The limits of agency: aspirational frustrations amongst working-class Chinese youths

Journal article

This paper investigates the frustrated aspirations of three young Han working-class students in Inner Mongolia, Northern China. Drawing upon anthropological debates and philosophical developments in action theory, I argue that the subject qua actor ought not to be seen as an analytic construct that is given or presumed, but rather treated as an observable achievement that may be frustrated. Specifically, I argue that agency is exercised in cases when means and ends fit together, and this tenuous relationship between means and ends depend on an array of factors, which are often changeable in principle even if they do not change in real life. Along the way, I describe how amongst my Chinese interlocutors, the standards of agency – the normative assumptions of what counts as agentive – are tethered to aspirations to participate in the middle class.

Authors: Jiang, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Anthropological Society
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Volume: 16
• Pages: 3-22
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2024-12-13
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-vjmvqxgog
• EISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: JASO; the middle class; action; subjectivity; China; self