Depoliticizing Tobacco's Exceptionality: Male Sociality, Death and Memory-Making among Chinese Cigarette Smokers

Kohrman, Matthew

doi:10.1086/tcj.58.20066308

Cited by 41 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…Most ethnographic research on contemporary Chinese masculinity reveals the other side of the story, however. Such studies have focused on males interacting mainly in unisexual settings including those involving the use of violence by unemployed rural youth to demand token respect (Watson 1988;Watson and Rubie 2004), other sexually charged, often intensely competitive, unisexual gatherings (Osberg 2013), semiformal professional dining celebrations (Mason 2013), audacious adventures (Liu 2011), and other demonstrations of bravery and mobility (Kohrman 2005(Kohrman , 2007. Although the activities in these studies vary, they share some common themes, such as the use of violence (real and symbolic), long distance sojourns as evidence of bravery, the consumption of alcohol, the use of crude language, vulgar displays, sexually insensitive, overtly competitive status assertions, materialistic displays of self-importance, and sexually flirtatious encounters used to promote camaraderie and, thus, male solidarity, or, in other words, the apparent embracing of the w¢ u persona.…”

Section: Chinese Masculinity: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Decline of the Chauvinistic Model of Chinese Masculinity: A Research Report

Jankowiak

Xuan

2014

Chinese Sociological Review

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Our study is the first study to explore the transformation of Chinese gender stereotypes over a thirty-year period. Based on the field research conducted in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, and supplemental data in Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing, we examine the way men and women's supposed "essence" has been objectified in folk ideology to form a cognitive or ideal model of gender. We argue that there is a decline in the 1980s chauvinistic model of masculinity that centered around a simplistic dichotomy of wén (scholarly)/w¢ u (oriented toward bold action); whereby masculinity is associated with a presumption of superiority and contempt toward women to a newer form of masculinity organized around a blend of wén and w¢ u cultural traits that highlight confidence, decisiveness, politeness, and a cool demeanor, along with a heightened respect for females.Gender images and role expectations vary from culture to culture. This is often true even where behavioral similarities across cultures persist in regard to gender-related behaviors of males and females. In Imperial China, studies exploring the significance of gender have noted that there was no word for masculinity or femininity in that era. The absence of a linguistic term that identifies gender as a social configuration has led some to infer that kinship in Imperial China was more essential than gender (Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002). Rather than being bounded by availability of linguistic labels, we argue that there are interesting and important aspects of male/ female subjective experiences, behaviors, and interactions (Jankowiak 1999(Jankowiak , 2002(Jankowiak , 2006, as it is one thing to assert that not every culture has labels in everyday language for folk ideology of masculinity and femininity and quite another to conclude that there are no recurrent sex-linked patterns of behavior.After the fall of the Qing empire, many sex-linked behaviors continue to cluster around specific orientations toward the erotic (Buss 2007;Symons 1979),

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Section: Chinese Masculinity: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Decline of the Chauvinistic Model of Chinese Masculinity: A Research Report

Jankowiak

Xuan

2014

Chinese Sociological Review

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“…A 2010 study conducted by the China Center for Disease Control in Jiangsu showed that over 50% of respondents planned to buy cigarettes as gifts for Chinese New Year, even though more than 68% acknowledged the dangers of smoking, and cigarettes were the most popular gift during Chinese New Year 16. People express social courtesy by sharing cigarettes and smoking17 so people ultimately smoke more during Chinese New Year; 40% of respondents in a 2008 survey in China said that they smoked at least twice as much as usual during the festival 18…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational tobacco industry promotion of the cigarette gifting custom in China

2011

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Objective To understand how British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris (PM) researched the role and popularity of cigarette gifting in forming relationships among Chinese customs and how they exploited the practice to promote their brands State Express 555 and Marlboro. Methods Searches and analysis of industry documents from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library complemented by searches on LexisNexis Academic news, online search engines and information from the tobacco industry trade press. Results From 1980–1999, BAT and PM employed Chinese market research firms to gather consumer information about perceptions of foreign cigarettes and the companies discovered that cigarettes, especially prestigious ones, were gifted and smoked purposely for building relationships and social status in China. BAT and PM promoted their brands as gifts by enhancing cigarette cartons and promoting culturally themed packages, particularly during the gifting festivals of Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival to tie their brands in to festival values such as warmth, friendship and celebration. They used similar marketing in Chinese communities outside China. Conclusions BAT and PM tied their brands to Chinese cigarette gifting customs by appealing to social and cultural values of respect and personal honour. Decoupling cigarettes from their social significance in China and removing their appeal would probably reduce cigarette gifting and promote a decline in smoking. Tobacco control efforts in countermarketing, large graphic warnings and plain packaging to make cigarette packages less attractive as gifts could contribute to denormalising cigarette gifting.

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“…While Chen Zhu (2012), then minister of China's MOH, declared that services to promote cessation of tobacco use should be included in national health care policies, it is beyond the MOH's power to live up to such a declaration. To eschew responsibility for tobacco-related diseases in the health care system, the government spares no efforts to normalize the idea that the government has nothing to do with the tobacco victims (Kohrman 2007). Therefore, the government has no economic incentives and little pressure from smoking victims to practice effective tobacco control policies.…”

Section: Policy Transfer: An Analytic Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why FCTC Policies Have Not Been Implemented in China: Domestic Dynamics and Tobacco Governance

Jian

2014

Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law

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The international community, under the auspices of the World Health Organization, developed the landmark Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to curb the global tobacco epidemic. As an internationally binding convention about global best practices on tobacco control, the FCTC has become an overriding source of policy transfer for developing countries in the fight against smoking. However, since its ratification of the first global norm over tobacco governance and against the grim background of the widespread tobacco-induced public health devastation within its borders, China has failed to genuinely pursue FCTC policies because of domestic political and social factors. The empirical findings of this article point to the dominance of political-social dynamics for China's nontransfer of FCTC policies, arguing that the government's GDPism, its sovereignty-first mentality, and hostility to NGOs as well as widespread social acceptability of tobacco consumption and high smoking prevalence are fundamental causes of China's nontransfer of FCTC policies. The article explicates how these variables correspond to FCTC policies in an analytic framework of policy transfer.

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Depoliticizing Tobacco's Exceptionality: Male Sociality, Death and Memory-Making among Chinese Cigarette Smokers

Cited by 41 publications

References 0 publications

The Decline of the Chauvinistic Model of Chinese Masculinity: A Research Report

The Decline of the Chauvinistic Model of Chinese Masculinity: A Research Report

Transnational tobacco industry promotion of the cigarette gifting custom in China

Why FCTC Policies Have Not Been Implemented in China: Domestic Dynamics and Tobacco Governance

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