The Self-Understandings and Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan

基于18个月的人种学田野调查，我的博士研究考察了在快速的社会、技术和政治变革背景下性的建构和调节。我提供了关于中国性动态的重要见解，并推进了全球性研究的概念视野。在过去的40年里，中国的快速城市化、更大的地理流动性、技术发展和信息获取的增加促进了非异性恋身份、社区和生活方式的扩散。与此同时，这些都受到儒家观念的限制，即通过异性生殖来“延续家族”的责任，国家对媒体性别多样性的审查，以及公共福利的削减，这些都使孩子成为以后生活中照顾的来源。此外，区域和城乡界线上的社会经济差异使某些地方的非异性恋生活比其他地方更容易。这些问题已经在有限的关于中国非异性恋生活的文献中进行了探讨。然而，现有的工作主要集中在主要的城市环境。因此，对于历史和持续的变化和连续性的动态如何塑造小城市、城镇和农村地区的非异性恋生活，人们缺乏了解。这既是经验知识的差距，也是目前对性的理解的限制。正如我的研究所表明的，探索非异性恋生活是如何被超越世界主义现代性全球中心的变化和连续性过程所塑造的，可以开辟新的研究途径，反过来，可以扩展“性”本身的意义。我分析了海南男同性恋者找到彼此、发展共同情感、在他们生活的乡村、城市和数字空间中穿行、各种竞争、顺应和适应他们生活中异性婚姻和生育的主导取向的过程。这些被证明需要话语、技术、欲望、体现、主体间性和共同依赖的物质关系的复杂纠缠。因此，我主张扩大性的概念，超越个人，人类主体，转向塑造可居住生活的力量和可能性的生态。我在与最近的社会理论研究的对话中提出了这个论点，这些研究试图理解人际关系、制度话语、物质背景和环境系统的不可分割性。该奖学金将促进这项重要研究的出版，使其成为一本书和一系列文章，通过将性的概念扩展到包括人、话语、空间和技术之间的复杂关系，从而显著推进性研究领域。如果当代学术要在一个日益复杂的世界中从跨文化的角度来应对不断变化的性动态，这些新的研究方向至关重要。这些想法还将通过一个研讨会来分享和巩固，该研讨会汇集了讨论相关主题的学者。奖学金也将使我的研究能够支持海南和全国的LGBT群体。这将通过与海南同性恋父母和同性恋之友（PFLAG）以及更广泛的LGBT社区的一系列研讨会来完成。这将产生一份共同设计的调查结果报告，在地方和全国范围内共享。这将有助于同性恋亲友会有效地规划他们的工作，并将帮助全国LGBT群体了解中国不同地区LGBT人群的不同经历。

Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, my doctoral research examined the construction and regulation of sexuality in a context of rapid social, technological and political change. Focusing on the lives of gay men in Hainan, a socio-economically marginal province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), I explored how local, national and global processes play out in everyday life as gay men negotiate liveable lives in relation to shifting fields of people, discourses, spaces and technologies. I offer vital insights into dynamics of sexuality in the PRC and advance the conceptual horizons of global sexualities studies.Over the past 40 years in the PRC, rapid urbanisation, greater geographic mobility, technological development and increased access to information have fostered a proliferation of non-heterosexual identities, communities and ways of life. At the same time, these are curtailed by Confucian notions of a responsibility to 'continue the family line' through heterosexual reproduction, state censorship of sexual diversity in the media, and cuts to public welfare that have entrenched the need to have children as a source of care in later life. Further, socio-economic disparities along regional and urban/rural lines make living non-heterosexual lives in certain sites easier than in others.These issues have been explored within the limited literature on non-heterosexual lives in the PRC. However, existing work has focused on major urban contexts. As such, there is a lack of knowledge on how historical and ongoing dynamics of change and continuity are shaping non-heterosexual lives in smaller cities, towns and rural areas. This is both an empirical knowledge gap and a limitation on current understandings of sexuality. As my research shows, exploring how non-heterosexual lives are shaped by processes of change and continuity beyond global centres of cosmopolitan modernity can open up new avenues of enquiry which, in turn, can expand the meanings of 'sexuality' itself.I have analysed processes through which gay men in Hainan find one another, develop feelings of commonality, navigate the rural, urban and digital spaces in which they live and variously contest, conform to and accommodate the dominant orientation of their lives toward heterosexual marriage and reproduction. These are shown to entail complex entanglements of discourse, technology, desire, embodiment, intersubjectivity, and material relations of co-dependence. As such, I argue for an expanded conception of sexuality that looks beyond the individual, human subject and towards ecologies of power and possibility that shape what counts as a liveable life. I make this argument in dialogue with recent work in social theory that seeks to understand the inseparability of human relationships, institutional discourses, material contexts and environmental systems.The Fellowship will facilitate the publication of this important research as a book and series of articles that significantly advance the field of sexualities studies by expanding the notion of sexuality to include complex relationships between people, discourses, spaces and technologies. These new research directions are vital if contemporary scholarship is to grapple with changing dynamics of sexuality from a cross-cultural perspective in an increasingly complex world. These ideas will also be shared and consolidated through a symposium bringing together scholars addressing related themes. The Fellowship will also enable my research to support LGBT groups in Hainan and across the PRC. This will be done through a series of workshops with the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and wider LGBT communities in Hainan. These will result in a co-designed findings report to be shared locally and nationally. This will assist PFLAG in planning their work effectively and will help national LGBT groups understand the contrasting experience of LGBT people in different regions of the PRC.