Intimate Utopias: anti-politics in Chinese civil society

Can civil society offer alternative modes of sociality in an authoritarian political regime? Drawing on a study on small “voluntary fellowships” in China, we explore the anti-political values of a specific type of group whose members share a moral code of “civic intimacy” that values an idealized social condition of free, pure and caring social relations, and dream of achieving this utopian condition not through political activism but through the immediate realization of authentic relations of emotional intimacy. Thus, we offer the case of “intimate utopias” as an invitation to question a normative framework prevalent in discourses on civil society that privileges the political consciousness and activism of voluntary associations and ignores or dismisses other motivations and modes of sociality. We draw on Alexander’s Civil Sphere Theory to analyze the moral codes of small groups seen as micro-civil spheres, in which the group builds its identity by expressing, enacting and maintaining its boundaries against a “profane” world of instrumental and political social relations. Our materials lead us to propose a model of Chinese civil sphere dynamics that is diffuse, pluralistic, and centrifugal.