When Understanding Is Not Enough: Emotion, Cultural Work of Intergenerational Negotiation over Marriage

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 21. Intimacy and Gender

Abstract

Rapid socioeconomic transformation in contemporary China has reshaped women’s educational and economic opportunities, yet cultural expectations surrounding marriage have shifted more unevenly, generating visible intergenerational tensions within families. This study asks: How do mothers and daughters negotiate divergent understandings of marriage, and how are continuity and change produced through their interaction? Drawing on in-depth paired interviews with mother–daughter dyads in eastern China, this project moves beyond treating marriage beliefs as stable attitudes. Instead, it conceptualizes marriage decision as a site where multiple cultural schemas coexist within individuals and are activated, contested, and reworked through interaction. The analysis proceeds across three interrelated layers: the coexistence of multiple and sometimes contradictory views on marriage; the interactional articulation of these views, including emotionally charged exchanges; and cultural work, defined as the processes through which actors reinterpret, repair, reinforce, or recalibrate their understandings in the aftermath of tension. Preliminary findings show that mothers and daughters often understand each other’s positions at a cognitive level, yet this discursive awareness does not eliminate emotional volatility. Conflicts frequently emerge from a misalignment between cognitive recognition and emotional response. Emotionally intense interactions become moments in which certain cultural schemas are rendered salient, and subsequent reflection takes place. Rather than leading to abrupt belief change, these episodes generate gradual processes of adjustment, partial realignment, or strengthened commitments. By foregrounding interaction, emotion, and cultural work, this study offers a dynamic account of intergenerational value change. It contributes to cultural sociology by demonstrating how cultural continuity and transformation are negotiated relationally in everyday encounters, rather than simply unfolding through cohort replacement.

Author

• Beichen Fang, Rutgers University-New Brunswick