Research Projects

Beyond the book project, I have been engaged in four complementary streams of work that examine the state, creativity, identity, and methods, with peer-reviewed works published in top journals in cultural sociology.

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State Intervention & Global Cultural Production

The first workstream examines the social life of the state and the dynamics between state intervention and global processes. An article published in the American Sociological Review develops a micro-sociological model of censorship. It argues that state censorship is often intermediated and informal and can exert global effects, through which cultural producers are induced to engage in what I call “complicit creativity.” Also, I am developing another article from my book on how geopolitical tensions shape studios’ effort to craft global imaginaries in developing scripts. It argues that studios have shifted from “cultural diving” (bridging cultures more profoundly through historical common ground) to “cultural surfing” (favoring light cultural blending and genre movies), to navigate an increasingly risky market due to the deteriorating U.S.-China relations. Lastly, I am working on a book chapter titled “Censorship in Art and Culture,” which will be included in The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Speech and Censorship.

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Creativity & Class

The second stream involves creativity in the new economy, bringing China’s artists and creative class into the large theoretical debates about taste, class, and the self. In my article, “Tensions in Aesthetic Socialization: Negotiating Competence and Differentiation in Chinese Art Schools” (published in Poetics), I examine how young artists negotiate competing conceptions of creativity between Chinese and Western art worlds to navigate professions. I argue that art students resolve three areas of tension in the making of art and selves: a processual practice of learning to unlearn; a reconciliation of present demands and long-term goals; and a paradox of weighing the contrasting identities of artist and designer. These tensions comprise the sites of artistic negotiation, enabling scholars to analyze creative decisions rarely verbalized in explicit terms. In a second article, “The Visual Arts in the Chinese Middle-Class Home: Occupational Status Groups, Abstract Art, and Self-Presentation” (published in Sociological Studies), I use mixed methods to investigate how Chinese middle-class families display art at home, especially abstract art. I argue that consuming abstract art is associated with one’s occupational status and interacting with abstract art creates one’s imaginative capability to wander and connects one’s own life experiences. In doing so, I contribute to a growing literature in the new sociology of art by emphasizing the aesthetic properties and materiality of art and taste in action.

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Naming and Identity

Third, I investigate identity construction in light of transnational mobility, intersecting naming, assimilation, and self-presentation. In a co-authored article with Gary Fine, “Names and Selves: Transnational Identities and Self-Presentation among Chinese International Students” (published in Qualitative Sociology), we show how Chinese students in the U.S. use multiple names to construct global selves. We argue that their identity construction is engaged in transnational processes and situated practices, constituting what we call “cross-cultural naming.” These students negotiate between multiple names to signal ethnic distinctions, distinguish themselves from others, and manage public presentation. Names are multi-layered and temporal, as they evolve throughout school lives, shaped by power relations in American cultural contexts and channeled by images of their home country. The findings show a new form of cultural assimilation, shedding light on transnational identity and challenges facing international students.

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Cultural Methods

Finally, as an ethnographer, I write on qualitative methods. In our article, “Idioculture” (published in SAGE Research Methods Foundations), Gary Fine and I present the central theory of idioculture – or local culture – as a concept that helps provide a hinge between the actions of individuals and the structure of systems. We argue that culture is actively constructed through interactions in local communities, suggesting group cultures as the locations for cultural creation and preservation. This concept has proved useful in understanding cultural dynamics in various social domains, as well as examining methodological implications of cultural research on the meso-level of analysis.