Beauty and status: Matching and exchange within Chinese marriages

IF 1.4 4区社会学 Q2 SOCIOLOGY

社会 Pub Date : 2023-07-01 DOI:10.1177/2057150X231189027

Qi Xu, Xiuming Pan

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Status exchange in marriage refers to a marriage pattern in which one spouse compensates for his or her disadvantage in one status area relative to the other spouse with an advantage in another. Two prominent examples of marriage exchange discussed in the existing literature are race–status exchange and beauty–status exchange. Although the marriage exchange theory is well supported by early studies, in recent years, its applicability has been questioned by some scholars. Protracted debates on the topic in question were launched in two top sociological journals, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology. This study reviews these debates and offers an in-depth theoretical investigation into the relationship between matching and exchange, and the premise of marriage exchange theory. In addition, we collect and analyze the data from the five waves of the China Family Panel Studies (2010–2018) on beauty–status exchanges and other forms of marriage exchanges in China. We found little evidence of beauty–status exchanges in Chinese marriages and even the well-assumed exchange of “woman's beauty for man's talent” lacks sound empirical support. However, there are ample evidences of exchanges among the four status factors of education, occupation, income, and family background. As indicators of socioeconomic status, these four variables are homogeneous in nature, and therefore can more easily substitute for one another. We argue that the validity of marriage exchange theory depends on the similarity or substitutability between the elements in exchange. Thus, we can neither completely accept nor reject the marriage exchange theory.

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美丽与地位：中国婚姻中的匹配与交换

婚姻中的地位交换是指一方以另一方的优势弥补其在一个地位领域的劣势的婚姻模式。现有文献中讨论的婚姻交换的两个突出例子是种族-地位交换和美丽-地位交换。尽管婚姻交换理论在早期的研究中得到了很好的支持，但近年来，它的适用性受到了一些学者的质疑。两本顶级社会学杂志《美国社会学评论》和《美国社会杂志》就这一主题展开了旷日持久的辩论。本研究回顾了这些争论，并对匹配与交换之间的关系以及婚姻交换理论的前提进行了深入的理论研究。此外，我们收集并分析了中国家庭小组研究（2010-2018）中关于中国美貌-地位交换和其他形式婚姻交换的五波数据。我们发现，在中国婚姻中，几乎没有证据表明美貌与地位的交换，甚至“女人的美貌与男人的才华”的交换也缺乏可靠的实证支持。然而，有充分的证据表明，教育、职业、收入和家庭背景这四个地位因素之间存在着交流。作为社会经济地位的指标，这四个变量本质上是同质的，因此可以更容易地相互替代。我们认为，婚姻交换理论的有效性取决于交换要素之间的相似性或可替代性。因此，我们既不能完全接受也不能拒绝婚姻交换理论。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

社会 Social Sciences-Social Sciences (all)

CiteScore

1.70

自引率

0.00%

发文量

6799

期刊介绍： The Chinese Journal of Sociology is a peer reviewed, international journal with the following standards: 1. The purpose of the Journal is to publish (in the English language) articles, reviews and scholarly comment which have been judged worthy of publication by appropriate specialists and accepted by the University on studies relating to sociology. 2. The Journal will be international in the sense that it will seek, wherever possible, to publish material from authors with an international reputation and articles that are of interest to an international audience. 3. In pursuit of the above the journal shall: (i) draw on and include high quality work from the international community . The Journal shall include work representing the major areas of interest in sociology. (ii) avoid bias in favour of the interests of particular schools or directions of research or particular political or narrow disciplinary objectives to the exclusion of others; (iii) ensure that articles are written in a terminology and style which makes them intelligible, not merely within the context of a particular discipline or abstract mode, but across the domain of relevant disciplines.