Woman, House, Identity: The Study of the Role of House in Constructing the Contemporary Dong Minority Woman’s Identity

Authors: Sze Wai Veera Fung, Peter W. Ferretto

Abstract:

Similar to most ethnic groups in China, men of the Dong minority hold the primary position in policymaking, moral authority, social values, and the control of the property. As the spatial embodiment of the patriarchal ideals, the house plays a significant role in producing and reproducing the distinctive gender status within the Dong society. Nevertheless, Dong women do not see their home as a cage of confinement, nor do they see themselves as a victim of oppression. For these women with reference to their productive identity, a house is a dwelling place with manifold meanings, including a proof of identity, an economic instrument, and a public resource operating on the community level. This paper examines the role of the house as a central site for identity construction and maintenance for the southern dialect Dong minority women in Hunan, China. Drawing on recent interviews with the Dong women, this study argues that women as productive individuals have a strong influence on the form of their house and the immediate environment, regardless of the male-dominated social construct of the Dong society. The aim of this study is not to produce a definitive relationship between women, house, and identity. Rather, it seeks to offer an alternative lens into the complexity and diversity of gender dynamics operating in and beyond the boundary of the house in the context of contemporary rural China.

Keywords: Conception of home, Dong minority, house, rural China, woman’s identity.

References:

[1] Mallett, Shelley. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review 52.1 (2004): 62-89.
[2] Spain, Daphne. Gendered Spaces. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
[3] McDowell, Linda. Gender, Identity & Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.
[4] Douglas, Mary. “The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space.” Social Research 58.1 (1991): 287-307.
[5] Somerville, Peter. “Home Sweet Home: A Critical Comment on Saunders and Williams.” Housing Studies 4.2 (1989): 113-118.
[6] Darke, Jane. “Women and the Meaning of Home.” Housing Women. Ed. Rose Gilroy and Roberta Woods. London: Routledge, 1994. 9-25.
[7] Wardhaugh, Julia. “The Unaccommodated Woman: Home, Homelessness and Identity.” The Sociological Review 47.1 (1999): 91-109.
[8] Pratt, Geraldine and Susan Hanson. “On the Links between Home and Work: Family-Household Strategies in a Buoyant Labour Market.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 15 (1991): 55-74.
[9] Oberhauser, Ann M. “Gender and Household Economic Strategies in Rural Appalachia.” Gender, Place & Culture 2.1 (1995): 51-70.
[10] —. “Relocating Gender and Rural Economic Strategies.” Environment and Planning A 34.7 (2002): 1221-1237.
[11] Ekinsmyth, Carol. “Challenging the boundaries of Entrepreneurship: The spatialities and practices of UK’ Mumpreneurs’.” Geoforum 42.1 (2011): 104-114.
[12] Nel, P, Alex Maritz and Onnida Thongpravati. “Motherhood and entrepreneurship: The Mumpreneur phenomenon.” International Journal of Organizational Innovation 3.1 (2010): 6-34.
[13] Bain, Alison L. “Female Artistic Identity in Place: The Studio.” Social & Cultural Geography 5.2 (2004): 171-193.
[14] Borelli, Jessica L., et al. “Bringing Work Home: Gender and Parenting Correlates of Work-Family Guilt among Parents of Toddlers.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 26 (2017): 1734-1745.
[15] Craig, Lyn and Brendan Churchill. “Working and Caring at Home: Gender Differences in the Effects of Covid-19 on Paid and Unpaid Labor in Australia.” Feminist Economics 27.1-2 (2020): 210-326.
[16] Hjálmsdóttir, Andrea and Valgerður S. Bjarnadóttir. ““I Have Turned into a Foreman Here at Home”: Families and Work-Life Balance in Times of COVID-19 in a Gender Equality Paradise.” Gender, Work & Organization 28.1 (2020): 268-283.
[17] Valentine, Gill. “(Hetero)Sexing Space: Lesbian Perceptions and Experiences of Everyday Spaces.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11 (1993): 395-413.
[18] Sibley, David. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. London: Routledge, 1995.
[19] Hollander, John. “It All Depends.” Social Research 58.1 (1991): 31-49.
[20] Cai, Ling. 侗族聚居區的傳統村落與建築. Beijing: 中國建築工業出版社, 2007.
[21] Zhang, Weiguo. ““A Married Out Daughter Is Like Spilt Water”?: Women’s Increasing Contacts and Enhanced Ties with Their Natal Families in Post-Reform Rural North China.” Modern China 35.3 (2009): 256-283.
[22] Madigan, Ruth, Moira Munro and Susan J. Smith. “Gender and the Meaning of the Home.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 14.4 (1990): 625-647.
[23] Mallett, Shelley. Conceiving Cultures: Reproducing People and Places on Nuakata, Papua New Guinea. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2003.