William Schroeder

Sociocultural Anthropology

Regional focus: China

Topical interests: Queer Anthropology, Kinship, Gender, Discourse,
Cultural Politics of Identity

My dissertation, “An Anthropology of the Weekend: Leisure time Community-Building and Kinship in Gay Beijing,” argues for placing the process of relationship-building through variously structured forms of play at the center of the analysis of gay and lesbian life in urban China. Specifically, it inquires into the emergent phenomenon of gay and lesbian leisure organizations and how they provide welcoming spaces for socializing and being socialized outside dominant structures of the nuclear family and workplace. These leisure organizations—ranging from gay and lesbian rollerskating clubs and yoga groups to discussion salons—attract a large number of participants and pose a challenge to the conceptual dominance of mainstream relationship networks, although they do not entirely displace them in practical significance.

I think the importance of my study lies in its novel approach to understanding the globalization of ideas about sexual identity— instead of seeking out activist groups in Beijing whose models are Western political organizations, I participated in a variety of locally based leisure collectives that seek to establish supportive networks for their members and provide them with outlets for fun. Because most gay and lesbian Beijingers are interested in maintaining extant sociocultural values of interpersonal harmony and measured change, the leisure groups they belong to tend to thrive covertly alongside culturally valorized institutions such as the nuclear family and workplace. But despite the unwillingness among most gays and lesbians in the city to challenge dominant social structures through overt political means, their participation in leisure groups nevertheless constituted an opposing force to the dominance of kinship and employment networks in the structuring of their everyday livelihoods. By broadening my research goals beyond the common Western assumption that political activism represents the nexus of change in the cultural understanding of sexuality, I was able to recognize the importance of the groups I studied to Beijing’s gay life. This methodological move eflects the emphasis I place on diversity in approaches to the anthropology of sexuality, which I hope will result not only in ethnographic richness, but also in theoretical appropriateness.