Moral Masculinities: Ethical Self-fashionings of Professional Chinese Men in London

Abstract

Through qualitative interviews and examination of textual sources, this essay investigates the gendered, class and cultural subjectivities of transnational, highly-educated Chinese men living and working in London. Narrative analysis of the interviews of two participants suggests that they exhibit hybrid “bricolage masculinities,” which incorporate elements from Western educational and corporate cultures, and also appropriate concepts and practices from the Confucian tradition of moral self-cultivation. A discussion of contemporary texts that support the revival of Confucian masculinities illuminates the discursive context in which the participants’ ethical self-fashionings take place. The study argues that the cosmopolitan yet culturally embedded masculinities of the participants are suggestive of how professional Chinese men, as they step onto the world stage, seek to insert themselves more advantageously into local and global power relations of gender, class and nation.

Knowing Male Subjects: Globally Mobile Chinese Professionals and the Aesthetics of the Confucian Sublime

“…When previously analysing the masculinities of professional Chinese men in London, I mentioned the "ambivalences and contradictions" apparent in Xianyang's and other men's sense of their masculine identities (Hird, 2016b). This article probes further into such ambivalences: their sources, manifestations, significance, and consequences.…”

The Road Home: Rebellion, the Market and Masculinity in the Han Han Phenomenon

“…In the era of market reform and opening up to the world, it is discussed, critiqued and carefully reconstructed according to shifting and diversifying ideas about ideal manhood. Public debates about the how Chinese men ought to behave -be that as modern Confucian gentlemen (Hird 2017;Hird 2016), enlightened fathers (Li and Jankowiak 2016), or tough "wolf warriors" (Liu and Rofel 2018) -are held with mounting frequency, and 2 Simon Elegant, " Han Han: China's Literary Bad Boy," Time, 2 November 2009, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0, 9171,1931619,00.html, (accessed 21 May 2019). 3 Barmé coined the term "bankable dissent" to refer to the street cred and market value that dissident writers and artists accrued regardless of their level of artistic prowess.…”

“…cries of a "crisis" are often to be heard (Song 2010;Hird 2012). 5 Meanwhile, a growing number of gender scholars have sought to make masculinity visible within China studies, highlighting the ways in which it intersects with, and sheds further light upon, major points of concern in the postsocialist era, including the shifting position of the intellectual vis-a-vis the state (Zhong 2000); the rise of consumerist values (Baranovitch 2003;Hird 2016;Osburg 2013); and China's interactions with the rest of the globe (Louie 2015;Hird and Song 2018). Studies such as these have highlighted both the transnational influences on contemporary Chinese gender, which have created new and hybridized ideals of masculinity, alongside the continuing importance of longstanding local understandings of "real men" as constituting wen ⽂ or cultural attainment, and wu 武, or martial valour (Hird and Song 2018;Louie 2015;Louie 2016).…”