[lit-ideas] Re: News via the web
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 14:33:51 +0900
On 2004/04/05, at 14:00, Omar Kusturica wrote:
> Not having time for social relationships (or other
> people not having time for relationships with you) is
> increasingly a problem in China as well, as long hours
> get spent on work or study. You hear from students
> that they broke up with their boyfriends or
> girlfriends because they "did not have time." (Though
> this may not always be the whole story.) Thus people
> might conclude that it is more practical to stick to
> the old relationships (family, marriage) than try to
> develop new ones. I am not sure that I like this
> thinking, though.
"Too busy for lasting relationships" is a trope now heard around the
world. It reflects social arrangements common in market-driven
societies where work has become the primary source of identity and
commercial entertainment replaces family and neighborhood.
What is fascinating is how the basic issue works out in different
contexts.
One way to look at Japan is to see it as a place that went to extremes
in becoming a modern society, one of whose defining characteristics is
separation of home and work, with the wife staying home with the kids
and the husband spending most of his days away at his job. If, however,
we compare, say, Park Forest, the 1950s Chicago suburb described in The
Organization Man with post-WWII Japan, we discover that Park Forest
husbands and fathers were typically home by 5 or 6 p.m., allowing time
for participation in family and community activities. In contrast,
since roughly the 1970s, their Japanese counterparts have combined long
commutes (up to two hours each way) with long days at work followed by
mandatory workplace socializing. In contrast to their American
counterparts, they are literally almost never home.
This is the background to the "big trash" and "fallen wet leaves"
mentioned in my reply to Andreas. Given a gendered division of labor in
which husbands and wives have very little to do with each other
throughout the man's working career, his retirement and return home can
be a real pain in the ass for the woman--especially if he expects to be
pampered and taken care of.
One place to look for differences in China is that in post-socialist
Chinese society both women and men go off to work, creating a different
family dynamic (for example the importance of grandparents in raising
their children's kids). For a taste of what this all means to young
people now starting out in life, check out my Sophia colleague James
Farrer's book, _Opening Up: Youth, Sex, Culture and Market Reform in
Shanghai_, University of Chicago Press, 2002.
John
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