The Affective State and Civic Intimacy: Youth Marriage, Public Mediation, and State-Making in Contemporary China

Abstract

In the wake of state-initiated marketization, both urban marriage and social solidarity in China are perceived to be in crisis. My dissertation examines how the Chinese state tackles this perceived crisis by mobilizing “love,” care, and belonging on a collective level, and by constructing urban publics invested in these domains. One exemplary state endeavor this project focuses on is the matchmaking services for unmarried young adults. With data from participant observation, interviews, archival research and survey in Beijing and Shanghai, this project argues that marriage carries strong symbolic power for governing collective desire and relatedness. State investment in matchmaking has higher social and political stakes than marriage per se. It aims primarily to reconnect young citizens with local state representatives, and to rechannel their market-based desires into love and belonging of a civic nature. Rather than approaching society via authoritarian control, the state now seeks to conjure up citizens’ feelings of multilayered attraction (romantic love, social belonging, and state care) in urban publics. This is becoming a salient modality of power over marketized societies.