Susanne Bregnbæk
Biographic Data
| ID | 122812 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susanne Bregnbæk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susanne |
| FAMILY NAME | Bregnbæk |
| SIGNATURE | BREGNBÆK S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3505-8088 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Politics of Parenting
This special issue addresses questions of how the practices of (welfare) state practitioners and policy makers (trans)form the lives of families. The aim is to illuminate how social policies and educational institutions influence parents’ hope for the wellbeing and future success of their children through new forms of audit culture and policies of early interventions. We invited contributions that explore how politicized ideals, norms and practic…
States of Intimacy
This article examines the ways in which parenting practices of refugee parents are the object of concern for the Danish welfare state. Emphasis is placed on how interventions of daycare institutions and other welfare professionals have been experienced by refugee families who live in a context of radical uncertainty since they hold temporary residence permits in Denmark. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with families spanni…
The Varieties of Transformative Experience
A Mind of Winter
This article explores the transformative experience of estrangement by a Kurdish Iranian refugee named Hiwa in exile in Denmark. Through a person-centered approach, I focus on what was at stake for stateless people, such as Hiwa, at a time when right-wing populist asylum politics made achieving permanent citizenship an uphill battle and leaving Denmark impossible due to the Dublin Regulation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of "the multiple se…
Utopian Movements, Enactments and Subjectivities among Youth in the Global South
Fragile Elite
China's One Child Policy and its rigorous national focus on educational testing are well known. But what happens to those "lucky" few at the very top of the pyramid: elite university students in China who grew up under the One Child Policy and now attend the nation's most prestigious universities? How do they feel about having made it to the top of an extremely competitive educational system—as their parents' only child? What pressures do they fa…
Questioning care
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, in this article, I tell the story of a particular Syrian family and their encounter with a day-care institution in Denmark – and by extension with the Danish state. In doing so, I highlight how the initially legitimate worries and genuine care of the institution turned into a form of ‘coercive concern’ (Jaffe-Walter 2016) as the family failed to fully meet the requirements of the Danish educational/ integration …
Introduction
As a fluid age cohort and a social category between childhood and adulthood – and hence with tenuous links to the status quo – youth are variously described as ‘at risk’, as victims of precarious and unpredictable circumstances, or as agents of social change who embody the future. From this future-oriented generational perspective, youth are often mobilised to individually and collectively imagine, enact and embody Utopian futures as alternatives…
In search of the heart of a heartless world
In this article I shed light on the phenomenon of Chinese young people’s conversion to Christianity and argue that it is often closely tied to a utopian longing for what is missing in their lives (Bloch 1907). Through a person-centered account of two young people, I explore their quests to escape the temporal predicament of endless striving 'fuzao' and search for a better life based autotelic values abroad. Paraphrasing Marx I argue that they are…
Transforming Chinese Patriarchy
Transforming Chinese Patriarchy, edited by Gonçalo D. Santos and Stevan Harrell, is athought-provoking collection of meditations upon changes in the gendered landscape ofcontemporary Chinese society. The book focuses on“gender systems”primarily as anelement of“family systems”, and it deals with“patriarchal configurations”as seen througha lens that is both gendered and inter-generational. It contains 12 strong chapters, whichtake different ethnogr…
Running into Nowhere
The Chinese Race to the Bottom
This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among what Lian Si (2009) has called China's 'ant tribe', referring to the millions of unemployed Chinese college graduates who live in the outskirts of Beijing and to some extent share the predicament of China's migrant workers. Education has been the main route to social mobility for centuries in China, but today college graduates are outnumbering jobs in China's large cities. I focus …
From Filial Piety to Forgiveness
This article is based on fieldwork in a Chinese Protestant house-church in Beijing-more specifically, it focuses on a form of group therapy, which took place in the vicinity of the church. It combines two phenomena usually studied separately, namely the popularity of Chinese underground churches and China's so-called "psycho-boom." Drawing on attachment theory, I focus on the psychic conflicts that draw certain people, in this case a young woman,…
Himlen Over Beijing
Undergrundskirker, kinesiske unger og forhandlingen af politiske og eksitenstielle grænser
Martin Holbraad
Anmeldes af Susanne Bregnbæk
Between Party, Parents and Peers
This article explores the lived contradictions entailed in being a young member of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) today. The focus is on how political and existential issues intersect. It explores party membership as a strategy for personal mobility among Beijing elite university students by providing an ethnographic account of the quandaries of two young ccp members. Even though one student is of rural origin and the other has an urban elite …
A public secret
This article is based on anthropological fieldwork undertaken at two elite universities in Beijing. It addresses the paradoxical situation of the many instances of suicide among Chinese elite university students in Beijing, which constitute a public secret. The pressure of education weighs heavily on the shoulders of China's only child in each family, known as the generation of little emperors and little empresses. Since the 1980s, the suzhi jiao…
In search of paradise
Den Kinesiske drøm om Harvard
Susanne Bregnbæk: The Chinese Dream of Harvard This article examines 'the Chinese dream of Harvard' from the perspective of Chinese parents, the state and students at two elite universities in Beijing. It argues that Harvard University is seen as the ultimate symbol of the kinds of qualities that the current educational reform, known as the education for quality movement wishes to instil in Chinese youth. The introduction of the One Child Policy …
Shanghai
The article traces the image of Shanghai as the whore of the East. Taking Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit's thoughtprovoking book Occidentalism (2003) as a point of departure, the author explores how Shanghai because of its close relationship to the West, epitomises a Chinese ambiguous relationship between modernity and tradition. Since the beginning of the twentieth century Shanghai has been associated with the promiscuous good-life of the Engli…
The Varieties of Transformative Experience
From Filial Piety to Forgiveness
This article is based on fieldwork in a Chinese Protestant house-church in Beijing-more specifically, it focuses on a form of group therapy, which took place in the vicinity of the church. It combines two phenomena usually studied separately, namely the popularity of Chinese underground churches and China's so-called "psycho-boom." Drawing on attachment theory, I focus on the psychic conflicts that draw certain people, in this case a young woman,…
The Chinese Race to the Bottom
This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among what Lian Si (2009) has called China's 'ant tribe', referring to the millions of unemployed Chinese college graduates who live in the outskirts of Beijing and to some extent share the predicament of China's migrant workers. Education has been the main route to social mobility for centuries in China, but today college graduates are outnumbering jobs in China's large cities. I focus …
Questioning care
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, in this article, I tell the story of a particular Syrian family and their encounter with a day-care institution in Denmark – and by extension with the Danish state. In doing so, I highlight how the initially legitimate worries and genuine care of the institution turned into a form of ‘coercive concern’ (Jaffe-Walter 2016) as the family failed to fully meet the requirements of the Danish educational/ integration …
States of Intimacy
This article examines the ways in which parenting practices of refugee parents are the object of concern for the Danish welfare state. Emphasis is placed on how interventions of daycare institutions and other welfare professionals have been experienced by refugee families who live in a context of radical uncertainty since they hold temporary residence permits in Denmark. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with families spanni…
A Mind of Winter
This article explores the transformative experience of estrangement by a Kurdish Iranian refugee named Hiwa in exile in Denmark. Through a person-centered approach, I focus on what was at stake for stateless people, such as Hiwa, at a time when right-wing populist asylum politics made achieving permanent citizenship an uphill battle and leaving Denmark impossible due to the Dublin Regulation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of "the multiple se…
Transforming Chinese Patriarchy
Transforming Chinese Patriarchy, edited by Gonçalo D. Santos and Stevan Harrell, is athought-provoking collection of meditations upon changes in the gendered landscape ofcontemporary Chinese society. The book focuses on“gender systems”primarily as anelement of“family systems”, and it deals with“patriarchal configurations”as seen througha lens that is both gendered and inter-generational. It contains 12 strong chapters, whichtake different ethnogr…
Between Party, Parents and Peers
This article explores the lived contradictions entailed in being a young member of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) today. The focus is on how political and existential issues intersect. It explores party membership as a strategy for personal mobility among Beijing elite university students by providing an ethnographic account of the quandaries of two young ccp members. Even though one student is of rural origin and the other has an urban elite …
Shanghai
The article traces the image of Shanghai as the whore of the East. Taking Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit's thoughtprovoking book Occidentalism (2003) as a point of departure, the author explores how Shanghai because of its close relationship to the West, epitomises a Chinese ambiguous relationship between modernity and tradition. Since the beginning of the twentieth century Shanghai has been associated with the promiscuous good-life of the Engli…
Den Kinesiske drøm om Harvard
Susanne Bregnbæk: The Chinese Dream of Harvard This article examines 'the Chinese dream of Harvard' from the perspective of Chinese parents, the state and students at two elite universities in Beijing. It argues that Harvard University is seen as the ultimate symbol of the kinds of qualities that the current educational reform, known as the education for quality movement wishes to instil in Chinese youth. The introduction of the One Child Policy …
A public secret
This article is based on anthropological fieldwork undertaken at two elite universities in Beijing. It addresses the paradoxical situation of the many instances of suicide among Chinese elite university students in Beijing, which constitute a public secret. The pressure of education weighs heavily on the shoulders of China's only child in each family, known as the generation of little emperors and little empresses. Since the 1980s, the suzhi jiao…
In search of paradise
Between Party, Parents and Peers
This article explores the lived contradictions entailed in being a young member of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) today. The focus is on how political and existential issues intersect. It explores party membership as a strategy for personal mobility among Beijing elite university students by providing an ethnographic account of the quandaries of two young ccp members. Even though one student is of rural origin and the other has an urban elite …
Himlen Over Beijing
Undergrundskirker, kinesiske unger og forhandlingen af politiske og eksitenstielle grænser
Martin Holbraad
Anmeldes af Susanne Bregnbæk
The Chinese Race to the Bottom
This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among what Lian Si (2009) has called China's 'ant tribe', referring to the millions of unemployed Chinese college graduates who live in the outskirts of Beijing and to some extent share the predicament of China's migrant workers. Education has been the main route to social mobility for centuries in China, but today college graduates are outnumbering jobs in China's large cities. I focus …
From Filial Piety to Forgiveness
This article is based on fieldwork in a Chinese Protestant house-church in Beijing-more specifically, it focuses on a form of group therapy, which took place in the vicinity of the church. It combines two phenomena usually studied separately, namely the popularity of Chinese underground churches and China's so-called "psycho-boom." Drawing on attachment theory, I focus on the psychic conflicts that draw certain people, in this case a young woman,…
Running into Nowhere
Introduction
As a fluid age cohort and a social category between childhood and adulthood – and hence with tenuous links to the status quo – youth are variously described as ‘at risk’, as victims of precarious and unpredictable circumstances, or as agents of social change who embody the future. From this future-oriented generational perspective, youth are often mobilised to individually and collectively imagine, enact and embody Utopian futures as alternatives…
In search of the heart of a heartless world
In this article I shed light on the phenomenon of Chinese young people’s conversion to Christianity and argue that it is often closely tied to a utopian longing for what is missing in their lives (Bloch 1907). Through a person-centered account of two young people, I explore their quests to escape the temporal predicament of endless striving 'fuzao' and search for a better life based autotelic values abroad. Paraphrasing Marx I argue that they are…
Transforming Chinese Patriarchy
Transforming Chinese Patriarchy, edited by Gonçalo D. Santos and Stevan Harrell, is athought-provoking collection of meditations upon changes in the gendered landscape ofcontemporary Chinese society. The book focuses on“gender systems”primarily as anelement of“family systems”, and it deals with“patriarchal configurations”as seen througha lens that is both gendered and inter-generational. It contains 12 strong chapters, whichtake different ethnogr…
Questioning care
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, in this article, I tell the story of a particular Syrian family and their encounter with a day-care institution in Denmark – and by extension with the Danish state. In doing so, I highlight how the initially legitimate worries and genuine care of the institution turned into a form of ‘coercive concern’ (Jaffe-Walter 2016) as the family failed to fully meet the requirements of the Danish educational/ integration …
Utopian Movements, Enactments and Subjectivities among Youth in the Global South
Fragile Elite
China's One Child Policy and its rigorous national focus on educational testing are well known. But what happens to those "lucky" few at the very top of the pyramid: elite university students in China who grew up under the One Child Policy and now attend the nation's most prestigious universities? How do they feel about having made it to the top of an extremely competitive educational system—as their parents' only child? What pressures do they fa…
The Varieties of Transformative Experience
A Mind of Winter
This article explores the transformative experience of estrangement by a Kurdish Iranian refugee named Hiwa in exile in Denmark. Through a person-centered approach, I focus on what was at stake for stateless people, such as Hiwa, at a time when right-wing populist asylum politics made achieving permanent citizenship an uphill battle and leaving Denmark impossible due to the Dublin Regulation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of "the multiple se…
States of Intimacy
This article examines the ways in which parenting practices of refugee parents are the object of concern for the Danish welfare state. Emphasis is placed on how interventions of daycare institutions and other welfare professionals have been experienced by refugee families who live in a context of radical uncertainty since they hold temporary residence permits in Denmark. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with families spanni…
The Politics of Parenting
This special issue addresses questions of how the practices of (welfare) state practitioners and policy makers (trans)form the lives of families. The aim is to illuminate how social policies and educational institutions influence parents’ hope for the wellbeing and future success of their children through new forms of audit culture and policies of early interventions. We invited contributions that explore how politicized ideals, norms and practic…
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · China (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Beijing (6 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works)