TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards a Chinese Hip-hop Feminism and a Feminist Reassessment of Hip-hop with Breakdance
T2 - B-girling in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China
AU - Chew, Matthew Ming-tak
AU - Mo, Sophie Pui Sim
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by a Faculty Research Grant (Grant No. FRG2/14-15/071) from the Hong Kong Baptist University. We thank the b-girls and b-boys who provided us with valuable information for this article.
PY - 2019/9
Y1 - 2019/9
N2 - Based on data collected through interviewing b-girls (breakdancing girls) and participant observation of b-girling, we analyse gender inequalities confronting women who practise breakdancing in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, document these women’s struggles against gender inequality, and illustrate that these inequalities and struggles differ somewhat from those found in the US context and even from those found in studies of women who practise rap music. We outline the contours of a Chinese hip-hop feminism and suggest adopting it to investigate the local specificities of hip-hop-based gender politics in Chinese societies. We find that culture is a key part of the matrix of domination on which Chinese hip-hop-based gender politics focuses, but that racism is not. We discuss how such local specificities pose difficulties for the internationalisation of hip-hop feminism. We also construct a tentative signpost for understanding how a feminist assessment of hip-hop based on research on breaking differs from that based on research on rap. The signpost, which sums up the central findings of current studies and the present one, is “remaking hip-hop, redoing gender”: the remaking of hip-hop in a way that is fairer for women and the redoing of gender by b-girls for themselves, their audiences and society at large.
AB - Based on data collected through interviewing b-girls (breakdancing girls) and participant observation of b-girling, we analyse gender inequalities confronting women who practise breakdancing in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, document these women’s struggles against gender inequality, and illustrate that these inequalities and struggles differ somewhat from those found in the US context and even from those found in studies of women who practise rap music. We outline the contours of a Chinese hip-hop feminism and suggest adopting it to investigate the local specificities of hip-hop-based gender politics in Chinese societies. We find that culture is a key part of the matrix of domination on which Chinese hip-hop-based gender politics focuses, but that racism is not. We discuss how such local specificities pose difficulties for the internationalisation of hip-hop feminism. We also construct a tentative signpost for understanding how a feminist assessment of hip-hop based on research on breaking differs from that based on research on rap. The signpost, which sums up the central findings of current studies and the present one, is “remaking hip-hop, redoing gender”: the remaking of hip-hop in a way that is fairer for women and the redoing of gender by b-girls for themselves, their audiences and society at large.
KW - b-girling
KW - breakdance
KW - breaking
KW - Chinese hip-hop
KW - gender
KW - global hip-hop
KW - Hip-hop feminism
KW - sociology of popular culture
UR - https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/casr/2019/00000043/00000003/art00007
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068561117&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10357823.2019.1631256
DO - 10.1080/10357823.2019.1631256
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85068561117
SN - 1035-7823
VL - 43
SP - 455
EP - 474
JO - Asian Studies Review
JF - Asian Studies Review
IS - 3
ER -