Blurring life and work: the predicament of young middle-class women in Shanghai

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines the positioning of young middle-class women in the dispositif of creativity in China. Based on empirical fieldwork, it argues that the call to be creative – as a form of governmentality – directs the middle-class youth to work and live with limited social protections. The discourse of creativity marks a tendency whereby young middle-class women are subject to an increasingly flexible, informal, and precarious condition. Instead of being taken merely as victims of such a ‘creativity dispositif’, the young middle-class women in this research reject the stable jobs within the system and prioritize the value of flexibility promoted by the cultural and creative industries. Besides, they embrace the self-enterprising culture as a new norm and engage themselves actively in multiple ways of capitalizing their skills, lived experience, and social relations. Such activities eventually dissolve the boundaries between life and work, both formally and informally. Thus, under the joint forces of state and market, the discourse of creativity operates as a self-motivating mechanism that facilitates these women to embrace flexibility and entrepreneurship in acts of self-actualization. Consequentially, all pain and risks emerging from the tiring and unbearable working life are perceived as personal problems to be dealt with by the individuals alone. These young middle-class women seek recourse in the market and their families to solve their problems.