Cultivating shenti in everyday life: Self, relationality and embodied masculinity in China

Abstract

Reading through the concept of shenti (body–self), this article examines the everyday processes by which Chinese young men make sense of and articulate ideal embodied masculinity as situated in different relationships. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with urban young men, I argue that the Chinese masculine self is essentially constitutive of and constructed through shenti during the men’s ordinary daily experiences. I highlight the relational formation of shenti as lying at the core of constructing ideal Chinese manhood, teasing out the different layers of body–self and relationality underpinning an individual man’s bodily practices and social interactions. Engaging with traditional cultural values of the ideal body–self and a feminist interactionist approach to gendered embodiment, shenti provides an important analytical lens that will enable us to expand ethnocentric discourses of the sociology of the gendered body by revealing the embodied and experiential aspects of culture in everyday practices. In doing so, this article contributes to enriching the existing debates around cultural variations in the male body and embodied masculinity by offering a Chinese perspective.