Events

His, Her, and Their Marriages: (re)verticalization of family loyalties in urban China

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Date:

6 Jan 2016

Time:

9:00 am – 10:00 am

Venue:

Cho Yiu Hall, CUHK

Speaker(s):

Prof. Deborah S. Davis, Yale University

Biography of Speaker:

Prof. Deborah S. Davis is the Professor of Sociology at Yale University. In addition she has run a summer workshop with CUHK where Yale students work collaboratively with students from Hong Kong and China. Prof. Davis currently is an Associate Editor of The Journal of Asian Studies and on the editorial board of The China Quarterly. In 2004 she helped launch the Yale China Health Journal. At Yale she has served as Director of Academic Programs at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Chair of the Department of Sociology, Chair of the Council of East Asian Studies, Director of Graduate Studies in both East Asian Studies and Sociology, and co-chair of the Women Faculty Forum. Currently she serves as a vice-president of the Board of Trustees of the Yale-China Association. Professor Davis is the author or editor of ten books, including The Consumer Revolution in Urban China (California 2000), SARS: Reception and Interpretation in three Chinese Cities (Routledge 2007), Creating Wealth and Poverty in China (Stanford 2009), and most recently Wives, Husbands and Lovers (Stanford 2014).

Admission:

All interested are welcome. Free Admission.

Enquiries:

Tel.: (852) 3943-8763/8765
Email: usc@cuhk.edu.hk

Synopsis of Lecture:

Since 2005 demographic, economic, and cultural changes in Chinese cities have so increased parental financial and emotional investments in the weddings and marriages of their (usually) single son or daughter that loyalties between parents and adult children frequently trump those between engaged couples or married spouses. Therefore, in contrast to the “triumph of conjugality” that Yan Yuxiang (2003) identified as the dominant trend during the early 1990s, today one observes a re-verticalization of family loyalty where ties between parents and children frequently overwhelm the “horizontal” conjugal desires and priorities of individual brides and grooms.

Remarks:

To encourage academic exchange among young scholars and broaden their horizons, the Universities Service Centre for China Studies of The Chinese University of Hong Kong and CUHK-Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation Asia-Pacific Centre for Chinese Studies co-organize the Graduate Seminar on China (GSOC) every year. The Twelfth GSOC will take place from January 6 to 9, 2016. All interested are welcome. For more details, please contact USC. Thank you.