Social Anthropology Seminar - Dr William Schroeder III (The University of Manchester)
| Dates: | 7 March 2016 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Dr William Schroeder III |
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Title : Playing with Happiness: Queer Chinese Views on Finding Emotional Satisfaction
Although escaping from the mundane is a common strategy for achieving happiness, queer Chinese groups, having been denied access to the things that are meant to bring everyone else satisfaction in life, demonstrate an especially intense devotion to the pursuit of bliss in their time away from the everyday. The worlds of play and recreation they create function as forums for exploring happiness, and discussing the topic takes up a great deal of their time spent at leisure. By following debates in queer Chinese recreational communities about what happiness is and by looking at what people spend their time doing in response, we discover that understanding the concept requires more than simply identifying a set of ideologies handed down to the masses and distributed unevenly at the margins. Indeed, happiness everywhere seems to derive from a range of mutually constituting emotional states and capacities, each of which merges into and out of others in illuminating ways, despite their superficial differences. Two such terms that receive the most attention in queer forums are also most frequently translated into English as ‘happiness’ - xingfu, which refers to something like ‘contentment’, and kuaile, which means something like ‘joy’. But many others contribute to the ever-moving conceptual universe that emerges from queer Chinese play. Such diverse sensations as fun, comfort, satisfaction, tranquillity, and friendliness also contribute to the complex relationship between contentment and joy. By exploring these and other variations, we can begin to grasp the meaning of happiness and its pursuits in contemporary China, moving toward an understanding of affect that incorporates both the limitations of discourse and the unpredictability of emotion.
2.016/2.017, Second Floor Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building
(Tea and Coffee will be available outside the boardroom at 4pm)
All welcome.
Speaker
Dr William Schroeder III
Organisation: The University of Manchester
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
2nd floor Boardroom 2.06 / 017
Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester
