城市经济型大众住宅,是响应党和国家建设"和谐社会"的重要指示的一项基本内容。邯郸市凤凰花苑作为建设和谐住区的一个全新尝试,不仅做到屋美价廉、经济适用,更体现在其功能性、适用性、经济性及环境的可持续性上,达到人与居住空间相互融合的舒适、优美的生活环境。     

辩护人制度中的价值冲突与协调

辩护人制度是现代刑事诉讼制度的重要组成部分。在这一制度运作过程中,一些价值冲突经常凸显,如辩护人的职业伦理和社会大众伦理的分野、辩护人的真实义务和保密义务的冲突。分析这些冲突产生的原因以及正确认识和合理协调这些冲突,对辩护人制度的建构和改革有着重要意义。     

论唐与奚、契丹的和亲

安史之乱前,唐朝为控制辽西,以便向东控制辽东,向西控制北亚,试图用和亲来抚绥辽西两蕃奚、契丹,但由于两蕃的内讧而归于失败。之后,唐与两蕃陷入了累年相攻之中。     

中国共产党领导下婚姻家庭制度的回顾与展望

中国共产党建党至今已一百周年,在党的领导下,中国在经济、文化、法制等各个方面都发生了翻天覆地的变化。而作为关系着每个人切身利益的婚姻家庭制度也在朝着体系化、制度化、科学化的方向不断发展。从《中华苏维埃共和国婚姻法》到《民法典》婚姻家庭编,不同时期的婚姻立法不仅仅回应了时代要求,也向我们展示了我国婚姻法在立法理念和制度建构上的极大提升。