Patriarchal Capitalism with Chinese characteristics: Gendered Discourse of ‘Double Eleven’ Shopping Festival
Double 11, or Singles’ Day (双11, 光棍节) is an unofficial Chinese holiday and shopping season that celebrates supposedly people not in relationships. The date, November 11 (11/11) was chosen because the ‘1’ reflect bare sticks or guangun (光棍), an internet slang for single men. Today, this holiday has become one of the largest physical retail and online shopping days in the world.
On Wednesday November 10, 2021, from 10AM to 11AM (PST), join our event on Double 11 hosted by UBC’s Centre for Chinese Research. The event will have the feature speaker Bingchun Meng from the London School of Economics and Dr. Amy Hanser from UBC’s Department of Sociology as a discussant. This event will be moderated by Dr. Julia Harten from UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
In her talk, Dr. Meng will examine the Double Eleven shopping festival as a major discursive site where the hegemony of what she calls patriarchal capitalism with Chinese characteristics is articulated. The state, the market, the corporations and the media, both mainstream and social media, all played an important role in building up a national spending spree that is deeply embedded in the current class and gender structure of China. It is at the intersection of a dissipating socialist ethos, emerging economic stagnation, and ascending consumerism that the sexist discourse in relation to Double Eleven proliferates.
Date & Time
November 10, 2021, from 10:00AM to 11:00AM (PST)
November 10, 2021, from 6:00PM to 7:00PM (GMT)
“Location”
The event will be hosted via Zoom. Participants will receive a link to access the event 24 hours prior to the event via email. Registration is required.
*If you do not receive the event link 24 hours prior to the event, please email Lisa Ren at lisaren@mail.ubc.ca
Registration Required on zoom. https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Moce-spjwqGtG1GEuTLoLZQ8tRRaEJQmEp or https://tinyurl.com/n9meuy5y.
Featured speaker bio:
Dr. Bingchun Meng: Bingchun Meng is an Associate Professor in the Department for Media and Communications at LSE, where she also directs the MSc Double-degree Programme in Global Media and Communications (with Fudan), and LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Research Centre. Her research interests include gender and the media, political economy of media industries, communication governance, and comparative media studies. She has published widely on these topic areas on leading international journals. Her book The Politics of Chinese Media: Consensus and Contestation was published by Palgrave in early 2018. She is currently working on a monograph about the development of AI industries in China.
Discussant bio:
Dr. Amy Hanser: Dr. Amy Hanser is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. Her work centers around topics on work, gender, and the cultural aspects of markets, with most of her research focused on contemporary China. Her current research project looks at the childbearing experiences of Chinese immigrants in Canada.
Moderator bio:
Dr. Julia Harten: Dr. Julia Harten is an Assistant Professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning and a Faculty Affiliate at SPPGA. In her work, she leverages innovative data strategies to study the housing strategies of marginalized people and the role of cities and housing for social mobility in China and North America. She is also a member of the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative and Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Center for Housing and Urban-Rural Development.
Please visit the Centre Website for updates and other events: