Suowei Xiao is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia and an Associate Professor of Sociology in her home institute, Beijing Normal University, China. She is the author of Desire and Dignity: Class, Gender, and Intimacy in Transitional China and a number of articles on gender, intergenerational relations, family change, and class formation

Suowei Xiao’s research interest includes gender, family and migration. Her current research project examines the rise of paid care and its impact on family dynamics in contemporary China. She has also worked on projects concerning intergenerational collaboration in childrearing, parenting in rural-to-urban migrant families and “the second-wife” phenomenon in reform-era China as well as gendered differences in settlement orientations among Chinese immigrants in the U.S.

Books:

Xiao, Suowei. 2018. Desire and Dignity: Class, Gender in Intimacy in Transitional China (in Chinese,《欲望与尊严：转型期中国的阶层、性别与亲密关系》). Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press.

About Desire and Dignity: Class, Gender in Intimacy in Transitional China
This book provides a nuanced and richly textured study of the transformation of gender, class, and intimacy in post-socialist China by looking at the contemporary second-wife phenomenon (mistress arrangements of married from varying social classes). Drawing upon one-year ethnographic fieldwork in coastal China, it illuminates the ways in which extramarital intimacy has become a key venue to achieve “dignity” in the changing discourses of individual “desire”.

Articles and Book Chapters:

Zhou, Zepeng and Suowei Xiao. 2022. Experiencing Authenticity：The Sociability and Double Life of Migrant Youth in Beijing (in Chinese), Chinese Journal of Sociology (《社会》), (4): 104-133

Xiao, Suowei. 2021. Intimate Power: Intergenerational Cooperation and Conflicts among Urban Families, in Chinese Families Upside Down: Intergenerational Dynamics and Neo-Familism in the Early 21st Century, edited by Yunxiang Yan, Leiden and Boston: Brills.

Xiao, Suowei and Chaoping Tang. 2021. Juggling Motherhood: The Negotiation of Mothering in Rural-to-Urban Migration in China (in Chinese), Collections of Women’s Studies (《妇女研究论丛》), (3): 66-83

Xiao, Suowei and Yilun Jian. 2020. Care Work and Social Inequality: Feminist Scholarship and its Implications for China(in Chinese), Collections of Women’s Studies (《妇女研究论丛》), (5): 12-27

Lin, Huilin and Suowei Xiao. 2020. Factory as Living Room: A Case Study of Subcontracting Shoe Factory in Southeast China (in Chinese), Sociological Review of China (《社会学评论》)(5): 50-60

Liu, Yuting and Suowei Xiao. 2020. “Serving the Clients as Caring for One’s Family, While in Daily Interaction It’s Better to Keep oneself as an Outsider”: Emotional Labor and the Maintenance of Client Relations among Domestic Workers in Urban China (in Chinese), Collections of Women’s Studies (《妇女研究论丛》), (4): 73-87

Xiao, Suowei and Cong Guan. 2018. Emotional Buffering, Middle-person Mediation and Formalized Democracy: Mechanisms of Intergenerational Coordination In Multi-generational Families (in Chinese), Sociological Review of China (《社会学评论》)(5): 28-38

Xiao, Suowei. 2016. “No One Knows What’s Gonna Happen Tomorrow”: Mistress Arrangement and the Emotional Dislocation of Rural Women in Urban China. Issues & Studies: A Social Science Quarterly on China, Taiwan, and East Asian Affairs, 52(1):1-28

Xiao, Suowei. 2016. Intimate power: the intergenerational cooperation and conflicts in childrearing among urban families in contemporary China. The Journal of Chinese Sociology, 3:18（http://www.journalofchinesesociology.com/content/3/1/18）