Speaker: Claudia Huang, California State University, Long Beach

The current generational cohort of Chinese retirees have gotten a tough bargain in many ways. Because the one-child policy created an upside-down population pyramid, the customary practice of aging at home under the care of an adult child is becoming increasingly untenable. At the same time, the social welfare programs that the government promised in exchange for their reproductive sacrifices never materialized, leaving retirees to plan for old age on their own. Many older adults have responded to these policy reversals by focusing on leisure and enjoyment as much as possible– an attitude they call “play a day, count a day.” The stories I share paint a portrait of life at the limits of affective governance, showing that while the state can attempt to control life trajectories, it cannot determine people’s attitudes about their own experiences.

Claudia Huang is an anthropologist by training and an assistant professor of human development at California State University, Long Beach. She conducts ethnographic research in Chengdu, Sichuan, where she examines the ways in which macro-level policies affect people’s intimate experiences of growing older. Her first book, titled Dancing for their lives: the pursuit of meaningful aging in urban China was recently published with the series on global aging at Rutgers University Press.

Zoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97147498753