[lit-ideas] Re: News via the web
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 23:18:24 -0700 (PDT)
--- John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> 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.
*You are perhaps correct to identify the market forces
at work, though in China even the people working in
state-run institutions tend to work long hours. But I
would suggest that the effects might not be the same
everywhere. "Not having enough time for relationships"
could suggest, to one, having only non-committing
relationships and distancing oneself from the family
which is perceived as tiresome and demanding. To
another, it might suggest relinquishing 'optional'
relationships that are perceived as tiresome and
demanding, thus settling with the family relationships
and those with the immediate work/study environment.
The market forces may dictate selecting relationships,
but the selections made might differ culturally.
> What is fascinating is how the basic issue works out
> in different
> contexts.
*Indeed.
> 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.
*A rather different kind of modernization, as we see,
from that which took place in the Western societies.
(Snip)
>
> 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).
*You are right about the importance of grandparents in
child-rearing, but I am not sure that this is a new
phenomenon. There were women going out to work in the
socialist period. At present, the modernizing reform
creates excessively strong pressures (especially
within the urban middle class) on both men and women
to go out and work long hours, because the pay is
still comparatively low. Yet the idea that the woman
is supposed to stay home and take care of the children
is still quite strong, and those families that can
afford to adopt this arrangement usually do. We will
see how it is going work out eventually.
O.K.
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