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University of California, Irvine UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Volunteerism and the Legitimation of Inequality in Contemporary China DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Sociology by Henry Chiu Hail Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Yang Su, Chair Associate Professor Stanley Bailey Professor Ann Hironaka Professor Francesca Polletta Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom 2016 © 2016 Henry Chiu Hail DEDICATION To My mother, Mei Oi Hail, who is dearly missed. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv CURRICULUM VITAE v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vi CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2: Identity Building among the Privileged 29 CHAPTER 3: Building and Obscuring Boundaries 58 CHAPTER 4: Maintaining Boundaries 85 CHAPTER 5: Narratives of National Progress 97 CHAPTER 6: Do Chinese Volunteers Care about Inequality? 114 CHAPTER 7: Conclusion 123 REFERENCES 129 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my dissertation committee for their wisdom and guidance. I am especially grateful to my advisor, Yang Su, who spent many long hours discussing my dissertation with me and pushed me to refine my ideas. I would also like to thank my good friends Yidi Wu, Yader Lanuza, and Ralph Hosoki, all of whom provided me with invaluable assistance and insight. Thank you also to my father, sister, and brother-in-law, who provided much encouragement. I am eternally grateful to my dearly departed mother, who taught me to believe in myself and was a model of strength and compassion. Finally, thank you to all of the volunteers who shared their lives with me and who continue to inspire me with their passion for creating a better world. iv CURRICULUM VITAE Henry Chiu Hail Education Ph.D., Sociology, 2016 University of California, Irvine M.A., Sociology, 2009 University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa B.A., Sociology, 2004 Boston College Fields of Study Culture, Inequality, Education, Globalization, Social Movements, Civil Society Publications Hail, Henry Chiu. 2015. “Patriotism Abroad: Overseas Chinese Students’ Encounters with Criticisms of China.” Journal of Studies in International Education. 19(4): 311-326. DOI: 10.1177/1028315314567175 Chu, Rongwei and Henry Chiu Hail. 2014. “Winding Road Toward the Chinese Dream: The U-Shaped Relationship Between Income and Life Satisfaction Among Chinese Migrant Workers.” Social Indicators Research, 118(1):235-246. DOI:10.1007/s11205-013-0415-7 v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Volunteerism and the Legitimation of Inequality in Contemporary China By Henry Chiu Hail Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Irvine, 2016 Professor Yang Su, Chair As economic inequality and the rural-urban education gap in China have rapidly increased since the Reform and Opening, so too have the number of Chinese volunteer organizations. How does volunteerism in China reflect and influence Chinese urbanites’ perceptions of inequality? To answer this question, I conducted participant observation with several Chinese volunteer organizations over the course of one year. I also conducted in-depth interviews with former and current volunteers and organizational staff. I found that many Chinese volunteers perceive economic inequality as normal, but are concerned that lack of understanding between the rich and poor could lead to social conflict. These volunteers explicitly profess egalitarianism, yet construct narratives which implicitly attribute inequality to individual and cultural differences. They draw symbolic boundaries between themselves and the rural poor by creating narratives which portray poor rural people as lacking the ability to make autonomous, rational decisions. Moreover, volunteer organizations develop styles of talk which discourage volunteers from recognizing structural sources of inequality. I argue that volunteers’ discourses can legitimate inequality and reinforce prejudice toward disadvantaged groups. Privileged people exercise agency in developing new ways to legitimate inequality in response to changing contradictions associated with capitalism. However, they draw upon widely-accepted master narratives to construct these legitimations. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This study addresses the following questions: Do Chinese urbanites care about inequality? Why do they care or not care about inequality? How do they maintain their own attitudes toward inequality? In regard to the first question, survey data seems to indicate that Chinese urbanites indeed care about inequality (Whyte 2010; Pew Research Center 2012). In fact, Chinese urbanites care more about inequality than rural residents (Wang 2010; Whyte 2010). However, there is often a gap between what people say and what they really think, as well as a gap between what people say and what they do. Moreover, survey data is often inadequate for ascertaining subjects’ subconscious assumptions, attitudes and motives. Thus, I use both in-depth interviews and ethnography to ascertain my respondents’ attitudes toward inequality. Specifically, I analyze how upper-class respondents talk about inequality during interviews, and I observe how they situate themselves in relation to poor people and interact with poor people while acting as volunteers. By constantly comparing what they say in different contexts, and what they say to what they do, I am able to reveal a more accurate assessment of my subjects’ attitudes toward inequality. There are many ways to address the second question, which asks why Chinese urbanites care or do not care about inequality. A full understanding of the causes of people’s attitudes requires a thorough understanding of the historical and biographical conditions which shape their subjective experience. In this particular study, I describe how narratives told by the Chinese media, education system, government, and other institutions inform my respondents’ attitudes toward inequality. I also describe how my respondents’ social backgrounds shape their attitudes toward inequality. The bulk of this study addresses the third question, which asks how Chinese urbanites maintain their own attitudes toward inequality. I observe how people’s practices influence their perceptions. I analyze the ways in which upper-class people make their perspectives on inequality believable to themselves. I primarily analyze what they do with their talk: how they construct narratives and enforce 1 styles of talk which produce either concern or indifference toward inequality. I examine how my respondents construct narratives in the course of interviews, but also how they use narrative and other framing practices during their interactions with other volunteers and with poor, rural people. I also examine how volunteers enforce a particular style of talk among volunteers, which shapes volunteers’ perceptions and limits the scope of discussion. The Chinese young adults whom I studied are not representative of Chinese people as a whole. When I draw conclusions about “Chinese urbanites,” I am mainly referring to middle-class and upper- class young adults in their 20s. This is a group with considerable economic, political and social resources. Hence, this is the group of Chinese urbanites who may be in the best position to effect social change, should they choose to. Moreover, I chose to study a particular subgroup of young Chinese urbanites: those who chose to volunteer in the countryside. One might expect this subgroup to be more aware of rural-urban inequality, more concerned about inequality, and more altruistic than their peers who did not choose to volunteer. Thus, if even those urbanites with volunteer experience do not really care about reducing inequality, there is little chance that most other privileged urbanites care either. I argue that young middle-class and upper-class Chinese urbanites are not opposed to economic inequality. They are concerned about social conflict and some worry about rising prices, but they fundamentally accept economic inequality as normal. To some degree, they also accept the unequal distribution of educational and economic opportunities. To put things another way, most urban Chinese young adults believe they have the right to be wealthy and spend money the way they want, even if this requires other people to make do with much less. Secondly, I argue that privileged people construct narratives which (a) attribute economic success to individual and cultural characteristics, and (b) obscure structural inequality and inequality of opportunity. Specifically, volunteers use narratives to ascribe different groups of people with different levels of personal autonomy. In this study, I define autonomy as an individual’s ability to make independent, informed, rational decisions which are free from coercion and are not restrained by social 2 norms. Volunteers believe that autonomous people make better decisions and are therefore, generally speaking, more economically successful than people who lack autonomy. Rather than view autonomy as structurally determined, volunteers perceive autonomy as a personality characteristic and cultural characteristic which varies between individuals and regions. Most volunteers, when asked, will acknowledge that opportunities are not equally distributed. However, they are not particularly upset by this fact. Volunteers in educational NGOs claim that teaching poor rural people autonomy can provide them with happiness and “meaning,” even if they remain in poverty. They do not always blame poor people for their poverty, but to a large extent they deny that
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