Anthropological Frontier Seminar

 二零一二年春  第五讲  总第七讲

 Lecture 5, spring 2012, Total 7th

讲题（Title）：中国同志(同性恋者)的亲属实践 Queer Kinship Practices in Contemporary Chinese Society
主讲人（Key Speaker）：殷莉 Elisabeth L. Engebretsen

时间： 2012年6月14日（周四）下午2:00——4:00
地点： 中国人民大学科研楼A座 212会议室
主办： 中国人民大学人类学研究所
 
Time: 14th,June(Thursday),2012  2:00PM——4:00PM
Site:  Number 212 Meeting Room, A-wing of Building of Keyan
Held By: Institute of Anthropology, Renmin University of China

 讲座内容简介（A Brief Introduction of the Report）：

 中国的“同志”（同性恋者）如何在他（她）们的同性趋向和关系与家庭和传统社会之间进行协调？在这种协调中的一个主要问题是如何在个人对幸福和浪漫爱情的追求与占主导的关于“面子”的社会规范之间进行平衡，特别是与有关理想婚姻的社会规范的平衡。“面子”比幸福更重要么？一个“拉拉”（女同性恋者）女儿应该为了家庭的面子而放弃个人的幸福么？基于对北京同志社区的长时间人类学调查，这篇文章讨论了几个同志家庭的案例，以及婚姻双方试图为现代人格、可选择的家庭组合、婚姻规范创造新的理想类型的策略。我试图展现，中国的同志高度重视孝道、听话的儿女、对年老父母和亲属的赡养等传统的亲属价值观，同时，依靠物质和符号资源（教育、工作、普世性的中产阶级认同）的促成，新的选择也让持久和忠诚的同性结合成为可能，有时候父母和家庭还对此表示支持。

 How do Chinese ‘tongzhi’ (tongxinglianzhe) negotiate same-sex desires and relationships vis-a-vis their families and conventional society? A key issue that emerges in these negotiations is how to successfully balance the personal desire for happiness and romantic love, with the dominant social norm of respectability (mianzi, or ‘face’), especially the normative marriage ideal. Is ‘face’ more important than being happy? Should a lala (lesbian) daughter sacrifice her personal happiness for the sake of family respectability? Based on long-term anthropological research in Beijing’s tongzhi community, this paper discusses several cases of tongzhi family and marital strategies as they attempt to navigate new ideals for modern personhood, alternative family constellations, and forms of marriage. I seek to demonstrate how Chinese tongzhi place high value on many aspects of traditional kinship values, such as being filial, good daughters and sons, and support elderly parents and kin, but at the same time, how newly emergent alternatives, mediated by material and symbolic resources (education, employment, cosmopolitan middle-class identity) also enable lasting and committed same-sex unions, sometimes even with parents and families’ expressive support.

 主讲人简介(A Brief Introduction of The Key Speaker)：

 殷莉（伦敦政治经济学院2008年人类学博士）是芬兰赫尔辛基大学的赫尔辛基高级研究学会的一名研究员。之前，她曾在加拿大麦吉尔大学的人类学系和性别、性、女权主义研究所担任讲师（2009—2011），她还在美国杜克大学的妇女研究项目进行过跨国性比较的博士后研究（2008—2009）。她的专著《中国城市的女同性恋者：一个民族志》将在2013年春由纽约的劳特里奇出版社出版。

 Elisabeth L. Engebretsen (PhD Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2008) is a Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland.  Previously, she was Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, at McGill University, Canada (2009-2011), and Postdoctoral Fellow in Transnational Sexualities, The Women’s Studies Program, Duke University, USA (2008-2009). Her monograph,Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography is forthcoming spring 2013 on Routledge, New York.