Seeking Stability in China's "Involuted Generation"

Autores

  • Yuchen Liang St. Lawrence University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15273/jue.v14i1.12047

Resumo

In recent years, the word “involution” (Nei Juan) has become a popular word in Chinese society to refer to the great competitive
pressure young people in China now face in their life such as passing the college entrance examination and searching for a
job. They are called the “involuted generation.” To study the involution phenomenon, I conducted eleven semi-structured
interviews with students, parents, and teachers in Zhejiang Province in China. This study also explores the causes and effects
of the phenomenon of involution by combining online research and a literature review. I argue that the pursuit of stability
produces the present involution while the college entrance examination and differences in family background create different degrees of involution which intensifies the stress of competition. The effects of involution include anxiety and
tension for both students and parents brought on by competition, the devaluation of academic qualifications in the job
market, and the gap young people experience between their interests and careers.

Wedding of Chandni Sakhrani's Mother. Photo by Sanjay Nichani.

Downloads

Publicado

2024-02-19

Edição

Vol. 14 N.º 1 (2024)

Secção

Articles

Licença

By sending potential submissions to the editors, you grant The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography a royalty-free, perpetual, license to: use, reproduce, store, adapt, translate, and publicly display such submissions for any purpose.  In addition to the grant of the above license, you hereby consent to your name appearing as the contributor of any submission where applicable, and to the disclosure and/or display of such information and any other information which appears in or is associated with a submission. Further, you acknowledge and agree that The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography is not responsible for any loss, damage, or corruption that may occur to your submissions, and acknowledge and agree that any submissions you provide for display on the website will be considered non-confidential. If your manuscript is rejected, the above license is revoked, and your submission (manuscript, name, and associated documentation) will be stored only in the correspondence records of The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. You may submit your manuscript to other publications, but must withdraw if selected for publication in The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. Your paper itself is published using a strict Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License that allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can‘t change them in any way or use them commercially. You retain the right to grant other permissions.