Decades of economic reforms have made China one of the most unequal countries in the world, but the impact of this inequality is not just socioeconomic. Drawing on first-hand ethnographic research among rural migrant factory workers in the Pearl River Delta in southern China, Wanning Sun presents key findings from her latest book Love Troubles: Inequality in China and its Intimate Consequences (Bloomsbury 2023). She discusses how big, structural issues of socioeconomic inequality shape the ways in which individuals from different socioeconomic groups understand, think about, and experience love and intimacy. She also explores how inequality—both socioeconomic and cultural—impacts on the intimate lives of the nation’s vast and growing population of rural migrant workers.
This event is both in-person and online.
Please note the event time has changed. This event will now begin at 5:00pm AEST.
The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.
Event Speakers
Wanning Sun is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology Sydney and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She is a member of the College of Experts, Australian Research Council (2020-2023). She is known for her ethnography of rural-to-urban migration in China, and for her study of transnational and diasporic Chinese media.