The Self-Understandings and Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan
The Self-Understandings and Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan James Robert Cummings A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Geography, Politics and Sociology Newcastle University February 2019 Abstract Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Hainan, People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially 30 semi-structured interviews, this thesis explores the self-understandings and everyday lives of men who recognised themselves as gay, homosexual, tongzhi (comrade), and/or ‘in the scene’ (quanneiren). Given the choice of field site, this thesis is one of a handful of sociological studies to explore the lives of non-heterosexual people in the PRC outside of major urban centres, and potentially the first to do so in a region that has historically been considered ‘marginal’. As such, an exploratory approach is taken in engaging with a range of concepts and contexts that participants saw as central to their self-understandings and everyday lives. Specifically, this thesis explores the ways in which participants constructed and experienced ‘the scene’ (quan) as a framework of social-sexual belonging, perceived internet technologies as having deeply impacted their everyday lives, and narrated their lives as dis/oriented towards certain futures. These issues can be seen as complexly intertwined; they are drawn together in this thesis under an overarching concern for the ways in which participants negotiated understandings of themselves, in relation to others, within socio-cultural and material contexts of emergent social-sexual possibilities and pervasive pressures to marry and have children. In exploring these issues, this thesis draws upon a range of sociological and anthropological perspectives.
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