Papers by Ling Tang
Communication, Culture and Critique, 2025
Instead of centering on the relatively elite cultural spaces that have shaped much of the existin... more Instead of centering on the relatively elite cultural spaces that have shaped much of the existing scholarship on Chinese queer culture, such as independent cinema, film festivals, and performing arts, this study turns to digital culture as a site where every day queer expression and community building unfolds. Using Huaxiaodiao, a popular nonbinary/gay vlogger with a substantial following on the Chinese video platform Bilibili, as a case study, this article examines how they leverage Bilibili's distinctive cultural affordances to foster mediated affective solidarity within the Chinese queer community. Through various affective rhetorics of humor, Huaxiaodiao and their audience tactically satirize heteronormativity through cross-gender play, while playing with homonormativity through queer slang. At the same time, they evoke emotional resonance by digital storytelling, using sentimental irony to rewrite trauma. This study contributes to the scholarship on Chinese queer culture and gendered affective politics by illustrating how digitally mediated humor fosters queer affective solidarity within China's digital landscape.
Media, Culture & Society, 2025
Based on 3 years of ethnographic research with urban elite businesswomen in China, this paper int... more Based on 3 years of ethnographic research with urban elite businesswomen in China, this paper introduces the concept of "burnout queerness" to deepen the understanding of homonormativity under post-socialism. Burnout queerness highlights how homonormativity is highly contingent, shaped by an imagined standard of neoliberal success and monogamy. This framework positions certain T (masculinepresenting women) as preferable intimate partners over their male counterparts, who are often associated with infidelity due to the pressures of "entrepreneur masculinity". Examining a form of fluid desire among individuals who move away from the politics of coming out, this homonormativity is both precarious and pragmatic. When neoliberal conditions are no longer met, or pragmatism breaks down, samesex intimacy becomes unstable, with both partners potentially reverting to differentsex relationships.
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2025
This study explores the everyday digital practices of Jinü (Chinese radical feminists) through th... more This study explores the everyday digital practices of Jinü (Chinese radical feminists) through the lens of the cultural politics of emotion. Based on three years of digital ethnography and interviews, the research identifies "rage" as a critical "emotional rule" among Jinü. This collective rage, shaped by affective discursive practices and rooted in various sub-emotions experienced by members, manifests in three forms: rage directed at men, other women, and LGBTQ + individuals. These rage-driven feminist practices constitute a form of "soft activism," fostering "slow resistance" within authoritarian constraints. However, this rage-centric feminist politics exposes an "unfinished business of sentimentality," characterized by three forms of ambivalence: the commodification of emotion, the intensification of misogyny, and a reliance on individualized feminist solutions. By analyzing the complex interplay between Jinü's affective subjectivities and social contexts, this research offers a nuanced perspective on Chinese radical feminism, shedding light on non-activism-oriented feminist practices in digital China.
Journal of Sociology, 2021
Based on a three-year digital ethnography as an educational consultant on the Chinese digital pla... more Based on a three-year digital ethnography as an educational consultant on the Chinese digital platform X, I use guanxi, enduring interpersonal relationships, to explain how people voluntarily work to the extent of burning out. Drawing on literature about emotion and work in precarious labour, and especially the discussion on emotional capitalism, I demonstrate that it is not because of the lack of social connections that people engage in auto-exploitation and burning out, as Han Byung-chul argues, but precisely because of shared values and the emotions people develop for each other that people commit more to work. Complementing research on digital economic tribes, I argue that guanxi could serve as an analytical framework to decipher the buyer-seller relationship on platforms. In particular, I use two guanxi-related concepts ganqing (emotional attachments) and renqing (norms of interpersonal relationship) to explain why I worked voluntarily and obligatorily for the students I met via X.
British Journal of Chinese Studies, 2021
Based on eight in-depth interviews, this article analyses the quandary faced by liberal mainland ... more Based on eight in-depth interviews, this article analyses the quandary faced by liberal mainland Chinese student migrants in Hong Kong. On the one hand, the liberal pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong are deeply intertwined with the rise of localism, which is based on a dichotomy between Hong Kong and mainland China. On the other hand, a rising, development-centric nationalism in mainland China reduces Hong Kong protesters to unemancipated British colonial subjects. However, in the context of this "double marginalisation," liberal Mainland students guard a form of liberalism that transcends both Hong Kong localism and Chinese nationalism. They debunk the stereotype of mainland Chinese students being apolitical and therefore provide an alternative definition of being Chinese. They challenge the view that mainland Chinese can only be emancipated outside mainland China to destabilise a Fukuyamian linear interpretation of history. They use four tactics to cope with double marginalisation: understanding localists, befriending expatriates, assuming professionalism, and becoming apolitical.
Asia Pacific Business Review, 2019
By critically incorporating the concept of erotic capital, this research, which is based on an et... more By critically incorporating the concept of erotic capital, this research, which is based on an ethnographic study of female white-collar employees, discloses the gendered and sexualized dynamics of guanxi in urban China. The research first examines the male-centred standardized routine of guanxi through a detailed analysis of yingchou, a practice consisting of banquets and post-banquet activities, which can involve the use of women as subordinate ‘erotic gifts’. Then, a four-type characterization of white-collar women is developed which demonstrates ways in which women can achieve more agentic, and potentially equal, guanxi status. The types identified in the study are: ‘pseudo-brothers’, ‘rational legal professionals’, ‘the unreachable desired’, and ‘the unspoken rules followers’. Each type has a specific way of navigating the patriarchal structure of guanxi, though boundaries between types are blurred and women may change their strategy, and therefore their type, over time.
Book Reviews by Ling Tang
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2025
Maid to Queer addresses a highly visible but largely ignored issue in Hong Kong: the queer intima... more Maid to Queer addresses a highly visible but largely ignored issue in Hong Kong: the queer intimacy and desires of Indonesian domestic workers. For anyone who has lived in Hong Kong, the presence of domestic workers is unmistakable, particularly on Sundays in public spaces, a "tradition" conditioned by their low wage and confined living situation at employees' homes, which they are legally bound to live in. Their Sunday presence is also distinctly gendered, comprising a feminized homosocial group of women, many of whom appear in pairs. These pairs often reflect a dynamic of same-sex relationships, with one partner embodying a more masculine identity (referred to as tomboi) and the other a more feminized counterpart (cewek). Although the majority of domestic workers in Hong Kong are from the Philippines, a growing and almost equally sufficient number come from Indonesia. The author, Francisca Lai-a queer, Hong Kong-raised anthropologist-astutely highlights that much of the existing research on labor migration is framed through the concept of the "chain of care" (Martin F. Manalansan IV, "Queering the Chain of Care Paradigm," The Barnard Center for Research on Women 6 (3): 2008, cited in Lai, 10). This framework examines how reproductive labor is outsourced along a chain from more developed to less developed regions, sustaining heteronormative global capitalism. The key contribution of Lai's book lies in its introduction of a queer perspective to labor migration studies, shifting the focus to the queer intimacy and sexuality of these workers-a vital yet underexplored dimension. There are numerous tensions and dynamics surrounding this group of migrant laborers, shaped by the intersectionality of race, class, gender, sexuality, geography, and religion. In Indonesia, the spread of Islamic conservatism in the 2000s, following the presidency of Muslim leader Abdurrahman Wahid, created a complex duality. On the one hand, women from low status were celebrated as heroines for sending back substantial remittances, vital both for their families and the state. On the other hand, these same women faced increasing regulation of their gender and sexuality, alongside growing hostility toward LGBT individuals. Much of this body policing is carried out under the rhetoric of religion and family,
WAGnet (Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Network), 2017
Teaching Documents by Ling Tang
This Cultural Sensitivity Guide has been developed for the Year 3 undergraduate course Global Cul... more This Cultural Sensitivity Guide has been developed for the Year 3 undergraduate course Global Cultures at the University of Melbourne. Its aim is to help decolonize the pedagogical space and create a more inclusive learning environment for students from diverse backgrounds (mainly Asian).
The guide is intended for our tutors, including some staff who are teaching the course for the first time, and offers practical considerations for fostering respectful, equitable, and culturally aware classroom practices.
Books by Ling Tang
《见树又见林》, 2024
《见树又见林》第三版中文版的序。
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Papers by Ling Tang
Book Reviews by Ling Tang
Teaching Documents by Ling Tang
The guide is intended for our tutors, including some staff who are teaching the course for the first time, and offers practical considerations for fostering respectful, equitable, and culturally aware classroom practices.
Books by Ling Tang