The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk with Harriet Zurndorfer, who is affiliated with the Leiden University's Institute for Area Studies.
This lecture focuses on men and women engaged in China’s sexual economy, which is dominated by the exchange between wealthy and politically influential men and unmarried young women who trade their femininity and sexuality for material wealth and financial security from these men. Drawing on analyses of the popular 2009 television serial, Woju (Dwelling Narrowness), coupled with recent ethnographic studies, the lecture aims to demonstrate how this sexual economy thrives in the increasingly competitive and commercial urban landscape of present-day China. It will also attempt to view gender dynamics within the context of the socioeconomic changes during the past three decades and to investigate how gender inequality became assimilated into both official and popular discourses of Chinese life, thereby facilitating the ascendancy and power of the sexual economy.