Hong Kong Baptist University

Seminar - The Micro-politics of Recognition and Care: How Adult Children in Urban China Negotiate Relationships with Emigrant Siblings (CCL22230368)

Activity Session(s) 2022-12-19 11:00 - 2022-12-19 12:30
Venue: Online via Zoom (Internet) and AAB1045
Language: English
Corresponding GA(s): Learning, Knowledge
Speaker: Dr. Ken Chih-Yan SUN - Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology, / Villanova University, USA
Organiser: GSIS
Enquiry: Department of Sociology
34117131
soc@hkbu.edu.hk
Website: https://hkbu.zoom.us/j/96696270581
Registration Period: 2022-12-07 09:00 - 2022-12-19 10:00
Activity Description:
Drawing on 65 qualitative interviews, this research develops the concept of “economies of recognition” to analyze the moral frames that siblings caring for left-behind parents in China use to negotiate intimate connections to their emigrant brothers and sisters. We argue that the impact of family dislocation on sibling relations is shaped by family members’ co-constructed relational infrastructure. Our findings identify four types of relational infrastructure—collaboration, intrusion/interference, voluntary takeover, and feeling left behind—that mediate the impact of geographic proximity on parental caregiving. We suggest that the interplay between physical distance and elder care is emotionally experienced, interactionally evaluated, and symbolically understood. Understanding solidarity, conflicts, and ambivalence in the contexts of family crisis requires a close examination of how members of a care network attribute each other’s roles and contributions to power symmetry or asymmetry. This explains why the advice, information, money, people, and emotions that are circulated are thought of as helpful resources in some cases but perceived as constraints in others.
Registration Description:

Thank you for your registration for Dr. Ken Sun’s seminar. 

The Zoom Link: https://hkbu.zoom.us/j/96696270581

Meeting ID: 966 9627 0581

[Note: Please access the Zoom Link via HKBU account ONLY (i.e. @life.hkbu.edu.hk) AND complete the online Survey which will be provided to you by email after the seminar. Otherwise, attendance would not be counted.]

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