Masculinity, Marriage and Rural Men in Urban China: Modest Expectations

This book explores the conjuncture and interrelationship between three so-called ‘crises’ facing Chinese society: a crisis of marriage, a crisis of masculinity and a crisis of mobility.

Based on sustained ethnographic research on unmarried lower-class rural men from two distinct social and class categories, namely migrant workers employed in the food delivery and express mail delivery industries and tertiary educated, white collar professionals, the book reveals how the increasing socio-economic precarity of rural men and their largely unrealised desires to marry and have children demonstrates a fundamental reconfiguration of Chinese masculinity and mobility in urban China and the social impact on central Chinese institutions. The book also reveals the futile efforts to fulfil hegemonic models of masculinity in contemporary China and addresses the heterogeneity of unmarried lower-class rural men as they navigate marriage, manhood and mobility.

Exploring gender relations in China and contributing to global studies of heterosexual masculinities, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, gender studies and social anthropology.

Sarah Gosper is the Deputy Director of the Global Immersion Guarantee Program at Monash University, Australia, and a General Councillor for the ASAA Women’s Forum. Her research interests include China, gender, international development and global education.