The Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE PRINCETON JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES VOLUME IV SPRING 2013 PRINCETON JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Anji Shin ’13 Jenna Song ’14 COPY EDITORS Gavin Cook ’15 Charles Fortin ’15 Kevin Liaw ’15 LAYOUT EDITOR Jiweon Kim ’15 FINANCE & OPERATIONS TEAM Ben Chang ’14 Ryan T. Kang ’14 Kevin Liaw ’15 Jay Park ’16 Samantha Wu ’16 IT TEAM IT MANAGER Pavel Shibayev ’15 STAFF Jenny Nan Jiang ’16 CHINA EDITORIAL TEAM JAPAN EDITORIAL TEAM KOREA EDITORIAL TEAM ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Charles Fortin ’15 Ben Chang ’14 Ryan T. Kang ’14 EDITORS EDITORS EDITORS Ben Chang ’14 Charles Fortin ’15 Jennifer Cho ’15 Gavin Cook ’15 Tzu-Yung Huang ’15 Jisoo Han ’14 Adrienne Fung ’14 Marina Kaneko ’15 Jee Eun Lee ’15 Rebecca Haynes ’15 Ryan T. Kang ’14 Jay Park ’16 Tzu-Yung Huang ’15 Christian Edwards van Alicia Huaze Li ’16! Muijen ’15 Cameron White ’14 ! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS ! ! 1. PRETTIER IN PINK: IDENTITY RECONSTRUCTION AMONG RURAL MIGRANT WOMEN IN MARY KAY CHINA | JAMNAH MORTON | COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1 2. THE PARADOX OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND OTHER CHALLENGES: LABOR RESISTANCE IN CONTEMPORARY BEIJING | RUODI DUAN | AMHERST COLLEGE 26 3. THE INTERSECTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND SUICIDE IN SOUTH KOREA| KRISTEN KIM | PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 39 4. EURASIANS IN EARLY COLONIAL HONG KONG | KIM DENG | THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG 53 5. THE EXOTIC WOMEN OF THE WEST: DEPICTIONS OF NANBAN WOMEN IN THE MOMOYAMA PERIOD | AMANDA TSAO | COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 73 6. KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN: NATIONALIST DISCOURSE IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH KOREA | JUDY PARK |HARVARD UNIVERSITY 83 7. ‘STRANGE KALEIDOSCOPIC SCENES’: WESTERN REPRESENTATIONS OF JAPANESE CITIES IN MEIJI, 1868-1912 | HANNAH SHEPHERD | HARVARD UNIVERSITY 102 8. RE-BALANCING OR COUNTER-BALANCING? ASSESSING AMERICA’S RESPONSE TO CHINA’S RISE THROUGH BILATERAL INVESTMENT TREATIES | ESTHER TRANLE | NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 115 9. PEARLS OF THE FAR EAST: REMAKING AND RECLAIMING VIETNAM THROUGH CINEMA | ELIZABETH SHIM | NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 130 PRETTIER IN PINK: Identity Reconstruction Among Rural Migrant Women in Mary Kay China Jamnah Morton Columbia University ABSTRACT in the business despite prolonged individual unprofitability. Rural migrant women in China commonly face abusive work conditions INTRODUCTION that exacerbate the hardships associated with social dislocation. Limited access to While clothes may not make the woman, financial and social resources, coupled they certainly have a strong effect on her with China’s stigmatization of migrant self-confidence—which, I believe, does laborers, makes urban integration make the woman. extremely difficult for many migrant women. However, Mary Kay China, the Mary Kay Ashi Chinese subsidiary of American-based cosmetics company Mary Kay Inc., For migrant women in Mainland China, presents a contrary case of empowerment labor is often just another domain of though migrant labor. Comprising a vast social stigmatization. Abuse and majority of the beauty consultant discrimination are common realities for workforce, female migrants act as rural women joining the urban labor entrepreneurs within Mary Kay’s direct force, and many women have little selling business model, marketing recourse for social, financial, and physical cosmetic products and services and security. ii Disparaging migrant labor managing their own client base. This conditions have a number of negative article aims to examine how these women consequences for mental health in renegotiate their migrant identities and particular, and can induce emotional and overcome marginalization through this psychological damage that affects key participation in labor. factors related to self-perception. iii Based on interviews with migrant However, for some migrant women the distributors and an analysis of an online workplace may also serve as a vehicle for network of beauty consultants, this article identity reconstruction whereby they may found that migrant women were able to transcend the social labels that connote construct and perform alternative selves their position with inferiority. Drawing through four main mediums: material from the personal narratives of migrant gains, organizational aesthetics, a cohesive beauty consultants in Mary Kay China, social network, and strong ideological this article asserts that labor participation mechanisms. These avenues serve both as can be formative and constructive for pull factors for new distributors and as some female migrant workers, and performance motivators in congruence explores the ways in which employment with the economic interests of the firm. facilitates the negotiation of selfhood. Additionally, some narratives indicate that Although much research has been these devices effectively retain consultants conducted on the sociology of networking Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies! 1! and direct selling, this study is compelling CHINA’S RURAL MIGRANTS due to the paucity of gendered analysis and the lack of consideration of rural Over the last quarter century, China’s migrants in the literature.iv Furthermore, rapid economic development and the case enterprise is an American-based urbanization have been inextricably direct selling organization, characterized involved with rural-urban migration on an by a very different working dynamic, unprecedented scale. Since the compensation system and organizational government reforms of the early 1980s, structure from companies in the textile, China’s urban population has expanded by service and manufacturing industries in about 440 million to 622 million people in which Chinese migrant women are 2009; about 340 million of the 440 million commonly employed. v Mary Kay’s were due to urban reclassification and net relationship-driven business model and migration. vii Estimates from China’s Western origins also provide a unique set National Bureau of Statistics show the of angles from which to assess migrant total migrant labor population has grown women’s labor participation. Its core from approximately 30 million to over branding of femininity and its nuclear, 250 million migrant workers between surrogate-family structure inspire new 1989 and 2011.viii In 2012, by the end of social possibilities for rural workers not the third quarter alone, the number of commonly found in other companies in rural migrant laborers exceeded 168 China. vi It is the aim of this study to million, representing a 3 percent increase contribute to the understanding of from the previous year.ix Although issues Chinese women’s labor activities as it of statistical integrity continue to plague relates to their migrant status within this the study of migration trends, the context. significance of migrant labor in China is The article proceeds in the unquestionable.x following order. First, recent migration The influx of rural women into trends and common themes associated urban areas indicates a feminization of with the female migration experience, labor and migration, given the push-and- particularly with regards to migrant pull factors and segmented labor markets women, will be briefly outlined. Second, a specifically encountered by women. xi profile of the Mary Kay Company will be Females comprise a substantial minority presented followed by an analysis of of China’s floating population. In the early beauty consultant interviews and profiles 2000s, women were estimated to comprise from an unofficial company website, about 50 percent of the migrant Hicay.com, to develop a more nuanced population. xii This represents a interpretation of the migrant-enterprise considerable increase from various relationship. Third, organizational social estimates during the 1990s, which range theories and ideas related to identity from 30 percent to 40 percent.xiii Many construction will be explored in an move from the countryside in search of attempt to explain the subjects’ employment opportunities and better motivations and methods of self- wages, though motivations are not always conceptualization in their particular social purely economic.xiv circumstances. The article closes with a To position the migrant women as discussion on possible implications helpless victims undermines personal beyond the study of gendered migration. narratives in which, regardless of indicators of the contrary, they indeed feel Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies! 2! themselves to be more confident and self- rural migrant women demonstrate the aware.xv Certainly for many rural women, dominant notions of acceptable identity the transition to urban life is often within the urban environment. Migrant wrought with social and institutional women are penalized for their incongruity prejudice, and their subordination as of speech, dress, mannerisms, physical “second-class” citizen is reinforced in appearance, and other qualities. While their destination area. This extends to the urban residents typify characteristics of corporate sphere, where many migrant rural migrants that may not actually be women who are able to procure part of an individual migrant’s identity employment are exploited and abused by (descriptors like “inferior,” “incapable,” their employers. A lack of sufficient social and “violent” are not uncommon) this capital pre-migration can undermine their scheme of marginalization inadvertently ability to rebuild it once they have makes rural women distinctly aware of relocated: guanxi, for instance, a cultural their contrariness, which they then form of social capital and one crucial in internalize as defects. xviii The idea of Chinese relationships,