Caring in Times of Precarity

Caring in Times of Precarity draws together two key cultural observations: the increase in those living a single life, and the growing attraction of creative careers. Straddling this historical juncture, the book focuses on one particular group of 'precariat': single women in Shanghai in various forms of creative (self-)employment. While negotiating their share of the uncanny creative work ethos, these women also find themselves interpellated as shengnü ('left-over women') in a society configured by a mix of Confucian values, heterosexual ideals, and global images of womanhood. Following these women's professional, social and intimate lives, the book refuses to see their singlehood and creative labour as problematic, and them as victims. It departs from dominant thinking on precarity, which foregrounds and critiques the contemporary need to be flexible, mobile, and spontaneous to the extent of (self-)exploitation, accepting insecurity. The book seeks to understand empirically and specificallywomen's everyday struggles and pleasures. It highlights the up-close, everyday embodied, affective, and subjective experience in a particular Chinese city, with broader, global resonances well beyond China. Exploring the limits of the politics of precarity, the book proposes an ethics of care.

Explores how women are living single, creative lives in a Chinese city Considers the lives of these women holistically, taking into account their professional, social and intimate lives Engages with the fundamental issue of precarity, which configures the post-Fordian, contemporary condition of our lives

Autorentext
Chow Yiu Fai is Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing of Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong.

Klappentext
Caring in Times of Precarity draws together two key cultural observations: the increase in those living a single life, and the growing attraction of creative careers. Straddling this historical juncture, the book focuses on one particular group of 'precariat': single women in Shanghai in various forms of creative (self-)employment. While negotiating their share of the uncanny creative work ethos, these women also find themselves interpellated as shengnü ('left-over women') in a society configured by a mix of Confucian values, heterosexual ideals, and global images of womanhood. Following these women's professional, social and intimate lives, the book refuses to see their singlehood and creative labour as problematic, and them as victims. It departs from dominant thinking on precarity, which foregrounds and critiques the contemporary need to be flexible, mobile, and spontaneous to the extent of (self-)exploitation, accepting insecurity. The book seeks to understand empirically and specificallywomen's everyday struggles and pleasures. It highlights the up-close, everyday embodied, affective, and subjective experience in a particular Chinese city, with broader, global resonances well beyond China. Exploring the limits of the politics of precarity, the book proposes an ethics of care.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Living on my own, creatively, precariously.- Chapter 2: Living with their own images.- Chapter 3: Living with a generation qilinghou, balinghou, jiulinghou.- Chapter 4: Balancing work/life?.- Chapter 5: To love, to live.- Chapter 6: Living with us the case of Kunqu.- Chapter 7: Living with the city.- Chapter 8: Living with themselves, creating themselves.- Chapter 9: Epilogue.