ABSTRACT

Chapter 2 investigates the understudied group of rural dama (middle-aged or old women, or, in general, married women) in China’s urbanization process. Rural dama are usually the “left-behind” group in China’s modernization process, although their labor and social participation has played an important role in China’s rural development. Their inferior position in both socioeconomic and cultural practices, however, has been restructured in the urbanization process. This study uses interviews with relocated villagers who were resettled following land development and urban sprawl in Ningxia, Northwest China. Interviews suggest that dama are not only defined by their age and marital status but also that they feel a sense of being socially useless. These women were deprived of their rural multitasking and mediating roles under the urban economy and governance. Lacking necessary human and cultural capital to navigate their city lives, these women faced low-end or short-term jobs and limited social circles, whereas men and young women tried to distance themselves from this “lagging” group. These women were often considered unattractive and unproductive, and their control over family property and children’s life plans declined due to new urban uncertainties. Living at the margins of the city and estranged in family power dynamics, they were trapped between rural nostalgia and the urban dream. Their “otherness” was not new in the patriarchal countryside, but they were further marginalized under new institutions and trends such as urban consumerism. As urbanization reshapes economic activities, family relations and social lives, dama face new forms of social marginality when the city comes closer.