Ethics of the Heart
Moral Breakdown and the Aporia of Chinese Volunteers
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2227786 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rundong Ning (0000-0003-1270-2096), David A Palmer (0000-0003-0884-995X) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 395-417 |
| Publication date | 2020-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Current Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/710217 |
| OpenAlex | W4288080113 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 17 |
| References cited | 60 |
This article explores the angst of deeply committed volunteers in China, engaging with anthropological debates on ethics under conditions of "moral breakdown." Under market socialism, sacrificial volunteering is both ideologically glorified and socially deviant, placing volunteers at the point of dissonance between conflicting moral discourses. Interrogating the monolithic governmentality perspective that informs most anthropological studies of volunteering, we highlight the "fractured governmentality" that prevails in contemporary China, where contradictory modes of ethical subjectivization structurally generate moral breakdown. Volunteers are caught between the moral imperatives of altruistic sacrifice derived from China's socialist revolutionary tradition and "neoliberal" utilitarianism derived from market rationality. Unable to articulate their commitment in reference to either moral code, they are at a loss for words and produce an ethics of emotional authenticity that resists incorporation into any discursive ethical system. Instead of public engagement, volunteering becomes a private, misunderstood, and unspoken personal choice, an emotional act or a concealed "faith" that warrants no ethical justification. Undermining the dichotomy between the inertia of moral habitus and the reflexive ethics of creative agency that structures much of the anthropological theorization of moralities, the Chinese volunteers point to what we call an embodied "ethics of the heart
Environmental ethics · Governmentality · Ideology · Immorality · Morality · Political science · Politics · Rationality · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Philosophy
Beyond nannying
Volunteer mobilisation and old-age support in urban China
Ruling by Other Means
Monkey King's Golden Headband
On being-with
Politics of indifference
Blood and Citizenship in a Fragmented Nation
Tragic Stability and Elusive Selfhood
Philanthropy Fever from Below
Remember this picture when you take more than you need”
I Am Not a Hero
Intimate Utopias
Struggling to Uplift Divine Sparks
Chinese NGOs at the interface between governmentality and local society
"Middle-aged Old Mothers" in China
Remaking the value of work
Realizing Traditional Values through Overseas Education
Unknotting the Heart
The emotional dog and its rational tail
Ordinary Ethics
Visions of CharityVolunteer Workers and Moral Community
Volunteering and Society in the 21st Century
Making Volunteers
Ethnographies of Social Support
Irony, Cynicism and the Chinese State
Individualization
Desiring China
The Good Samaritan's new trouble
A Collective of Their Own
The Post-Communist Personality
Soviet-Style Neoliberalism
Community Volunteers' Associations in Contemporary Tianjin
Technology of Self, Technology of Power. Volunteering as Encounter in Guangzhou, China
Ritual and Its Consequences
HIV Is God's Blessing”Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia
The Individualized Society
The conflicted individualism of Japanese college student volunteers
Deep China
A History of Vocation
The Chinese path to individualization
Chinese youth and alternative narratives of volunteering
The Societalization of Social Problems
Doing Personhood in Chinese Culture
Volunteers as the 'new' model citizens
On the Boundaries Between Good and Evil
Redefining Need, Reconfiguring Expectations
Invited by the State
Volunteering as a Lifestyle Choice
The Moral Neoliberal
The Subject of Virtue
Becoming Sinners
The Old Faith and the Russian Land
Student Volunteering in China and Canada
Monism, pluralism, and the structure of value relations
Moralizing emotion
New directions in the anthropology of morality
Moral and ethical assemblages
Moral breakdown and the ethical demand
The Anthropology of Ethics and Morality
On Affective Labor in Post-Fordist Italy
On the Problem of Empathy
Suffering and Tears
New Age with Chinese Characteristics? Translating Inner Child Emotion Pedagogies in Contemporary China
Moral Moods
On love
Neo-socialist governmentality
Within a Range of Possibilities
Between Reproduction and Freedom
| Unique citing works | 17 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 17 |