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  • The ethos of self-optimization calls on people to imagine a desirable future state of existence and to approach this desired state by adjusting aspects of their everyday lives. This ethos depends on a specific capacity for fantasy. Therefore, this article argues that the concept of self-optimization applies not only to entrepreneurial self-making but also to consumer lifestyles and that it provides a useful critical lens for investigating cultural constructions of labor, leisure, and desire. China has been depicted a place inimical to fantasy, where dreams are denied by social and political pressures. However, in today's China personal dreams symbolize modern subjectivity. Drawing on ethnographic and textual research on self-help psychology in China, this article traces links between self-optimization and various actors, including entrepreneurs, marketers, activists, and authors, who are teaching Chinese youth to craft explicit visions of their ideal life. The article contextualizes projects of self-optimization within China's exploding consumer culture, and in a society where markets are entangled with interpersonal networks and encompassed by state policies. Within these constraints, the logic of self-optimization shapes modest and often commodified pursuits of the good life. (xsd:string)
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?:dateModified
  • 2024 (xsd:gyear)
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  • 2024 (xsd:gyear)
?:doi
  • 10.12759/hsr.49.2024.31 ()
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  • en (xsd:string)
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  • 0172-6404 ()
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  • 3 (xsd:string)
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  • Practical Daydreams: Self-Optimization through Consumer Lifestyles in China (xsd:string)
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  • Zeitschriftenartikel (xsd:string)
  • journal_article (en)
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  • GESIS-SSOAR (xsd:string)
  • In: Historical Social Research, 49, 2024, 3, 238-268 (xsd:string)
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  • 49 (xsd:string)