(Download PDF) Gender and Family Practices Living Apart Together Relationships in China Shuang Qiu Full Chapter PDF

Gender and Family Practices: Living
Apart Together Relationships in China

Shuang Qiu
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/gender-and-family-practices-living-apart-together-rela
tionships-in-china-shuang-qiu/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Romanian Transnational Families: Gender, Family

Practices and Difference Viorela Ducu
https://ebookmass.com/product/romanian-transnational-families-
gender-family-practices-and-difference-viorela-ducu/
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (Fifth Edition) (Vol.

Volume 1)
https://ebookmass.com/product/worlds-together-worlds-apart-fifth-
edition-vol-volume-1/
The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate

Relationships in a Changing
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-marriage-and-family-experience-
intimate-relationships-in-a-changing/
Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed

by Tech Jamie Susskind
https://ebookmass.com/product/future-politics-living-together-in-
a-world-transformed-by-tech-jamie-susskind/
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (Fifth Edition) (Vol. 1)
Fifth Edition – Ebook PDF Version
edition-vol-1-fifth-edition-ebook-pdf-version/
Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (Fifth Edition) (Vol. 2)

Fifth Edition – Ebook PDF Version
edition-vol-2-fifth-edition-ebook-pdf-version/
Living Better Together: Social Relations and Economic

Governance in the Work of Ostrom and Zelizer Stefanie
Haeffele
https://ebookmass.com/product/living-better-together-social-
relations-and-economic-governance-in-the-work-of-ostrom-and-
zelizer-stefanie-haeffele/
Future politics : living together in a world

transformed by tech First Edition. Edition Susskind
https://ebookmass.com/product/future-politics-living-together-in-
a-world-transformed-by-tech-first-edition-edition-susskind/
Family Business in China, Volume 2: Challenges and

Opportunities 1st Edition Chen
https://ebookmass.com/product/family-business-in-china-
volume-2-challenges-and-opportunities-1st-edition-chen/
GENDERS AND SEXUALITIES
IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Gender and Family

Practices
Living Apart Together
Relationships in China
Shuang Qiu
Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
Series Editors
V. Robinson
Centre for Women’s Studies
University of York
York, UK
D. Richardson
Department of Sociology
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
The study of gender and sexuality has developed dramatically over recent
years, with a changing theoretical landscape that has seen innovative work
emerge on identity, the body and embodiment, queer theory, technology,
space, and the concept of gender itself. There has been an increasing focus
on sexuality and new theorizing on masculinities. This exciting series will
take account of these developments, emphasizing new, original work that
engages both theoretically and empirically with the themes of gender,
sexuality, and, crucially, their intersections, to set a new, vibrant and con-
temporary international agenda for research in this area.
Shuang Qiu
Gender and Family

Practices
Living Apart Together Relationships in China
Shuang Qiu
School of Social, Political and Global Studies
Keele University
Keele, UK
ISSN 2947-8782 ISSN 2947-8790 (electronic)

Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
ISBN 978-3-031-17249-6 ISBN 978-3-031-17250-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17250-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Danita Delimont Creative / Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to my beloved parents.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful for many people who helped me in different ways at

different times in completing this book. First of all, my thanks go to all the
research participants who have genuinely shared their stories and experi-
ences with me. We were strangers before but because of this research proj-
ect, we sat together for hours and have crossed paths ever since. They
made my fieldwork over the summer in China unforgettable and enjoyable.
I would like to particularly thank Professor Victoria Robinson for her
continuous support, encouragement, and guidance at every stage of this
project. Countless meetings and conversations about my research have
inspired me to pursue an academic life. In my heart, she was not just my
supervisor, as she went far beyond what was required. We went to Niagara
Falls in Canada and spent a wonderful time together during the time I
gave a presentation at a conference in Toronto. She came to my wedding
in the UK, which made my big day become even more special and unfor-
gettable. I also offer my sincere gratitude to my previous supervisor,
Professor Stevi Jackson, for her intellectual inspiration, especially at the
early stage of my research, and the excellent example she has set as a dedi-
cated scholar, devoted researcher, and responsible professor. I also owe an
enormous debt of gratitude to Dr Julia Carter, Dr Rachel Alsop, and
Professor Vanessa May for their generous encouragement and construc-
tive comments. My thanks also go to colleagues at the University of York
who have supported me emotionally and made me feel not alone.
This research project has gained financial support from the Great
Britain–China Educational Trust (GBCET), for which I am immensely
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
thankful. I also acknowledge the patience and assistance of the Palgrave

Macmillan editorial team for bringing this book to fruition.
Finally, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to my beloved parents.
Their endless love, selfless devotion, and unreserved support are the most
important motivation that keeps me going. I am blessed to be their only
daughter and have always felt loved although they were thousands of miles
away. Dr Zeyu Fu is a good listener, reliable friend, and caring husband.
He has witnessed the development of this book and I really appreciated his
accompaniment and understanding.
It should be noted that some texts in this book have already been pub-
lished in peer-reviewed journals and reused with permission by the
following:
Qiu, S. (2020). Chinese ‘study mothers’ in living apart together (LAT)

relationships: Educational migration, family practices, and gender roles.
Sociological Research Online, 25(3), 405–420. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1360780419871574
Qiu, S. (2022a). Family practices in non-cohabiting intimate relationships
in China: Doing mobile intimacy, emotion and intergenerational caring
practices. Families, Relationships and Societies, 11(2), 175–191. https://
doi.org/10.1332/204674321X16468493162777
Qiu, S. (2022b). Negotiating intimacy and family at distance: Living apart
together relationships in China. In S. Quaid, C. Hugman and A. Wilcock
(Eds.), Negotiating families and personal lives in the 21st century
(pp. 77–92). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003039433
Contents
1 Understanding ‘Living Apart Together’ (LAT) Relationships 1
2 Detraditionalisation
and Retraditionalisation of Family
Lives: Gender, Marriage and Intimacy 31
3 Reconsidered Agency: Why Do People Live Apart? 65
4 Doing
Family at a Distance: How Different Are LAT
Relationships to ‘Conventional’ Partnerships? 97
5 Doing
Intimacy While Being Apart: Practices of Mobile
Intimacy, Emotion and Filial Piety131
6 Conclusion169
Appendices177
Index181
ix
About the Author
Shuang Qiu is a lecturer in Sociology based in the School of Social,

Political and Global Studies at Keele University. She obtained her PhD in
Women’s Studies from the University of York and her research interests lie
in the field of sociology of the family, intimacy, gender and sexualities,
agency, emotion, migration, care, and East Asian studies. She has pub-
lished several articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Sociological Research
Online and Families, Relationships, and Societies.
xi
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Marriage patterns in China, Hong Kong, Japan and

South Korea 51
Table 4.1 Mini-biographies of six ‘study mothers’ 100
Table A.1 List of the socio-demographics of 39 participants 178
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Understanding ‘Living Apart Together’

(LAT) Relationships
Introduction
Understanding the impact of social change on personal relationships and
family lives has become one of the key concerns of sociology. China’s dra-
matic social and economic transformation over the past few decades has
brought about diverse effects on different aspects of people’s personal
relationships and family lives. In contemporary Chinese society there is a
growing diversity in family patterns accompanied by a marked decline in
traditional pre-existing structures in relation to patriarchal and patrilocal
family systems. Non-traditional partnerships and living arrangements,
such as ‘living apart together’ (LAT) relationships (where committed cou-
ples live in separate households while maintaining their intimate relation-
ships), are not uncommon in China. For example, the family pattern of
out-migration of men and stay-behind married women with children (if
any), as a result of rural-to-urban labour mobility under the process of
urbanisation and modernisation, has been documented in migration lit-
erature (Fan, 2003). Due to increased educational attainment, young
people stay for a longer time in education and college education can delay
marriage for both men and women in China (Ji & Yeung, 2014). This
leads to a considerable number of people living separately from their part-
ner because of education and/or job locations.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
S. Qiu, Gender and Family Practices, Genders and Sexualities in the
Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17250-2_1
2 S. QIU
Couples in non-cohabiting intimate relationships have also gained

scholarly attention in the West, such as commuter marriages (Gerstel &
Gross, 1984), weekend couples (Kim, 2001) and long-distance relation-
ships (Holmes, 2006). A considerable body of research has also shown a
social tendency towards what has been termed the Second Demographic
Transition, manifested in the growing rates of non-traditional family rela-
tionships globally over time. For example, previous Western studies have
shown that around two-and-a-half million people in the United States are
relating at a distance (Guldner, 2003). They live apart for a variety of rea-
sons, such as work opportunities, care responsibilities and/or a desire for
autonomy (Holmes, 2006; Levin, 2004). Existing literature suggests that
this ‘unusual’ partnership challenges our taken-for-granted assumption
that couples should live together, and that intimacy always entails physical
proximity. Some theorists argue that these diverse forms of relationships
have served to expedite the dissolution of the stability of conventional
social bonds and disintegration of traditional notions of family, leading to
a transformation of intimacy as a part of the de-traditionalisation of social
life (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2005; Giddens, 1992).
However, the circumstances of LAT vary with people’s life stages and
social circumstances. The Chinese cultural framework, combining an
emerging emphasis on autonomy and personal choice as a response to the
profound social transformations in relation to long-standing traditional
values on gender roles and family obligations, provides a unique opportu-
nity to explore how Chinese people construct family life and experience
conjugal intimacy. Therefore, the focus of this book is to examine how
gender and heterosexuality structure the lived experiences of people in
non-conventional partnerships in present-day Chinese society. Through
looking at LAT relationships (LATs), my hope is that this research makes
a timely and valuable contribution to changing family practices and inti-
macy in contemporary China by giving a voice primarily to women’s lived
experiences in constructing their family lives and making sense of any sub-
sequent changes in their personal relationships. Notably, though the focus
in the study is on women participants, men’s views will also be used to
contradict and further explore women’s perspectives, especially when it
comes to gendered emotional work in a given context.
To this end, I start this chapter by demonstrating what an LAT rela-
tionship is and the rationale behind researching this ‘unconventional’ inti-
mate partnership in China. This is then followed by a discussion of previous
research on LAT mainly based on Western contexts. Given that there is a
1 UNDERSTANDING ‘LIVING APART TOGETHER’ (LAT) RELATIONSHIPS 3
knowledge gap on what we know about LAT in China, these findings

based on Western contexts play an important role in exploring, in my later
data-led chapters in this book, whether and how much difference exists
between LAT in the Western context and the Chinese context, as many
scholars argue that the Western culture of individualism has transformed
how Chinese people construct and understand their own family life and
intimate relationships. I will then shift my focus to explain how I design
this research in a feminist way as well as my own reflection on my episte-
mological and methodological engagement with Chinese LAT people.
Finally, I conclude this chapter by outlining an overview of the book.
What Is an LAT Relationship and Why Does

It Matter?
The phrase ‘living apart together’ and its acronym, ‘LAT’, was first used
by a Dutch journalist, Michel Berkiel, who wrote an article about it in the
Haagse Post in the Netherlands in 1978 (Levin, 2004). Since then, LAT
has gained visibility in volume and become accepted in the field of social
science study. Unfortunately, to date, it remains difficult to establish a
standard definition for the term ‘living apart together relationships’
(LATs), given that scholars interpret and measure LATs differently.
According to Levin and Trost (1999: 281), LAT refers to ‘a couple which
does not share the same household; both of them live in their own house-
holds, in which other persons might also live’. This relationship implies
that people do not necessary live in the same household in order to be
seen as couples (Levin, 2004). In addition, the term includes both married
and non-married couples, and refers to both heterosexual and same-sex
couples. However, some scholars exclude married people from LATs
(Haskey, 2005; Strohm et al., 2009). In his research, Haskey (2005)
stresses that LAT is a monogamous partnership in nature and reserved for
non-married couples living in separate households. This research draws on
the general agreement on the definition of LAT, which involves two het-
erosexual individuals living in separate households while maintaining an
intimate and committed couple relationship (Duncan et al., 2014).
Literature shows that most studies on LATs have predominantly been
carried out within in the context of Western Europe and North America,
such as Sweden (Borell & Karlsson, 2003; Evertsson & Nyman, 2013;
Levin, 2004), Britain (Carter et al., 2016; Coulter & Hu, 2017; Duncan,
4 S. QIU
2015; Ermisch & Seidler, 2009; Haskey, 2005; Haskey & Lewis, 2006),
France (Régnier-Loilier et al., 2009), Canada (Kobayashi et al., 2017;
Milan & Peters, 2003; Turcotte, 2013) and the USA (Strohm et al.,
2009).1 In Australia, research on LATs has also been observed (Reimondos
et al., 2011; Upton-Davis, 2015). Sweden was one of the first European
countries to study LATs (Levin & Trost, 1999). According to the 1993
Omnibus survey in Sweden, 4% of respondents considered themselves to
be living in LATs. This increased to 14% of the respondents who were
neither married nor cohabiting in 2001 (Levin, 2004). In Britain, there
were no specific analyses of LATs until Haskey (2005), who drew on the
2002 Omnibus Survey to examine whether LATs really exist in Britain.
The results show that the phenomenon of having a regular intimate part-
ner who lives elsewhere does exist—around two million men and women
aged 16–59 years were in LATs in Britain, the same number as were co-
residentially cohabiting. More recent empirical research has been further
developed by Simon Duncan and his colleagues, who point out that
around 10% of the population live apart from their partner in Britain
(Duncan & Phillips, 2010, 2011). In line with Duncan and Phillips’ find-
ing, Coulter and Hu (2017) provide a statistical analysis that 9% of adults
were in LATs in the UK. Regarding the prevalence of LATs in Canada, in
2011, 7.4% of people aged 20 and over were single, widowed or divorced
but were in an intimate relationship with someone living elsewhere, which
are known as LATs (Turcotte, 2013). A recent study shows that nearly
one-and-a-half million people aged 25–64 in Canada were reported to be
in an LAT relationship in 2017.2
Although statistics show that the number of people who live apart from
their partner is small in relative terms, the increasing body of research on
LATs indicates that being a couple without sharing the same household
has been a steadily growing phenomenon in many countries in recent
years. With the attempts to explain the possible reasons for the emergence
of new forms of relating and living arrangements, Levin (2004) suggests
that several factors may help to make LATs more visible in many Western
countries. The first factor is related to mortality rates. Previously, high
rates of early mortality, to some extent, meant the dissolution of marriage.
1
For an overview of LATs between European countries, see Ayuso (2019), Bawin-Legros
and Gauthier (2001), Liefbroer et al. (2015) and Stoilova et al. (2014).
2
Available at: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/190220/dq190220d-
eng.htm.
However, the lower the mortality rate, the greater the likelihood for a
person to live longer, experience separation from a marital cohabitation,
and thus, the greater likelihood for the person to enter into an LAT rela-
tionship, or some other new relationship.
In addition, labour-market opportunities, along with women’s partici-
pation in the workforce (Holmes, 2006), have also contributed to the
increase in LATs. This is in contrast to the past, when women were more
likely to follow their partners and find a new job where they relocated. It
is now difficult to do so since labour markets have become less localised
and more globalised. Economic independence and self-development also
play a more important role than previously in women’s lives. Due to the
development of information and communication technologies (ICTs),
people now find it easier to generate and maintain relationships with oth-
ers at a distance. A central aspect of this research will provide a much-
needed and previously lacking account regarding practices of mobile
intimacy through ICT in LATs, specifically in the Chinese context,
through analysis of my data in Chap. 5.
In the context of China, the first descriptive study on married couples
living apart was conducted based on survey data to evaluate the effect of
job-related marital separation on marital quality (Abbott et al., 1993).
During the period of China’s planned economy, jobs were once assigned
by the government to guarantee people’s right to work and to balance
regional development.3 It was estimated that about fifty million Chinese
people had their spouse living somewhere else as a result of job allocation
(Bonavia, 1982). However, to the best of my knowledge, little is known
about how people arrange and experience their everyday family life and
couple intimacy while being apart (Hare-Mustin & Hare, 1986). This is
partly because people at that time were reluctant to talk about their inti-
mate relationships publicly due to the sensitive nature of this topic. In
addition, official figures often do not allow us to ‘distinguish the different
types of one-person households by demographic or socioeconomic char-
acteristics’ (Yeung and Cheung, 2015: 1102). Lacking a standard defini-
tion of LATs also makes it hard for social researchers and policymakers to
collect statistical data in China, especially given its geographical size.
Since the 1980s, China has undergone dramatic social changes, leading
to rapid economic growth, increased education attainment and comple-
tion of a demographic transition (Xie, 2011). These social transformations
3
For more discussion about job assignments, see Bian (1994).
6 S. QIU
have diverse effects on different aspects of people’s personal relationships

and family lives. For example, there are a growing number of people living
separately from their partner due to education and/or job locations and
college education this can delay marriage for both men and women in
China (Ji & Yeung, 2014). It is worth noting that China’s economic
decentralisation due to its transition from a socialist to a market-oriented
economy has led to the replacement of job assignment by the government
with the labour market (Hoffman, 2008; Tsui & Rich, 2002). This has
given rise to an unprecedented rural-to-urban labour migration through
the processes of urbanisation and modernisation (Peng, 2011), with about
one in five being among a ‘floating population’.4 Statistics show that
among the 0.29 billion migrant workers, 78% of them are married and
over 65% of them are men.5 Recent academic work shows that in most
cases they are sole migrants who are separated from their spouse, children
and parents in the countryside (Fan et al., 2011; Wu et al., 2020). This
gendered family mobility pattern (out-migration of men and stay-behind
married women with children, if any) has, in some respects, reinforced the
prescribed social norms on gender roles, where women’s contribution to
family life is significantly shaped by their family roles (Chang et al., 2011;
Chen, 2005; Fan, 2003; Fan & Li, 2020; He & Gober, 2003; Qiu, 2022).
Although previous quantitative studies draw our attention to split
households in China, the changing meanings and practices of family life
have not yet been systematically researched. This is partly because living
together as a couple to establish a family remains the ideal and most
socially accepted family arrangement in a contemporary Chinese context.
As a result, non-conventional forms of family living have rarely been exam-
ined by ‘family sociologists’. In addition, lacking a standard definition of
what an LAT relationship is and the attendant difficulty in identifying
LATs if they happen for short periods of time also cause the knowledge
gap regarding this non-cohabiting partnership. Therefore, issues around
why Chinese people end up living separately from their partner and how
they negotiate their gender roles and identity still lack sufficient attention.
More importantly, I am interested in exploring how practices of family and
4
“Floating population” refers to migrants who stay in places different from their hukou
(household registration) locations, the vast majority of whom are rural–urban migrants
(NHFPC, 2012, 2016).
5
Available at: http://www.stats.gov.cn/ztjc/ztfx/ggkf40n/201809/t20180918_162
3598.html.
intimacy in non-conventional partnerships are worthy of sociology exami-

nation. In an effort to unpack these questions, this research represents one
of the first in-depth qualitative examinations of LATs in a changing
Chinese society. Before mapping out a feminist methodological frame-
work for this study and the research process, I will provide a brief overview
of existing literature on LATs in the Western context.
Who Lives Apart from Their Partner and Why?

Several Western studies have examined whether LATs are different demo-
graphically and socially to married, cohabiting and single people. Generally,
people from all age groups and with varied socio-economic backgrounds
can be found in LATs (Duncan & Phillips, 2010; Haskey & Lewis, 2006;
Roseneil, 2006). In terms of age, LATs as a whole are over-represented
among the younger age group. One plausible explanation for LATs in the
younger age groups is that they are in the early stages of their relationship
(Duncan et al., 2013). Drawing on the ONS Omnibus survey—the first
survey to investigate LATs in Britain—the results show that 47% of people
under 25 are reported to have a partner who lives elsewhere, accounting
for the highest proportion in the overall age profile (Ermisch & Seidler,
2009; Haskey, 2005). Similarly, data from France reveal that the probabil-
ity of being in an LAT decreases with age, as the highest prevalence of
LATs for both men (72%) and women (68%) is in the age group of under
25s, followed by 38% of men and 33% women between the ages of 25 and
29 (Régnier-Loilier et al., 2009). For people aged over 60, only 4% are
reported to have non-residential relationships. Although only a small pro-
portion of elderly people engage in LATs after divorce or widowhood, a
slight increase in couples living separately was observed. In Britain, 13% of
respondents between the ages of 55 and 64 are in LATs (Duncan &
Phillips, 2008). In Canada, the number of elderly people who live sepa-
rately from their partner has increased slightly compared to 2001, although
only 2% of those aged 60 years and over were involved in an LAT relation-
ship in 2011 (Turcotte, 2013). Therefore, it could be generalised that the
probability of being in an LAT relationship is closely associated with age
and the different stages of the relationship.
Regarding education and socio-economic status, the UK data reveal
little difference across socio-economic status as people with either profes-
sional or manual occupations can all be found in LATs (Duncan & Phillips,
2010). However, Haskey and Lewis’ (Haskey & Lewis, 2006) analysis,
8 S. QIU
based on both quantitative and qualitative data, indicate an interesting

comparison between those who live apart from their partner and those
who are in co-residential relationships. Again, it is a matter of degree.
Compared to those who are currently living with their spouse in Britain,
people in LATs aged 25–44 seem to be more likely to have high levels of
education and relatively high-status occupations. The positive relation
between the probability of being in an LAT relationship and educational
background is also found in the US data (Strohm et al., 2009), with peo-
ple in LATs, regardless of gender, having more schooling. This finding
also applies to European countries, where people with higher education
who have grown-up children or no children are more likely to be in LATs
than in a marital or cohabiting union (Ermisch & Seidler, 2009; Liefbroer
et al., 2015; Reimondos et al., 2011). An attempt to explain this was made
by Holmes (2004a), who investigated dual-career, dual-household aca-
demic couples based on the assumption that, if individualisation processes
are extending to women, this will be most obvious amongst elites. She
argues that women’s growing economic resources, with flexible working
patterns, have freed them from fixed obligations, while the effects of indi-
vidualisation for women on their intimate relationships are still limited.
With regards to ethnicity, there is no clear message about whether peo-
ple in LATs are more heterogamous regarding this variable than those in
other relationships. However, the US data indicate that women in LATs
are more ethnically diverse than those in either marriage or cohabiting
relationships (Strohm et al., 2009).
According to previous Western studies on LATs, the reasons for living
apart from partners are diverse and are always subject to variations.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with 100 people aged between 20 and
80 in Norway and Sweden, Levin (2004) summarises that people who live
apart together can be divided into two subgroups. One subgroup consists
of those who would not wish to live together even if they could do so, and
still want to remain as a couple living apart together (Levin, 2004: 233).
The ‘preference’ for LATs is evident in the group of divorced people
because they believe that ‘living together, in itself, will change the way
each of them relates to the other and that those changes could threaten
the relationship’s survival’ (Levin, 2004: 233). By living apart, however,
they can have more control over their lives and gain more autonomy. In
this way, LATs have been viewed as a strategy to avoid repeating and expe-
riencing the same mistakes from a previous relationship (Duncan et al.,
2013; Haskey & Lewis, 2006; Roseneil, 2006). Additionally, Levin (2004)
also mentions that older people, such as retired couples, even though nei-
ther partner is working any more, do not need to worry about jobs and are
likely to have sufficient financial resources to live apart in order to secure
autonomy and facilitate contact with adult children (Haskey & Lewis,
2006; Karlsson & Borell, 2002).
The other group is people who would like to live together but cannot
do so in practice due to external constraints. Caring reasons, the feeling of
responsibility for significant others, such as children and elderly parents,
can keep people from living together with their partner (Levin, 2004:
231; see also Duncan et al., 2013; Haskey & Lewis, 2006). Women, in
particular, are expected to stay with and take care of children, while living
apart from their partner. In this sense, LAT has been viewed as a strategy
to prioritise and protect the well-being of children. Levin (2004) further
points out that caring for elderly parents also serves as a driving factor for
couples living separately, with the sense of ‘repaying’ parents for what they
have done in raising them. In this way, LATs can be viewed as a solution
that allows people to both maintain their already-existing relationships by
caring for children or aged parents, and at the same time sustain an inti-
mate relationship with their partner. Therefore, this ‘both/and’ solution
to partnerships is appreciated, in particular, by those who have young chil-
dren and/or older relations to care for.
Similar to the Western context, caring plays an important part in organ-
ising Chinese people’s everyday life. The long-standing influence of tradi-
tional Confucian values in relation to filial piety, combined with the
under-developed social welfare system, have transferred the caring respon-
sibility from institutions to families (Zhu & Walker, 2018). Therefore,
people (women in particular) are expected to provide primary care for
their children and elderly parents.
In addition to caring for others, Levin (2004) also claims that working
or studying in different places can cause couples to live in separate house-
holds. Because people do not want to choose one over the other, they
have to live separately in order to maintain both their careers and intimacy
with a partner (Holmes, 2004a, 2006; Lampard, 2016; Levin, 2004;
Liefbroer et al., 2015). This is particularly evident among students, due to
different educational locations. Taking myself as an example, I was in an
LAT relationship during the time when my partner and I were pursuing
PhD degrees in different UK academic institutions. However, we are not
unusual in having this relationship. Based on my experience and that of
others I know, some people in the same situation as me, both in the UK
10 S. QIU
and China, often live on campus or at home with parents, while having a
partner living elsewhere. In terms of future plans, many young people
have high expectations of living together after graduation and finding jobs
near their common home (Levin, 2004).
However, the above two groups (preference and constraint), regarding
orientations towards cohabitation suggested by Levin, did not fit neatly
into other available UK data. For example, Roseneil’s (2006) data based
on small qualitative interviews (22 participants) categorised LAT into
three groups. She suggests that members of the small group (three partici-
pants in the cohort), in ‘regretfully apart relationships’, often give more
emphasis to their individual careers, although still being committed to
their heterosexual relationship. A larger group (eight participants) in
‘gladly apart relationships’ were on the opposite side of a willingness to
cohabitate, as people were seen to express strong desires to protect their
own time, space and relationships. The largest group (11 participants) in
her study were the ‘undecidedly apart group’, with people being more
ambivalent about their current relationship.
More recent research in the UK identifies five main reasons for couples
to live apart, based on survey data and qualitative interviews (Duncan
et al., 2013). These are: too early/not ready, financial constraints, situa-
tional constraints, obligated preference, and preference. Their research
data show that the most prevalent reason for people (32%) to live apart
from their partners is that it is too early in their relationship to live together,
while 30% of respondents are constrained by external circumstances from
desired cohabitation. Specifically, 18% of them are reported to live apart
due to affordability, and the rest do so because of their partner’s jobs loca-
tion or the demands of employers. In addition, some (8%) are labelled as
having an obligated preference for LAT due to obligations of care for oth-
ers, such as children and aged parents. Only a minority (22%) choose LAT
driven by personal ‘preference’ because they just want to keep their own
homes. This left 8% who give other unclassified reasons for LAT.
Is LAT a New Family Form or a Temporary Stage?

The question of whether this kind of intimate relationship involving non-
residential couples is a new family form or not has attracted a great deal of
attention, at least in relation to Western LATs. For those who regard LAT
as ‘a historically new family norm’, it provides a ‘both/and’ solution to
partnership, in which people can keep their couple relationship and at the
same time continue with their pre-existing commitments, such as respon-

sibility and care for others (Levin, 2004). Interestingly, older people are
most likely to see living apart as an alternative living arrangement, and
many reported no plans regarding moving in together in the future
(Duncan & Phillips, 2010; Reimondos et al., 2011). Similarly, Roseneil
(2006) also views LAT as a new form of relationship through which peo-
ple tend to de-prioritise sexual/love relationships and instead increase the
importance of friendship, changing the meaning of coupledom itself.
These findings demonstrate that LAT could be considered a new way of
conducting democratic personal lives that is beginning to move beyond
the dominant heteronormative framework, where life-long conjugal rela-
tionships have long been given prominence, which is in agreement with
Giddens’ (1992) notion of ‘pure relationships’, Beck and Beck-
Gernsheim’s (2005) emphasis on individualisation and Bauman’s (2003)
metaphor of ‘liquid love’.6
In contrast to Levin (2004) and Roseneil (2006), who regard LAT as a
new family form, others (Ermisch & Seidler, 2009; Haskey, 2005; Haskey
& Lewis, 2006) hold a more ‘continuist’ perspective, asserting that LAT
is just a temporary stage or a ‘stepping stone’ on the way to cohabitation
and marriage. In Haskey and Lewis’ (2006: 43) research, the respondents,
especially those in LATs who are divorced, are conservative about their
relationships and lives, and rarely express ‘an explicit desire for an alterna-
tive form of partnership or even a rejection of marriage or cohabitation’.
In addition, the never-married LATs, in particular, tend to have plans
regarding living together in the future, if possible. From this continuist
perspective, LAT couples in many respects are not radical pioneers, but
may merely reflect a new mode of living in practice, which is characterised
more by ‘caution and conservatism than radicalism and individualism’
(Haskey & Lewis, 2006: 46).
However, more recent studies on LATs support both ‘new family form’
and ‘continuist’ perspectives, although the latter are more evident in
quantitative research. In this way, a ‘qualified continuist’ position emerges
(Duncan et al., 2013). For example, based on the extensive range of atti-
tudinal data from the 2006 BSAS survey, Duncan and Phillips (2010)
explore whether LAT couples hold different attitudes towards families,
6
According to Bauman (2003), people are now living in a world characterised as being one
of precarious uncertainty, and traditional romantic relationships and communities that were
seen to provide solidity and security have been liquefied by individualisation.
12 S. QIU
personal life and relationships, compared to married people, cohabitants

and singles. Indeed, on some issues, LAT couples tend to be more liberal
and permissive than other groups, as Roseneil (2006) describes. But only
a minority expressed a positive preference for being apart or keeping their
own home. However, in the view of Duncan and Phillips (2010: 131), this
is a matter of degree rather than a radical departure from traditional mar-
ried partnerships. As the British evidence shows, like cohabitants, LAT
couples do emphasise friendship and often discuss personal problems with
friends, whereas it is married people who pay relatively less attention to
friends. As with attitudes towards partnering, again, it is married couples
who stand out as disapproving of homosexual relations and, conversely,
cohabitants are the least traditional about marriage. All this supports a
continuist perspective, in which little in the way of a ‘pioneer’ attitudinal
position about relationships and families is found among LATs.
Likewise, using survey data collected from 2004 to 2010 on LATs in
ten European countries, Liefbroer et al. (2015) also suggest that for most
people in their study LAT is mainly a temporary living arrangement driven
by practical reasons and financial constraints, as the majority of respon-
dents intended to live together within the following three years. Only
specific groups, such as the highly educated and the divorced, may see
LAT as an alternative to marriage or cohabitation.
Although the ‘qualified continuist’ perspective is easily found in statisti-
cal surveys, in later studies, Duncan et al. (2013: 326) question this posi-
tion, arguing that various personal ‘choices’ and ‘constraints’ were often
intertwined within an LAT relationship, which inevitably make them ‘dif-
ficult to unpick from survey evidence alone’. To revise and reflect the
range and diversity of LATs in Britain, they combined data from the 2011
national survey with 50 qualitative interviews and suggested that LATs
should be better understood as a flexible pragmatism that combines ele-
ments of both ‘new’ and ‘continuation’ or ‘tradition’. This combination
stems from an assumption that ‘people draw on existing practices, norms
and understandings in order to adapt to changing circumstances’ (Duncan
et al., 2013: 337). Although some women in their study showed a certain
degree of ‘preference’ for living apart (such as ‘obligated preference’ in
caring for children and aged parents), in fact, an ambivalence about
‘choices’ and ‘constraints’ was often involved because people’s choices
were inevitably bounded by the social norms in which they were embed-
ded. In other words, these constraints limit even those who appear to have
considerable resources for the pursuit of autonomy (Holmes, 2004b).
In addition, caring and connections sometimes cannot be regarded as

active choices because self-sacrifices are often involved at some point
(Bauman, 2003). Therefore, an LAT relationship does not just carry on
conventional relationship forms under a different name. It is not simply a
temporary stage between singlehood and marital formations. Instead, it
allows flexibility for individuals in conducting and maintaining their rela-
tionships. People can use the autonomy that LAT offers to manage differ-
ent needs and desires around personal autonomy, job advancement,
emotional closeness and other family commitments, or as a response to
external circumstances.
To sum up, the existing research evidence described above is mainly
based on the Western context, with many attempts being made to evaluate
the prevalence of and motivations behind couples in LATs in Western
societies. These pioneering studies are mostly based on data collected
from surveys and qualitative interviews, although some research has
employed both types of data. Specifically, the quantitative studies tend to
provide demographic and social incidence information concerning who
lives apart and how different they are, whereas the qualitative studies tend
to reveal the diverse reasons underlying couples’ living apart with the aim
of understanding the meanings that people attach to LATs. In terms of
those based on both forms of data (Duncan et al., 2013; Haskey & Lewis,
2006), there was still something missing in relation to how people at dif-
ferent life stages negotiate gender roles, experience conjugal intimacy and
‘do’ family across distance, which I will address by situating the empirical
research in a non-Western context and by looking in more depth than
many previous studies regarding the everyday practices, activities and
experiences of those in LATs.
Researching People in LATs in China

A number of existing texts concerning intimate and personal relationships
have focused on the theoretical grounds and research findings, while a few
studies pay attention to the research process of these areas in particular
(Gabb, 2008). Essentially, this is a feminist-driven piece of research. In
contrast to traditional male-defined ways of knowledge production and
viewing women as the ‘other’ and ‘outsider’, feminist ways of knowing
give greater emphasis on the lives of women and other marginalised under-
researched groups (Stanley & Wise, 1990, 1993). This feminist approach
is particularly concerned with gender in a reflexive way with an emphasis
14 S. QIU
on collaborative and participatory methodologies (Eichler, 1997;

Letherby, 2003; Oakley, 1981).
While I acknowledge that there are no methods that can specifically be
called ‘feminist methods’, what makes feminist research different from
other types of research is the ways in which methods are used, questions are
asked, and the sensitivity to the significance of gender within society
(Hardling, 1987; Kelly, 1988; Letherby, 2015). My criteria for the choice
of research methods were informed by Ann Oakley’s (2004: 191) argu-
ment, suggesting that the use of research methods should ‘fit with the
question being asked in the research’, and the theoretical position in which
the researcher is located (see also Reinharz & Davidman, 1992). As I men-
tioned earlier, the central aim of this research is to investigate the ways in
which people experience intimacy and construct their family lives when
they are physically apart from their partner. One of the concerns is that
people at different life stages in the life course with diverse social and eco-
nomic backgrounds may have different experiences of LATs, and thereby
understand the changes in their own personal lives differently in different
contexts. This focus on experience and everyday lives fundamentally shaped
the ways in which this research has been conducted. Given that people’s
experiences cannot be reduced to numbers (Scott, 2010; Stanley & Wise,
1993), I used qualitative in-depth interviews to gain knowledge of indi-
viduals’ relational practices of family and intimacy in certain, specific set-
tings from their own accounts (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009; Mason, 2002;
Maynard, 1994; Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Scott, 1998). In letting research
participants ‘tell their story’, this approach has been considered crucial in
studying relationships and everyday living (Gabb, 2008), especially for
gaining in-depth insights into the complexities and dynamics of the lived
experiences of people who have gone through social changes (Liu, 2007).
Inspired by feminist methodology, my research strategy is based on an
inductive approach, with the aim of constructing knowledge from the
interaction between the researcher and the individuals’ accounts during
interviews (Smith, 1990; Stanley & Wise, 1993). This approach, as Stanley
and Wise (1990) maintained, specifies a model of research in which theory
is systematically drawn from the actual experiences of individuals, and is
often referred to as ‘grounded theory’ (Glaster & Strauss, 1967). I believe
that there is no single ‘truth’ or ‘fact’ waiting to be discovered. The com-
plexity of subjective experiences means that ‘there are multiple realities
and therefore multiple truths’ (Taylor, 2001: 12; see also Stanley, 1993;
Stanley & Wise, 1990). As a result, this requires the researcher to be aware
of the responsibility of representing the voices of all participants, rather

than one objective account (Brooks & Hesse-Biber, 2007; Stanley &
Wise, 1993). Bearing in mind, this research has no intention of represent-
ing all the women in LATs in China, or applying research findings to all
LAT people at different life stages in different social contexts, what I aim
to achieve is to gather women’s own voices and focus on activities and
practices that are considered important to them. In doing so, this research
attempts to address the knowledge gap regarding how the social construc-
tion of gender and sexual relations has shaped people’s everyday practices
of family, intimacy and agency in non-cohabiting partnerships.
Approaching LAT People

The fieldwork was conducted over the summer of 2016 in China. I situ-
ated my fieldwork in two places: Beijing and Liaoning Province. First, this
is based on my personal familiarity with both places. I was born and grew
up in a small town in Liaoning Province in northeast China, and later
moved to Beijing for high-school study. I expected that the familiarity
with the research sites would give me confidence in understanding the liv-
ing environment and local culture in which people are embedded.
Although it does not guarantee that I would be viewed as an insider by the
potential participants, at least it was helpful in developing conversations
and building rapport between myself and those I researched.
Second, I was aware of many differences between the two sites. Beijing
is the nation’s political, cultural and educational centre, with a per capita
GDP (gross domestic product) in 2016 reaching RMB 118,198 (USD
17,795) (Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics, 2017). As the capital city
of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing has drawn much attention in
contemporary sociological research due to rapid socio-economic develop-
ment as well as greater cultural openness. As a result, it has attracted a
large amount of people from different parts of China studying, working
and living in Beijing. According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of
Statistics (2017), the total number of permanent residents of Beijing was
8.715 million in 1978, with a permanent migrant population of only
0.218 million. By 2016, however, the population had dramatically
increased to 21.729 million permanent residents, including 8.075 million
migrants, which means 38% of residents are from outside Beijing.
In contrast to the first-tier cities such as Beijing, very little attention has
been paid to my hometown, which was classified as one of the fifth-tier
16 S. QIU
cities. Liaoning Province, located in northeast China with a per capita

GDP of RMB 50,791 (USD 7646) in 2016, is an out-migration province
and the labour force outflow in this area has become increasingly severe
due to fewer advantages in relation to geographical location, cultural
development and economic growth (Liaoning Provincial Bureau of
Statistics, 2017). Although I was aware that my purposive selection of
research sites could not represent the diversity of forms of familial prac-
tices, these differences and regional inequalities in resource distribution
enable me to investigate how people’s lived experience of personal rela-
tionships and family lives are shaped by and, in turn, shape social structure.
By the end of September 2016, I interviewed 39 people (including four
men) at different life stages living separately from their partner for what-
ever reasons. They were recruited through different methods in order to
obtain a ‘purposive’ sample, rather than ‘generalised and representative’
data. At the initial stage, I used WeChat (in Chinese: Weixin; literally
meaning ‘micro message’), one of the most popular mobile-based instant-
messaging apps in China, to find young prospective participants. The
Weixin Impact Report in 2015 shows that the majority of WeChat users
are relatively young—with an average age of 26—and almost 90% (86.2%)
of users are less than 36 years old (see also Liu, 2007). To approach as
wide a range of participants using this method as possible, I registered a
subscription account (in Chinese, gong zhong hao) and publicly posted the
‘looking for participants’ call in Chinese on 25 April 2016 (two months
ahead of the start of my fieldwork) while I was still in the UK. The more
people knew about this research, the easier it would be for me to reach a
wide variety of participants.
This led to twelve people (including two men) contacting me and join-
ing my research project. Noticeably, this was the first time that I came
across the male participants during the research process. Although I was
initially looking for female participants, some valuable insights came out of
my data by including male participants, especially when they recounted
how they express intimacy and build closeness. I acknowledge that the
small number of male participants means I cannot illustrate or represent
LAT men in general, but they are used at some points in the following
chapters to additionally supplement and/or construction women’s prac-
tices of emotion. Therefore, the inclusion of male participants will also be
examined later in this chapter, particularly when useful to methodological
discussions of power dynamics.
Of these 12 people that were recruited via WeChat, the average age was
26.8, with the youngest being 23 years old and the oldest 34, which is in
line with the general overall WeChat user age (26 years). In terms of their
education, they all had received higher education, and therefore could be
described as well-educated and work-oriented young people who are able
to live alone and maintain their intimate couple relationships.
Although I benefited a lot from using WeChat when recruiting partici-
pants, this strategy only applied well to the younger generation, which I
attribute to their heavy involvement in social media. Being aware of the
unique social context where personal networks, or guanxi, often play an
important role in everyday life in terms of meeting new people and build-
ing trust (Gold et al., 2002; Liu, 2007; Park & Lunt, 2015; Zarafonetis,
2017), I asked intermediaries (such as my friends, schoolmates and family
members) to introduce anyone they knew in LATs. During the time of
staying in Beijing, 12 people (two men included), whom I had never met
before, were recruited via personal networks and snowball sampling, being
referred by people who had participated in the study or my friends and
older sister’s introductions.
However, as the fieldwork progressed, I realised that the voices of
middle-aged people were largely missing. I speculated that the social char-
acteristics of both the researcher and the intermediaries may have an
impact on the variety of the potential participants who are enlisted in the
research project. Even though I have established my personal contacts
since studying in Beijing, my social circle was largely based on my peer
groups, and my connections with wider society in Beijing were limited to
some extent. This inevitably led to the formation of group monotony in
this sample, while I struggled to find a ‘triangulation of subjects’ (referred
to specifically as older participants in this context) (Rubin & Rubin,
2005: 67).
In addition, due to the sensitivity of this research topic in a Chinese
context, it became difficult to reach middle-aged and older people and ask
them to share with me their private life, especially considering my identity
at the time of the interviews, as a young unmarried woman who had spent
years in a Western country studying for a higher-education degree. In
order to hear more ‘women’s voices’ in order to cover as diverse a sample
as possible, I returned to my hometown halfway through my fieldwork
because there were more (older) family members and relatives in Liaoning
Province. Finally, 15 more women who had relatively low educational lev-
els, with the oldest being aged 57, agreed to be interviewed.
18 S. QIU
It is clear that using informal personal networks was effective and suc-
cessful, especially with respect to approaching participants who were not
easily accessible (at least for me) and building up rapport. However, this
method can also be problematic, as the intermediaries sometimes would
use their autonomy and interpret my research in his/her own way.
Additionally, the decisions about whom to include and exclude in the
research were largely in the hands of intermediaries, and the snowballing
method (my participants provided the contact details of further potential
participants to me) had the potential to only attract participants who share
similar characteristics (Mason, 2002). For example, my father’s friend
introduced me to five ‘study mothers’ who all accompanied their children
to study during the course of interviews, while their husbands were work-
ing far away from home to provide financial support for the family.
Interestingly, the commonalities in their LATs allowed me to design cases
studies based on their everyday practices of family, which I will discuss in
more detail in Chap. 4. Nevertheless, as soon as I realised that the diversity
of data would be conditioned by the recruitment process, I addressed this
during the course of fieldwork by using a purposive sampling strategy
(Mason, 2002) and ensuring that I had wider social connections where
possible, all in order to gain as much diversity in the sample as possible.
Although ‘there are no rules for sample size in qualitative inquiry’
(Patton, 2002: 244), the number in a sample is subject to external con-
straints, such as time and financial resources. I stopped recruiting, and
later interviewing, on the grounds that I felt I had enough participants
and subsequent data to allow me to answer my research questions in an
informed manner (Bryman, 2016; Guest et al., 2006; Mason, 2010).
Consequently, my overall samples include 39 people, who varied in terms
of the length of their relationship and frequency in seeing each other due
to geographic distance, the nature of their partner’s occupation and stage
of their relationship (see Table A.1 in the Appendix for details of partici-
pant profiles). Specifically, they varied in age from 23 to 57 and were from
a variety of social backgrounds and occupations, ranging from graduate
students to retired people, professionals and housewives. In terms of edu-
cation, 24 people had university degrees with 8 of them having postgradu-
ate degrees. I interviewed 24 of them in Beijing and the rest (15) in my
hometown, Liaoning Province. In terms of marital status, 28 of them were
married, 19 of whom had between one and two children aged between 1
and 32. None of them had experienced divorce.
However, as I have already commented on, I was aware that there was
a lack of male voices in my sample, not only because of the scope of this
research project, but also due to the fact that they were mostly working
away from their partner during the course of my fieldwork. In this regard,
my sample cannot represent all the people with different social character-
istics who engage in an LAT relationship in China. Instead of providing a
statistical analysis of the number of Chinese people relating at a distance,
this qualitative research aims to provide in-depth insights into the ways in
which couples experience intimacy and family and negotiate their gender
roles. Therefore, these individuals’ accounts were able to reveal the com-
plexities and subtleties of subjective interpretations of LATs and their
experiences of being heterosexual across various life stages of family life.
Reflexivity, Power Dynamics and Positionality

‘Reflexivity is self-critical sympathetic introspection and the self-conscious
analytical scrutiny of the self’ (England, 1994: 82; see also Cotterill &
Letherby, 1993). The practice of reflexivity is significant to the research
process, and the researcher’s own positionality and assumptions can affect
the process of knowledge production (Chiseri-Strater, 1996; Hesse-Biber,
2012). Therefore, Stanley (1993: 49) argued that ‘research is contextual,
situational, and specific, and … will differ systematically according to the
social location (as gendered, raced, classed, sexualised person) of the par-
ticular knowledge-producer’. With that in mind, I will use this section to
provide a reflexive examination of the research process through an auto-
biographical approach.
Reflections on power dynamics between the researcher and the
researched in the research process have attracted increasing attention,
especially in feminist research (Cotterill, 1992; Letherby, 2003; Taylor,
2011). Being aware of the power hierarchies and exploitative relationships
that have often traditionally existed between researchers and the researched
in practice, I am keen to develop equal research relationships by empower-
ing research participants where possible (Cotterill, 1992; Millen, 1997;
Ryan-Flood & Gill, 2009; Wolf, 1985). However, this ideal can become
problematic when entering into fieldwork. During the course of fieldwork,
I used my identity as a 20-something unmarried Chinese female doctoral
student to build up rapport and develop a sense of trust, especially when
interviewing those of the same gender (Oakley, 1981). To some extent,
sharing some similarities with my participants enabled me to gain ‘rich’
20 S. QIU
data and pay continuous and reflexive attention to the significance of gen-
der as an aspect of all social life and within research (Letherby, 2015: 78).
Having a specific consideration of gender does not obliterate other
aspects of an individual’s social identity, such as age, class, educational
levels, marital status and geographical locations. These characteristics and
the intersection of these differences are considered important in people’s
life experiences and thereby are relevant to the research process
(Liamputtong, 2010). On many occasions, the boundary and relationship
with my research participants are not fixed but subject to constant nego-
tiation between all parties. For example, my insider identity was counter-
acted by other differentiations, such as age, religious belief and marital
status, when I interviewed Rosy (46, married). As she stated,
Because you’re not a mother, so you might be unlikely to understand our

age of people’s minds. You might even not be able to understand the ways
how I, as a Christian, view my family, work, and children. As a Christian, we
see problems from a different perspective [compared to non-Christians].
In recognition of people’s intimate life experiences being involved dur-

ing the course of interviews, my personal experience of being in an LAT
relationship was shared where appropriate, and some participants could
relate and feel more comfortable to share their own stories. What sur-
prised me is that my ‘outsider within’ identity (Collins, 1986), as someone
with a higher education living and working in the UK, had facilitated
them to openly express their feelings. On some occasions participants
were emotional, especially when they evoked the hard times they had
experienced. As I listened, I was also engaging and attending to their emo-
tions while offering tissues and the option to stop recording. Instead of
jumping to other topics, participants preferred to continue and reveal
their innermost thoughts to me. This implies that my status as an ‘out-
sider’ and ‘otherness’ itself, in the sense of living far away from partici-
pants’ immediate social networks and being unlikely to appear in their
everyday lives in the future, helped people to be more open when talking
about their lived LAT experiences.
Undoubtedly, an interview involves complex flows of power (Plummer,
1995). Although the researcher does have the ultimate control over both
the participants and the research process (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011;
Letherby, 2003), the researched could exercise power in a number of ways
at different stages of the research process. The unbalanced power
dynamics occurred in different ways when interviewing some of the male

participants. However, in some cases, my inferior position in terms of age,
gender and life experience was somehow redressed by my educational
attainment. In addition, I sometimes put myself in a vulnerable and pow-
erless position by allowing the research participants’ to decide where they
would like to be interviewed and where they felt comfortable. Because of
lack of control over the interview venue, the presence of other family
members, noisy surrounding environments and unexpected occurrences
would lead to the disruption of our interviews, especially if we were in
public spaces such as a coffee shop, or even private spaces such as a partici-
pant’s home. These encounters over the fieldwork site may constantly
throw up issues that the researcher has to deal with on the spot, and it is
only afterwards that they can reflect on how the methodological issues
actually played out during the research process, and consider the ethical
aspects potentially raised (Elwood & Martin, 2000; Leyshon, 2002).
Getting Familiar with the Data and Data Analysis

Reflexivity is an ongoing process and does not end when the researcher
leaves the field. The first thing I did after each interview was to write down
field notes as this offered me the opportunity to document my initial feel-
ings and views on the whole interview process from the perspective of a
researcher. This also enabled me to stand back to review my own perfor-
mance and amend the interview questions if necessary (Arthur et al.,
2014). In retrospect, I found this method especially useful in the data
analysis stage, as it could bring my thoughts back to the field and ensure
that my arguments were deeply rooted in the specific context in which
each interview was conducted.
As soon as I finished my fieldwork in China, I started transcribing ver-
batim from audio-recordings to text formats in an attempt to present
accurate accounts produced by participants at the research site (Patton,
1990). Although transcription is a time-consuming and labour-intensive
process, it helped me get familiar with my data. When listening to the
recorder and transcribing interview data, I also took notes and generated
initial codes that appeared interesting and were relevant to my research
questions. Through repeatedly reading my field notes and transcripts
thoroughly, some recurrent themes around practices of agency, family
practices and intimacy emerged.
22 S. QIU
I acknowledged that the researcher does have ultimate control over the
research process as a whole, especially when it comes to presenting research
findings in a language that is different from the one used to collect data.
As a Chinese researcher who shares the same language with the research
participants, our interviews were carried out in Mandarin Chinese.
Therefore, translation of participants’ accounts to (British) English was
crucial for the purpose of data analysis and reporting. In this regard, my
triple role as a researcher, transcriber and translator allowed me to re-
consider the power relations between the researcher and the people being
researched. This is because the decisions regarding how to translate and
what to translate largely fall into the hands of the researcher (Chin, 2018;
Temple & Young, 2004).
When I read the Mandarin transcripts, I was critically reflexive about
how I translated a Chinese word into English. When some terms were dif-
ficult to translate, I decided to retain specific cultural implications by cap-
turing ‘conceptual equivalence’, where the meanings of the text in my
study in both Chinese and English are conceptually the same (Phillips,
1960; Mangen, 1999; see also Smith et al., 2008). To keep the nuances of
the original data, literal equivalence was offered by carefully transliterating
(transcribing a letter or word into corresponding letters of a different
alphabet or language). For example, the Chinese term ‘guo rizi’ is fre-
quently used by participants in their accounts of everyday life. In this case,
I directly used pinyin (romanised Chinese) in the text and then transliter-
ated in English as ‘to pass the days to live’. This is followed by a detailed
explanation with the consideration of the context this word was given.
The rationale of combining conceptual equivalence with text equivalence
is to preserve both the reliability and the validity of the data so as to avoid
linguistic difficulties in working with multiple languages (Smith et al.,
2008; Temple & Young, 2004). When selected quotes were used to inter-
pret meanings in this research, I used quotation marks to indicate that this
is a direct quote from participants, with his/her pseudonyms being given
in order to preserve anonymity.
Structure of the Book

This book contains six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the research topic
of LATs and reviews existing studies on LATs mainly in the Western con-
text. I then reflexively examine my methodological standpoint and how
this has informed the research process during this study, including the
choice of research sites, recruitment strategies, power dynamics and data

analysis. Chapter 2 is primarily concerned with key debates that this
research has engaged in, such as those around individualisation, intimacy
and family practices. I then shift the focus to explore the specific social
context in which this research is situated and critically review the applica-
bility of the Eurocentric concept of individualisation in the Chinese
context.
Research findings around practices of agency, family and intimacy are
discussed from Chaps. 3 to 5. In Chap. 3, I consider the motivations
behind couples living apart and the interplay between agency and struc-
ture in their LATs. Inspired by Burkitt’s (2016) idea of relational agency
and Carter and Duncan’s (2018) research on differential agency in LATs,
the ways in which people’s agency in living in a desired co-residential part-
nership intersect closely with practices of gender, social norms about fam-
ily values and life stages as circumstances and contexts change. In the split
households that are a result of structural constraints, family life is essen-
tially shaped and constructed surrounding the gendered family roles and
maintained through gender inequalities. Although there is evidence of the
growth of individual reflexivity especially among the young generation in
making individual choices, the interaction and contradiction between
individualism and familism have significantly shaped the ways people
negotiate and make sense of their personal lives.
In Chap. 4, I give special attention to the group of ‘study mothers’ as
exemplars to examine how family practices are closely implicated with
regard to gender and social norms. In addition, how people engage in
family practices is also intertwined with their personal biographical experi-
ences, as they often draw on their own family life in which they grew up in
order to construct the meaning of family. Central to this case-study chap-
ter is the premise that most of the women presented in this chapter are
bound by their traditional feminine gendered habitus into a role that
entails the employment of emotional skills to do relational emotion work,
as they are (almost all) responsible for the emotional well-being of their
relationships.
In Chap. 5, I turn the focus to ‘doing’ intimacy for couples in circum-
stances that prevent them from being able to meet each other on a regular
basis. With the aid of mobile technologies, two aspects of communicating
are examined: text-messaging and virtual activities. While distance often
prevents practical care between couples, gift-giving and practices of filial
piety are noted and considered as important to maintain intimate
24 S. QIU
relationships across distance. The emotional aspect of intimacy is also dis-

cussed from both women’s and men’s perspectives.
In the Conclusion, I tie the findings together in response to the research
questions that I indicated at the beginning of this research. This leads to
my assessing the theoretical contribution that this research has made in
relation to gender and family relationships in the context of LAT. The
limitations of my research and suggestions for other, future studies in this
area are also reviewed.
References
Abbott, D., Zhi, Z., & Meredith, W. (1993). Married but living apart: Chinese
couples seeking a better life. International Journal of Sociology of the Family,
23(1), 1–10.
Arthur, S., Mitchell, M., Lewis, J., & Nicholls, C. (2014). Designing fieldwork. In
J. Ritchie, J. Lewis, C. M. N. Nicholls, & R. Ormston (Eds.), Qualitative
research practice: A guide for social science students and researchers (2nd ed.,
pp. 109–137). Sage.
Ayuso, L. (2019). What future awaits couples living apart together (LAT)? The
sociological review, 67(1), 226–244.
Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love: On the frailty of human bonds. Polity Press.
Bawin-Legros, B., & Gauthier, A. (2001). Regulation of Intimacy and Love
Semantics in Couples Living Apart Together. International Review of Sociology,
11(1), 39–46.
Beck, U., & Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2005). Individualization: Institutionalized
individualism and its social and political consequences. Sage.
Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics. (2017). 北京统计年鉴—2017 [Beijing sta-
tistical yearbook, 2017] [Online]. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from http://nj.tjj.
beijing.gov.cn/nj/main/2017-tjnj/zk/indexch.htm
Bian, Y. (1994). Work and inequality in urban China. State University of
New York press.
Bonavia, D. (1982). The Chinese. Penguin Books.
Borell, K., & Karlsson, S. G. (2003). Reconceptualizing intimacy and ageing:
Living apart together. In S. Arber, K. Davidson, & J. Ginn (Eds.), Gender and
ageing: Changing roles and relationships (pp. 47–62). Open University Press.
Brooks, A., & Hesse-Biber, S. N. (2007). An invitation to feminist research. In
S. N. HesseBiber & P. Leavy (Eds.), Feminist research practice: A primer. Sage
Publications.
Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Burkitt, I. (2016). Relational agency: relational sociology, agency and interaction.
European journal of social theory, 19(3), 322–339.
Carter, J., & Duncan, S. (2018). Reinventing couples: tradition, agency and brico-
lage. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carter, J., Duncan, S., Stoilova, M., & Phillips, M. (2016). Sex, love and security:
Accounts of distance and commitment in living apart together relationships.
Sociology, 50(3), 576–593.
Chang, H., Dong, X., & MacPhail, F. (2011). Labor migration and time use pat-
terns of the left-behind children and elderly in rural China. World Development,
Pergamon, 39(12), 2199–2210. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.WORLDDEV.
2011.05.021
Chen, F. (2005). Employment transitions and the household division of labor in
China. Social Forces, 84(2), 831–851. https://doi.org/10.1353/SOF.2006.0010
Chin, D. (2018). Everyday gender at work in Taiwan. Palgrave Macmillan.
Chiseri-Strater, E. (1996). Turning in upon ourselves: Positionality, subjectivity,
and reflexivity in case study and ethnographic research. Ethics and Representation
in Qualitative Studies of Literacy, 1, 115–133.
Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological signifi-
cance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), 14–32. https://doi.
org/10.2307/800672
Cotterill, P. (1992). Interviewing women: Issue of friendship, vulnerability, and
power. Women’s Studies International Forum, 15(5), 593–606.
Cotterill, P., & Letherby, G. (1993). Weaving stories: Personal auto/biographies
in feminist research. Sociology, 27(1), 67–79.
Coulter, R., & Hu, Y. (2017). Living Apart Together and cohabitation intentions
in Great Britain. Journal of Family Issues, 38(12), 1701–1729.
Duncan, S. (2015). Women’s agency in living apart together: Constraint, strategy
and vulnerability. The Sociological Review, 63, 589–607.
Duncan, S., & Phillips, M. (2008). New families? Tradition and change in partner-
ing and relationships. In A. Park, J. Curtice, K. Thomson, M. Phillips,
M. Johnson, & E. Clery (Eds.), British social attitudes: The 24th report
(pp. 1–28). Sage.
Duncan, S., & Phillips, M. (2010). People who live apart together (LATs) – How
different are they? The Sociological Review, 58(1), 112–134.
Duncan, S., & Phillips, M. (2011). People who live apart together (LATs): New
family form or just a stage? International Review of Sociology, 21, 513–532.
Duncan, S., Carter, J., Phillips, M., Rosenil, S., & Stoilva, M. (2013). Why do
people live apart together? Families, Relationships and Societies, 2(3), 323–338.
Duncan, S., Phillips, M., Carter, J., Rosenil, S., & Stoilva, M. (2014). Practices
and perceptions of living apart together. Family Science, 5(1), 1–10.
Eichler, M. (1997). Feminist methodology. Current Sociology, 45(2), 9–36.
Elwood, S., & Martin, D. (2000). Placing interviews: Location and scales of power
in qualitative research. The Professional Geographer, 52(4), 649–657.
26 S. QIU
England, K. (1994). Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist

research. The Professional Geographer, 46(1), 80–89.
Ermisch, J., & Seidler, T. (2009). Living apart together. In M. Brynin & J. Ermisch
(Eds.), Changing relationships (pp. 45–59). London.
Evertsson, L., & Nyman, C. (2013). On the other side of couplehood: Single
women in Sweden exploring life without a partner. Families, Relationships and
Societies, 2(1), 61–78.
Fan, C. C. (2003). Rural-urban migration and gender division of labor in transi-
tional China. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(1),
24–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00429
Fan, C. C., & Li, T. (2020). Split households, family migration and urban settle-
ment: Findings from China’s 2015 national floating population survey. Social
Inclusion, 8(1), 252–263. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v8i1.2402
Fan, C. C., Sun, M., & Zheng, S. (2011). Migration and split households: A com-
parison of sole, couple, and family migrants in Beijing, China. Environment
and Planning A, 43(9), 2164–2185. https://doi.org/10.1068/a44128
Gabb, J. (2008). Researching intimacy in families. Palgrave Macmillan.
Gerstel, N., & Gross, H. (1984). Commuter marriage: A study of work and family.
Guildford Press.
Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of intimacy. Polity press.
Glaster, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for
qualitative research. Aldine.
Gold, T., Guthrie, D., & Wank, D. (2002). Social connections in China: Institutions,
culture, and the changing nature of guanxi. Cambridge University Press.
Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough?
An experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods, 18, 59–82.
Guldner, G. T. (2003). Long distance relationships: The complete guide. J.F. Milne
Publications.
Hardling, S. (1987). Feminism and methodology. Open University Press.
Hare-Mustin, R., & Hare, S. (1986). Family change and the concept of mother-
hood in China. Journal of Family Issues, 7, 67–82.
Haskey, J. (2005). Living arrangements in contemporary Britain: Having a partner
who usually lives elsewhere and Living Apart Together (LAT). Population
Trends, 122, 35–45.
Haskey, J., & Lewis, J. (2006). Living-Apart-Together in Britain: Context and
meaning. International Journal of Law in Context, 2(1), 37–48.
He, C., & Gober, P. (2003). Gendering interprovincial migration in China.
International Migration Review, 37(4), 1220–1251. https://doi.org/10.
1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00176.x
Hesse-Biber, S. (2012). Feminist research: Exploring, interrogating, and trans-
forming the interconnections of epistemology, methodology, and method. In
S. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Handbook of feminist research: Theory and praxis

(pp. 2–26). Sage Publications.
Hesse-Biber, S. N., & Leavy, P. (2011). The practice of qualitative research. Sage.
Hoffman, L. (2008). Post-Mao professionalism: Self-enterprise and patriotism. In
L. Zhang & A. Ong (Eds.), Privatizing China: Socialism from afar
(pp. 168–181). Cornell University Press.
Holmes, M. (2004a). An equal distance? Individualisation, gender and intimacy in
distance relationships. The Sociological Review, 52(2), 180–200.
Holmes, M. (2004b). The precariousness of choice in the new sentimental order:
A response to Bawin-Legros. Current Sociology, 52(2), 251–257.
Holmes, M. (2006). Love lives at a distance: Distance relationships over the life-
course. Sociological Research Online, 11(3), 70–80. [Online]. Retrieved October
8, 2019, from http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/holmes.html
Ji, Y., & Yeung, W. J. (2014). Heterogeneity in contemporary Chinese marriage.
Journal of Family Issues, 35(12), 1662–1682.
Karlsson, S. G., & Borell, K. (2002). Intimacy and autonomy, gender and ageing:
Living apart together. Ageing International, 27(4), 11–26.
Kelly, L. (1988). Surviving sexual violence. Policy Press.
Kim, S. (2001). “Weekend couples” among Korean professionals: An ethnography
of living apart on weekdays. Korea Journal, 41(2000), 28–47.
Kobayashi, K., Funk, L., & Khan, M. (2017). Constructing a sense of commit-
ment in ‘Living Apart Together’ (LAT) relationships: Interpretive agency and
individualization. Current Sociology, 65(7), 991–1009.
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative
research interviewing. Sage.
Lampard, R. (2016). Living together in a sexually exclusive relationship: An
enduring, pervasive ideal? Families, Relationships and Societies, 5(1), 23–41.
Letherby, G. (2003). Feminist research in theory and practice. Open University Press.
Letherby, G. (2015). Gender-sensitive method/ologies. In V. Robinson &
D. Richardson (Eds.), Introducing gender and women’s studies (4th ed.,
pp. 76–94). Palgrave Macmillan.
Levin, I. (2004). Living Apart Together: A new family form. Current Sociology,
52(2), 223–240.
Levin, I., & Trost, J. (1999). Living apart together. Community, Work and Family,
2(3), 279–294.
Leyshon, M. (2002). On being ‘in the field’: Practice, progress and problems in
research with young people in rural areas. Journal of Rural Studies,
18(2), 179–191.
Liamputtong, P. (2010). Performing qualitative cross-cultural research. Cambridge
University Press.
28 S. QIU
Liaoning Provincial Bureau of Statistics. (2017). 辽宁统计年鉴—2017 [Liaoning

statistical yearbook, 2017] [Online]. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from a t:http://
tjj.ln.gov.cn/tjsj/sjcx/ndsj/otherpages/2017/indexch.htm
Liefbroer, A. C., Poortman, A., & Seltzer, J. A. (2015). Why do intimate partners
live apart? Evidence on LAT relationships across Europe. Demographic Research,
32(8), 251–286.
Liu, J. (2007). Gender and work in urban China: Women workers of the unlucky
generation. Routledge.
Mangen, S. (1999). Qualitative research methods in cross-national settings.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2(2), 109–124.
Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative researching. Sage.
Mason, M. (2010). Sample size and saturation in PhD studies using qualitative
interviews. Forum Qualitative Social Research, 11(3) [Online]. Retrieved
December 20, 2019, from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/
fqs/article/view/1428/3027
Maynard, M. (1994). Methods, practice and epistemology: The debate about
feminism and research. In M. Maynard & J. Purvis (Eds.), Researching women’s
lives from a feminist perspective (pp. 10–26). Taylor & Francis.
Milan, A., & Peters, A. (2003). Couples living apart. Canadian Social Trends. No.
69. Summer. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11-008-X.
Millen, D. (1997). Some methodological and epistemological issues raised by
doing feminist research on non-feminist women. Sociological Research Online,
2(3), 114–128. [Online]. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from http://socresonline.
org.uk/2/3/3.html
National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of
China. (2012). 中国流动人口发展报告 —2012 [Report on China’s migrant
population development 2012]. Zhongguo Renkou Chubanshe.
National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of
China. (2016). 中国流动人口发展报告 —2016 [Report on China’s migrant
population development 2016]. Zhongguo Renkou Chubanshe.
Oakley, A. (1981). Interviewing women: A contradiction in terms. In H. Roberts
(Ed.), Doing feminist research (pp. 30–61). Routledge.
Oakley, A. (2004). Response to ‘Quoting and counting: An autobiographical
response to Oakley’. Sociology 38, 191–192.
Park, S., & Lunt, N. (2015). Confucianism and qualitative interviewing: Working
Seoul to soul. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 16(2). https://doi.
org/10.17169/fqs-16.2.2166
Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Sage.
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods. 3rd ed.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Peng, X. (2011). China’s demographic history and future challenges. Science,
333(6042), 581–587. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1209396
Phillips, H. P. (1960). Problems of translation and meaning in field work. In

R. N. Adams & J. J. Preiss (Eds.), Human organisation research: Field relations
and techniques (pp. 184–192). Dorsey Press Inc.
Plummer, K. (1995). Telling sexual stories: Power, change and social worlds.
Routledge.
Qiu, S. (2022). Family practices in non-cohabiting intimate relationships in China:
Doing mobile intimacy, emotion and intergenerational caring practices.
Families, Relationships and Societies, 11(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.133
2/204674321X16468493162777
Régnier-Loilier, A., Beaujouan, E., & Villeneuve-Gokalp, C. (2009). Neither sin-
gle, nor in a couple: A study of living apart together in France. Demographic
Research, 21(4), 75–108.
Reimondos, A., Evans, E., & Gray, E. (2011). Living-apart-together (LAT) rela-
tionships in Australia. Family Matters, 87, 43–55.
Reinharz, S., & Davidman, L. (1992). Feminist methods in social research. Oxford
University Press.
Roseneil, S. (2006). On not living with a partner: Unpicking coupledom and
cohabitation. Sociological Research Online, 11(3), 111–124. [Online]. Retrieved
April 5, 2019, from http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/roseneil.html
Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing
data. Sage.
Ryan-Flood, R., & Gill, R. (2009). Secrecy and silence in the research process:
Feminist reflections. Routledge.
Scott, S. (1998). Here be dragons: Researching the unbelievable, hearing the
unthinkable. A feminist sociologist in uncharted territory. Sociological Research
Online, 3(3), 98–109. [Online]. Retrieved October 9, 2019, fromwww.socre-
sonline.org.uk/socresonline/3/3/1.html
Scott, J. (2010). Quantitative methods and gender inequalities. International
Journal of Social Research Methodology, 13(3), 223–236.
Smith, D. (1990). The conceptual practices of power: A feminist sociology of knowl-
edge. University of Toronto Press.
Smith, H., Chen, J., & Liu, X. (2008). Language and rigour in qualitative research:
Problems and principles in analyzing data collected in Mandarin. BMC Medical
Research Methodology, 8(44), 1–8.
Stanley, L. (1993). On auto/biography in sociology. Sociology, 27(1), 41–52.
Stanley, L., & Wise, S. (1990). Method, methodology and epistemology in femi-
nist research processes. In L. Stanley (Ed.), Feminist praxis: Research, theory
and epistemology in feminist sociology (pp. 20–60). Routledge.
Stanley, L., & Wise, S. (1993). Breaking out again: Feminist ontology and episte-
mology. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Stoilova, M., Roseneil, S., & Crowhurst, I. (2014). Living apart relationships in
contemporary Europe: Accounts of togetherness and apartness. Sociology,
48(6), 1075–1091.
30 S. QIU
Strohm, C. Q., Seltzer, J. A., Cochran, S. D., & Mays, V. M. (2009). Living apart
together relationships in the United States. Demographic Research, 21, 177–214.
Taylor, S. (2001). Locating and conducting discourse analytic research. In
M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. Yates (Eds.), Discourse as data: A guide for analy-
sis (pp. 5–48). Sage.
Taylor, J. (2011). The intimate insider: Negotiating the ethics of friendship when
doing insider research. Qualitative Research, 11(1), 3–22. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1468794110384447
Temple, B., & Young, A. (2004). Qualitative research and translation dilemmas.
Qualitative Research, 4(2), 161–178.
Tsui, M., & Rich, L. (2002). The only child and educational opportunity for girls
in urban China. Gender & Society, 16(1), 74–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0891243202016001005
Turcotte, M. (2013). Living apart together. [Online]. Statistics Canada. Retrieved
May 19, 2019, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/75-006-x/
2013001/article/11771-eng.pdf?st=ZoT2vOkH
Upton-Davis, K. (2015). Subverting gendered norms of cohabitation: Living
Apart Together for women over 45. Journal of Gender Studies, 24(1), 104–116.
Wolf, M. (1985). Revolution postponed: Women in contemporary China. Stanford
University Press.
Xie, Y. (2011). Evidence-based research on China: A historical imperative. Chinese
Sociological Review, 44(1), 14–25. https://doi.org/10.2753/csa2162-05
55440103
Yeung, W. J. J., & Cheung, A. K. L. (2015). Living alone: One-person households
in Asia. Demographic research, 32, 1099–1112.
Zarafonetis, N. (2017). Sexuality in a changing China: Young women, sex and
intimate relations in the reform period. Routledge.
Zhu, H., & Walker, A. (2018). The gap in social care provision for older people in
China. Asian Social Work and Policy Review, 12, 17–28.
CHAPTER 2
Detraditionalisation and Retraditionalisation

of Family Lives: Gender, Marriage
and Intimacy
Introduction
The individualisation thesis, also known as ‘detraditionlisation’, formed by
theorists within Western cultures with a long history of individualism, has
been documented and used to explain the major changes in family life. In
Western societies, recent decades have seen an increasing sociological con-
cern with change and diversity in personal relationships accompanied by a
marked decline in the popularity of marriage and the rise in heterosexual
cohabitation (Chambers, 2012). In the meantime, same-sex marriage has
grown significantly across an increasing number of Western countries
(Heaphy et al., 2013; Trandafir, 2015). Such transformations of intimacy
have been marked by the detraditionalisation of family life where the con-
trolling influence of traditional values and social ties that once bound
families together have now been lost (Beck, 2002; Giddens, 1992).
When it comes to intimate life and the broader social changes, globali-
sation is commonly understood as a complex set of processes with a global
reach in economic, structural, cultural and political terms. Jamieson
(2011) claimed that the changes in intimate relationships are closely impli-
cated in the processes of globalisation that social integration and repro-
duction are often involved in. Global intersections with the development
of communications and transportation technologies have profound
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Switzerland AG 2022
S. Qiu, Gender and Family Practices, Genders and Sexualities in the
Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17250-2_2
32 S. QIU
implications for the expansion and the growth of economic capitals and
cultural diffusion (Giddens, 2003). One consequence of globalisation is
that ‘distant events … affect us more directly and immediately than ever
before’ (Giddens, 1998: 31).
The increasing prevalence of non-conventional family relationships in
China provides an opportunity to critically engage in current sociological
debates about the Eurocentric grand theories of modernity in relation to
people’s intimate lives. In order to understand whether and to what extent
China has undergone individualisation and transformations of intimacy as
described in Western societies, in the remainder of this chapter I will
review the key theoretical discussions that this research has engaged with,
such as those around Western notions of modernity, individualisation,
intimacy and family practices. Following this, I move to review relevant
literature that informs the context within which my participants are
embedded. I particularly focus on the impact of China’s dramatic societal
and cultural transformation (including economic reform policies and the
introduction of the one-child policy) on people’s understandings and
experiences of intimate lives and family relationships. This led me to the
argument that China’s changing patterns of individualisation are unique,
in which individualism centred on personal choices is in tandem with tra-
ditional collective familism.
The Grand Theories: Modernity, Gender

and Transformations of Intimacy in the West
Since the 1990s, the sociological debate around modernity, gender and
intimacy has emerged predominantly in the West and soon gained much
attention across societies. In the Western context, Giddens (1991: 4)
claimed that modernity is a ‘post-traditional order’ (Giddens, 1991: 4) or
characterised as affected by ‘detraditionalization’ (Beck, 2002: 25–26),
leading to significant changes to intimate lives. It is argued that under the
processes of individualisation and detraditionlisation, pre-given life trajec-
tories and the social ties of kinship, which once bound people together,
have lost their control in guiding people’s everyday lives. Instead, more
emphasis has been placed on the rise of individual agency in constructing
family lives and relationships according to their own wishes (Beck & Beck-
Gernsheim, 1995; Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). From this perspective, people
have been free from externally imposed structural constraints, cultural
2 DETRADITIONALISATION AND RETRADITIONALISATION OF FAMILY… 33
customs and moral ethics. This increasing reflexivity of the self has engen-
dered a decreased value placed on romantic love and commitment, leading
to relationships becoming unstable, fluid and temporary (Bauman, 2003;
Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Beck, 2002; Giddens, 1992). These
changes have led some Western scholars to the argument that conven-
tional heterosexual relationships, that is, a married, co-resident hetero-
sexual couple with children, no longer occupy the centre position in
society (Roseneil, 2006). The emergence of diverse forms of relationships,
such as LATs, supports the notion that people are constructing a life of
their own in response to emotional and economic opportunities and
challenges.
Two different interpretations have taken shape when considering the
changes to family life that have occurred under the process of individuali-
sation within late, reflexive, second or liquid modernity. Giddens (1992)
keeps an optimistic attitude towards the democratisation of personal life
and suggests the idea of the ‘transformation of intimacy’. This is evident
in the separation of sexuality from reproduction, with ‘plastic sexuality’
being emphasised as a means of self-expression and self-actualisation. In
place of older forms of romantic love with an emphasis on lifelong com-
mitment (‘till death do us apart’), Giddens (1992: 58) then proposes an
idealised and democratic ‘pure relationship’:
A social relation which is entered into for its own sake, for what can be
derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which
is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough
satisfactions for each individual to stay within it.
In his view, ‘confluent love’, characterised as active, contingent and depen-

dent, features the ideal of the ‘pure relationship’, which is based on sexual
and emotional equality and sustained only as long as both parties are ful-
filled. Trust and a form of intimacy is established through intensive mutual
conversation and self-disclosure. Noticeably, Giddens (1992) located
women and lesbians, as well as gay men, at the forefront of this transfor-
mation, seeking more egalitarian partnerships and enjoying increased
autonomy and greater gender equality.
Under the context of a growing diversity of family forms and intimate
relationships, the traditional notion of ‘the family’ as a social institution,
which normally includes two people of the opposite sex—the breadwin-
ning husband and homemaking wife with their dependent children—has
34 S. QIU
conceivably been challenged somewhat in the face of the individualisation

thesis. David Morgan (1996, 2011) shifts the focus from the family as an
institution to a set of social practices. The idea of ‘family practices’ was
then proposed with a greater emphasis on ‘displaying’ family (Finch,
2007). As defined by Morgan (1996: 11),
the term ‘family practices’ refers to a set of practices which deal in some way
with ideas of parenthood, kinship, marriage and the expectations and obli-
gations which are associated with these practices.
With a focus on active ‘doing’ through everyday activities, rather than the
‘being’ of family, this ‘practices’ approach enables us to explore how fami-
lies are constructed and experienced in a broader social context (Gabb,
2011). One related concept in researching the complexities and diversity
of family and intimate relationships is intimacy, which refers to ‘the quality
of close connection between people and the process of building this qual-
ity’ (Jamieson, 2011). According to Jamieson (1999, 2011), ‘practices of
intimacy’ placed a greater emphasis on the ‘doing’ of intimacy, including
not only a dialectic of mutual self-discourse (Giddens, 1992), but also the
emotional sharing and performing of practical caring, which are also con-
sidered important in maintaining intimate relationships (Holmes, 2004;
Jamieson, 2011).
Late modern theories, such as Giddens’ (1992), as I discussed earlier,
tend to view changes in family life and the transformation of intimacy in a
positive way, arguing that people are entering a ‘democratic’ family situa-
tion. However, Beck (2002) are more pessimistic about the changes in
family life, arguing that the future of the family is disintegration and frag-
mentation. Under globalisation, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) argued
that lasting love is difficult to maintain because people may face more chal-
lenges to remain physically together while trying to meet the demands of
the labour market (Bauman, 2003). Relatedly it is argued, many family
members are forging experimental and creative associations out of the new
challenges and opportunities with which they are presented (Gillies, 2003:
10). As a consequence, people’s intimate relationships are becoming flim-
sier, fluid, fragile and contingent (Bauman, 2003; Beck-Gernsheim, 2002;
Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Beck, 2002). Modern social conditions
will succeed in pulling families part (Smart, 2007: 19).
While the concept of individualisation and its consequences—a democ-
ratising notion of the ‘transformation of intimacy’ (Giddens, 1992)—have
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Octagon 8 1·2071068 4·8284271 135 0 45 0
Nonagon 9 1·3737387 6·1818242 140 0 40 0
Decagon 10 1·5388418 7·6942088 144 0 36 0
16 43
Undecagon 11 1·7028436 9·3656399 147 4 32 7
11 11
Dodecagon 12 1·8660254 11·1961524 150 0 30 0
The tabular area of the corresponding polygon multiplied by the

square of the side of the given polygon, equals the area of the given
polygon.
OF ELLIPSES, CONES, FRUSTRUMS, ETC.
1. The square root of half the sum of the squares of the two
diameters of an ellipse multiplied by 3·1416 equals its
circumference.
2. The product of the two axes of an ellipse multiplied by ·7854
equals its area.
3. The curve surface of a cone is equal to half the product of the
circumference of its base multiplied by its slant side, to which, if the
area of the base be added, the sum is the whole surface.
4. The solidity of a cone equals one-third of the product of its base
multiplied by its altitude, or height.
5. The squares of the diameters of the two ends of the frustrum of
a cone added to the product of the two diameters, and that sum
multiplied by its height, and by ·2618, equals its solidity.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Vide page vi.

[2] The Articles omitted consist chiefly of directions, &c., or are
not generally required.
[3] Note. In the “Exercise and Movements.”
Commander’s Words are printed Small
in Capitals.
Executive Small print.
Directions, &c. Italics.
[4] Note.—Vide “Motion,” “Forces,” &c., Velocity, Gravity, and
Amplitude.
[5] Vide “Tables,” “Excentric Shot, Experiments.”
[6] When a shot is jammed in a gun, and cannot be rammed
home to the cartridge, destroy the charge by pouring water down
the vent, and muzzle until the ingredients are dissolved, and
cleared out of the bore; then introduce a small quantity of powder
through the vent, and blow out the shot.
[7] The recoil of guns on sleighs varies from four to five feet when
on rough ground or in deep snow; to twenty or thirty yards when
on glare ice. In the latter case it is of course necessary to send
the ammunition sleighs further to the rear; but the recoil may be
considerably lessened by placing a small chain round each of the
runners.
Ice of eight inches thick will bear with safety a weight of 1115 lb.
(or nearly half a ton) on the square foot.
[8] Old pattern.
[9] Further information relative to mixing the composition, and
filling combustibles, &c., &c., may be obtained from the “Aide
Mémoire,” under the head, “Pyrotechny, Military.”
[10] This will be discontinued when Shrapnell Diaphragm shells
are generally introduced into the Service.
[11] Vide Practice Tables for Ranges, Elevations, &c.
[12] The composition for French cannon tubes is two parts of
fulminate of mercury and two of mealed powder, mixed together:
then formed into a paste with distilled water, slightly impregnated
with gum arabic.
[13] Extracted from “Instructions and Regulations for Field Battery
Exercise and Movements” for the Royal Regiment of Artillery: the
Sections, &c., being similarly numbered.
Commander’s Words are printed Small
in Capitals.
Executive Common type.
Directions, &c. Italics.
[14] The Sections, of which merely the heads are given, consist
chiefly of details too long for the limited size of the Manual, and
they are therefore necessarily omitted.
[15] When Guns are in action, and “cease firing” is given, all
Guns then loaded are to be fired off, and on no account is a Gun
to be limbered up, or to move whilst loaded.
[16] The Commanding officer’s Word of command is always to be
repeated by the officers.
[17] From “Field Battery Exercise.”
[18] From “Field Battery Exercise,” &c.
[19] From “Field Battery Exercise,” &c.
[20] In the transport of horses to Turkey (July, 1854,) in the
Himalaya and Simla steamers, the distance between the upright
posts was 2 feet 1 inch in the clear per horse, and the length 9
feet.
[21] “For the guidance of the Farriers of the Royal Artillery.
Suggested by Charles Percival, Veterinary Surgeon; and
approved of by the Right Honourable the Master-General, and
Honourable Board of Ordnance.”
[22] In administering draughts to horses, the greatest possible
care and attention are required; should the horse cough, or make
an attempt to do so, his head must be instantly lowered,
otherwise a portion of the drink will be apt to find its way into the
trachea or windpipe, which will produce most distressing
symptoms, and often be followed by death. In lowering the head,
a can or vessel of any kind should be held under the mouth to
catch the drink as it escapes.
[23] From “Instructions for the Service of Heavy
Ordnance.”—Article 15.
[24] Words of command—small capitals.
[25] From “Instructions, and Regulations for the Service, and
Management of Heavy Ordnance, for the Royal Regiment of
Artillery.” Fourth edition. The Parts, and Articles are numbered in
conformity thereto.
[26] Words of command—small capitals.
[27] Vide Part 12, “Artillerist’s Manual,” etc., The Mechanical
powers. The Lever.
[28] By the ballistic experiment, conducted in May, 1837, it was
found that, with a heavy 6-pounder gun, a charge of 1½ lb. gave a
velocity of 1740 feet, and a charge of 2 lb. a velocity of 1892 feet
per second. The shot employed were of a high gauge, windage
only ·078 inch, and the powder was of the strongest quality; the
weight of the pendulum fired into was 58 cwt. 3 qrs. 16 lb. A light
6-pounder, two feet shorter than the heavy 6-pounder, with similar
charges, gave velocities of about 190 feet less.
[29] Extracted from Part 2, and Appendix of General Sir Howard
Douglas’ highly valued work, entitled “A Treatise on Naval
Gunnery.” 3rd edition.
[30] On wads for Heavy Ordnance.
The presence of a compressible body, between the powder and
the ball, is necessary for the preservation of the gun. The results
of the experiments at Fere, in 1844; at Ruelle in 1844, and 1846;
and at Gavres in 1848; with cast iron 30, and 24-pounders,
proved that all the pieces, fired without a thin piece of cork
interposed between the powder and the ball, burst before 500
discharges were made; whilst those, with which this precaution
was taken, sustained 1800 and 2000 discharges without any
damage, except an enlargement of the vent. Vide United Service
Magazine, September, 1855.
[31] Vide “Treatise on Naval Gunnery.” 3rd Edition. By General
Sir H. Douglas.
[32] In Extreme training of a gun to the Right: Nos. 3, 5, 7, 11, 13,
are placed outside; Nos. 8, 6, inside the tackle. No. 13 keeps the
end of the fall coiled up.
In Extreme training to the Left: Nos 4, 6, 8, 2, are placed outside;
Nos. 13, 7, 5, inside the tackle. No. 2 keeps the end of the fall
coiled up.
[33] In running out the right guns, Nos. 3, 5, 5, 7, man the left
tackle; Nos. 4, 6, 6, 2, man the right tackle.
In running out the left guns, Nos. 3, 5, 7, 5, man the left tackle;
Nos. 4, 6, 6, 2, man the right tackle.
[34] Note.—When the direction of the gun is to be altered, the
word “Traverse” is to be given, if the gun is in, and “Point,” when
the gun is out.
[35] Vide Sir Howard Douglas’s highly-valued publication, entitled
“A Treatise on Naval Gunnery.” Fourth edition.
[36] Vide—“United Service Magazine,” No. CCCVIII.
[37] Vide Field Fortification, pages 246, 247.
[38] Vide Preface.
[39] For a square, the length of the perpendicular is ⅛th the
exterior side; for a pentagon ⅐ th; for the hexagon, and other
polygons, ⅙th.
[40] Vide Tables of Weights, and Measures.
[41] Vide Tables of Weights, and Measures.
[42] In reducing fractions to a common denominator, and in
multiplication of fractions, the work may be considerably
diminished by cancelling any figures, which are in all the
multiples; or by dividing a figure in each of them by any figure
which can divide all without any remainder.
[43] See Note, page 268.
[44] To multiply decimals by 1, with any number of ciphers, as 10,
100, &c.—This is done by only removing the decimal point so
many places farther to the right hand, as there are ciphers in the
multiplier, and subjoining ciphers, if need be.
[45] The best way of doubling the root, to form the new divisor, is
by adding the last figure always to the last divisor, as appears in
the following example.
After the figures belonging to the given number are all exhausted,
the operation may be continued into decimals, by adding any
number of periods of ciphers, two in each period.
[46] This rule is only applicable to the very best-made new
cordage. The circumference squared should be divided by 6
instead of 5 for the description of rope generally employed.
[47] When the board is tapering, add the breadths at the two ends
together, and take half the sum for the mean breadth. Or else,
take the mean breadth in the middle.
[48] To strengthen a beam, &c. which is required to support a
great weight over a cavity, or ditch.—Place a prop, or short skid,
under the centre of the beam, and pass a strong rope, or chain,
over the beam lengthways, and under the skid, hauling it very
tight, and making fast.
[49] In Lieut.-Colonel B. Jackson’s scientific “Treatise on Military
Surveying, &c., &c., &c.,” Portable trigonometry without
logarithms, is thus introduced—
“The following useful application of Trigonometry, by means of the
natural sines, tangents, &c., is taken from an early number of that
valuable periodical, ‘The Mechanics’ Magazine,’ and will be found
particularly suited to the purposes of the military surveyor.”
[50] For further information on Surveying, and Reconnoitring,
reference should be made to the highly-valued publication,
entitled “A Treatise on Military Surveying, including
Sketching in the Field, Plan Drawing, Levelling, Military
Reconnoissance, &c.,” by Lieut.-Colonel Basil Jackson,
containing a full account of every surveying instrument, and the
right adaptation of them.
[51] 1. The Reconnoitring protractor is not intended to supply the
place of the Theodolite, or other expensive instruments, when
very great accuracy is required in surveying, or in trigonometrical
observations; but, in the hands of officers accustomed to the use
of it, bearings may be rapidly taken, heights and distances
ascertained, roads traversed, &c., &c., with sufficient accuracy for
a military survey, or reconnoissance.
The protractor has a tripod, on which it is to be steadily fixed for
taking angles, &c.; but the instrument can nevertheless be used
without the tripod; and mounted officers may, after a little practice,
make a reconnoissance with the protractor alone, especially if
they are able to measure, or calculate the distance of base lines,
by the length of the paces of their horses.
2. A survey, &c., may be very rapidly taken in the field, by laying
drawing-paper on the face of the protractor, under the marginal
scale, fixing it firmly by means of drawing-pins in the sides, and
using, at the first station, the edge of the index as a ruler to set off
on the paper, at once, by observation through the sights, the
angles of the objects whose distance is required; drawing a base
line parallel to the tube side of the instrument, and also lines at
the angles found. At the second station, the paper must be moved
a few inches, for a base line to be drawn; at the termination of
which (the second station) the index is to be directed to the
objects, as before, and lines are to be produced until they
intersect those drawn at the first station: thus the position of the
objects will be obtained; and, by using the scale on the index for
the length drawn for the measured base line, as well as for the
lines directed to the objects, their respective distances will be
ascertained.
3. The reconnoitring protractor, and all other instruments for
surveying, &c., &c. can be readily obtained from Messrs. Elliott,
56, Strand, London.
[52] Or Reconnoitring protractor.
[53] To erect a perpendicular, vide “Practical Geometry.”
[54]
3 inch cube full of air floats 1 lb. in water.
3 inch cube of water weighs 1 lb. in air.
1 cubic foot of water weighs 64 lb. in air.
1 ditto coal ditto 80 - 64 = 16 in water.
1 ditto sand ditto 95 - 64 = 31 in water.
A suit of clothes and a pair of boots, which weigh 7 lb. in air, when
well saturated with water, only weigh in water 1 lb.
[55] Vide also Definitions—Trigonometry, page 301.
[56] Gunter’s chain is in length 4 poles = 22 yards = 66 feet, and
is divided into 100 links. Each link is therefore 22 of a yard, or
100
66 of a foot, or 7·92 inches. Land is estimated in acres, roods,
100
and perches. An acre contains 10 square chains, or as much as
10 chains in length and 1 chain in breadth; or in yards it is 220 ×
22 = 4840; or in poles it is 40 × 4 = 160 square poles; or in links it
is 1000 × 100 = 100,000 square links. An acre is divided into 4
parts called roods, and a rood into 40 parts called perches, which
are square poles, or the square of a pole of 5½ yards long, or the
square of a quarter of a chain, or of 25 links, which is 625 links.
Thus the divisions of land measure are—
625 square links = 1 pole, or perch.
40 perches = 1 rood.
4 roods = 1 acre.
The length of lines, measured with a chain, should be set down in
links as integers, instead of in chains, and decimals. Therefore,
after the content is found, it will be in square links.
[57] 57·3 is the number of pounds of powder contained in a cubic
foot, when shaken; and 55 pounds when not shaken. According
to the first case, one pound of powder will occupy 30 cubic
inches; and according to the second case one pound will occupy
31·4182 cubic inches.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET
AND CHARING CROSS.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Footnote [37] is referenced six times from page 237;
footnote [52] is referenced twice from page 311;
footnote [54] is referenced four times from pages 317 and page 318.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after
careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of
external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a
predominant preference was found in the original book.
Some { bracketing in some tables has been adjusted or removed for readability.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and
inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg viii: page number ‘8’ replaced by ‘48’.
Pg xvi: Added new section ‘CONGREVE ROCKETS.’ to the ToC.
Pg xviii: ‘Embrasures’ replaced by ‘Embrazures’.
Pg xxi: ‘312, 313, 314’ replaced by ‘312–4’.
Pg 61: ‘thirty ronnds of’ replaced by ‘thirty rounds of’.
Pg 69: in the table header ‘Fore | Diameter’ replaced by ‘Fore | Hind’.
Pg 72: in second column of the table ‘3¾’ replaced by ‘2¾’.
Pg 80: ‘4⅗ inch Mortar’ replaced by ‘4⅖ inch Mortar’.
Pg 85: in the table ‘5½ in c’ replaced by ‘5½ inch’.
Pg 91: in LEVERS section ‘lb. oz.’ replaced by ‘ft. in.’
Pg 171: in the table ‘1’ replaced by ‘10’.
Pg 171: in the table ‘1209’ replaced by ‘1200’.
Pg 176: ‘to facilite the’ replaced by ‘to facilitate the’.
Pg 187: ‘assist 2 at’ replaced by ‘assists 2 at’.
Pg 195: ‘at an elevavation’ replaced by ‘at an elevation’.
Pg 222: ‘a longe range’ replaced by ‘a long range’.
Pg 226: ‘they ricoched and’ replaced by ‘they ricocheted and’.
Pg 226: the italic markup on the small table has been removed.
Pg 227: ‘the same is in’ replaced by ‘the same as in’.
Pg 234: ‘left betweeen the’ replaced by ‘left between the’.
Pg 235: ‘placed at tho top’ replaced by ‘placed at the top’.
Pg 238: ‘embrasures should be’ replaced by ‘embrazures should be’.
Pg 291: ‘(5 × 1)’ replaced by ‘(5 + 1)’.
Pg 318: the footnote in the original book ‘See note, p. 317’ was redundant and
has been removed.
Pg 320: ‘is is a’ replaced by ‘it is a’.
Footnote [7]: ‘to five eet’ replaced by ‘to five feet’.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
ARTILLERIST'S MANUAL AND BRITISH SOLDIER'S
COMPENDIUM ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in
these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it
in the United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of
this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept
and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and
may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the
terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of
the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as
creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research.
Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given
away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with
eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject
to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or
any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and

Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree
to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from
the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in
paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people
who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a
few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic
works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.
See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with
Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in
the United States and you are located in the United States, we do
not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing,
performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the
work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of
course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely
sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name
associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of
this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its
attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without
charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the
United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms
of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying,
performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this
work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes
no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in
any country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™
work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or
with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is
accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived

from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a
notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright
holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the
United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must
comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted
with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of
this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a
part of this work or any other work associated with Project
Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you
provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work
in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in
the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe
and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating
the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may
be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to,
incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a
copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except

for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph
1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner
of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party
distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this
agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and
expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO
REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF
WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE
FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you

discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it,
you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by
sending a written explanation to the person you received the work
from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must
return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity
that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a
replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work
electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to
give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in
lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may
demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted
by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the
Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability,
costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur:
(a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project
Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.
It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and
donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a
secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help,
see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

(Download PDF) Gender and Family Practices Living Apart Together Relationships in China Shuang Qiu Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Download PDF) Gender and Family Practices Living Apart Together Relationships in China Shuang Qiu Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Download PDF) Gender and Family Practices Living Apart Together Relationships in China Shuang Qiu Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gender and Family Practices: Living

Apart Together Relationships in China

Romanian Transnational Families: Gender, Family

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (Fifth Edition) (Vol.

The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (Fifth Edition) (Vol. 2)

Living Better Together: Social Relations and Economic

Future politics : living together in a world

Family Business in China, Volume 2: Challenges and

Gender and Family

Gender and Family

ISSN 2947-8782 ISSN 2947-8790 (electronic)

Cover illustration: Danita Delimont Creative / Alamy Stock Photo

I am deeply grateful for many people who helped me in different ways at

thankful. I also acknowledge the patience and assistance of the Palgrave

Qiu, S. (2020). Chinese ‘study mothers’ in living apart together (LAT)

1 Understanding ‘Living Apart Together’ (LAT) Relationships 1

3 Reconsidered Agency: Why Do People Live Apart? 65

Shuang Qiu is a lecturer in Sociology based in the School of Social,

Table 2.1 Marriage patterns in China, Hong Kong, Japan and

Understanding ‘Living Apart Together’

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Couples in non-cohabiting intimate relationships have also gained

knowledge gap on what we know about LAT in China, these findings

What Is an LAT Relationship and Why Does

have diverse effects on different aspects of people’s personal relationships

intimacy in non-conventional partnerships are worthy of sociology exami-

Who Lives Apart from Their Partner and Why?

based on both quantitative and qualitative data, indicate an interesting

Is LAT a New Family Form or a Temporary Stage?

same time continue with their pre-existing commitments, such as respon-

personal life and relationships, compared to married people, cohabitants

In addition, caring and connections sometimes cannot be regarded as

Researching People in LATs in China

on collaborative and participatory methodologies (Eichler, 1997;

of the responsibility of representing the voices of all participants, rather

Approaching LAT People

cities. Liaoning Province, located in northeast China with a per capita

Reflexivity, Power Dynamics and Positionality

Because you’re not a mother, so you might be unlikely to understand our

In recognition of people’s intimate life experiences being involved dur-

dynamics occurred in different ways when interviewing some of the male

Getting Familiar with the Data and Data Analysis

Structure of the Book

choice of research sites, recruitment strategies, power dynamics and data

relationships across distance. The emotional aspect of intimacy is also dis-

England, K. (1994). Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist

S. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Handbook of feminist research: Theory and praxis

Liaoning Provincial Bureau of Statistics. (2017). 辽宁统计年鉴—2017 [Liaoning

Phillips, H. P. (1960). Problems of translation and meaning in field work. In

Detraditionalisation and Retraditionalisation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

The Grand Theories: Modernity, Gender

In his view, ‘confluent love’, characterised as active, contingent and depen-

conceivably been challenged somewhat in the face of the individualisation

The tabular area of the corresponding polygon multiplied by the

OF ELLIPSES, CONES, FRUSTRUMS, ETC.

[1] Vide page vi.

1 Understanding ‘Living Apart Together’ (LAT) Relationships 1

3 Reconsidered Agency: Why Do People Live Apart? 65

Table 2.1 Marriage patterns in China, Hong Kong, Japan and