International Journal of Cultural Studies
Volume 8, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 307-328

'Naked' bodies experimenting with intimate relations among migrant workers in South China (Review)

Ma E.* , Cheng H.L.
  • a Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Communications Division, Graduate School, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Communication Division, Graduate School, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
  • b University of Iowa, USA, United States, David See-Chai Lam Centre for International Communication, Simon Fraser University, Canada, Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa, United States

Abstract

This article describes how Chinese rural migrant workers are left exposed to the contradictory regimes of rural and urban intimacy. The sensuous bodies of the workers have become the central stage for them to experience and perform competing sets of discourses about sex, love and marriage. It is neither a product of discursive discipline in the Foucauldian sense, nor is it an active body learning a socially acceptable presentation of self in the Goffmanian sense. Rather, it is a 'communicative body' that is in the process of making itself. To use a theoretical metaphor, they are 'naked' in the transient condition of urban modernity. The particular 'nakedness' of rural migrant bodies in South China problematizes a simple rural/urban dichotomy by highlighting the inbetween-ness of migrants' experiences in the rapidly globalizing and pluralized discourses on intimacy. Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications.

Author Keywords

Urbanity Intimacy Modernity marriage Tradition

Index Keywords

[No Keywords available]
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-27644521862&doi=10.1177%2f1367877905055680&partnerID=40&md5=36d1f2036101792dedadecab1e69e543
DOI: 10.1177/1367877905055680
ISSN: 13678779
Cited by: 22
Original Language: English