Speakers
Description
Square dancing is a popular public activity in China, with more than 100 million participants, most of whom are elderly women. In this presentation, we discuss the preliminary results of an ethnography on square dancing in Shenzhen, which has a large population of migrant workers and a significant wealth disparity. Using square dancing as a lens, we focus on migrant experiences of square dancers in the context of China’s unique political and economic system and social culture, examining tensions between urbanization and migration, as well as unequal power and space relations, social capital, identity construction, gender, and interfamily relations in Shenzhen.
Our analysis explores how square dancing is a leisure activity and a gendered social space practice through which important emotional and relationship attachments are formed. Most migrant square dancers are ""old drifters"" who have relocated to Shenzhen from rural areas to provide childcare for their grandchildren as their adult children labour in Shenzhen. Many of the migrant square dancers experience anomie and the loss of self-identity after leaving their ""acquaintance society"" and entering an unfamiliar metropolis to perform unpaid gendered labour. This presentation explores how migrant square dancers accumulate social capital by constructing local and self-identities through practices of physical culture. This research augments understandings of square dancing culture and social change in China by analyzing the interplay between social structures, agency and creativity of migrant square dancers, their migration experiences, and stigmatization and various misunderstandings of square dancing behind public spatial disputes among different groups.
