Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research in poor rural areas in Guangdong, this paper explores how marriage and intimate relations are being refashioned in rural China in the context of entangled intersections between private and public negotiations. Particular attention is given to issues of family planning

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores a Chinese case study on the disruption of 'traditional intimacies' that draws particular attention to questions of sexuality and family planning. Based on data drawn from long-term fieldwork in a lineage-village in Northern Guangdong, the paper shows how economic liberalization and above all the implementation of the 'one-child policy' have encouraged the emergence of new attitudes towards sexuality, gender relations, and family size. This shift was somewhat sudden and had a strong component of 'social engineering' that contributed to the emergence of a particular set of intimate choices and troubles. People's lives have become increasingly trapped within wider bureaucratizing and commercializing forces, but the local patriarchal lineage culture remains very powerful and children remain important economic assets. Infringing official birth quotas can help soothe parental anxieties over the future, but it often leads to harsh penalties like sexual sterilization and sometimes to significant conjugal tensions. These local developments reflect both regional specificities and wider trends in rural China; but they also present striking points of intersection with global late modern concerns over the rights and obligations of people in the more intimate spheres of life like sexuality, having children, and other personal issues.