“To Be a Little More Realistic”: The Ethical Labour of Suspension among Nightclub Hostesses in Southeast China

This article explores the “ethical labour” of suspension––the conscious effort of deferring one’s ethical judgement and reflections in order to avoid irreconcilable ethical conflicts between one’s present activities and long-term goals. While people engage in ethical judgement and reflections in everyday social interactions, it is the laborious aspect of regulating one’s ethical dispositions that I highlight in the concept of “ethical labour.” Although it cannot be directly commodified, ethical labour is a form of labour as it consumes energy and is integral to the performance of other forms of labour, particularly intimate and emotional ones. This formulation of ethical labour draws on my long-term ethnographic research with a group of young women migrants working as hostesses in high-end nightclubs in southeast China. Many of them perform socially stigmatized work with the goal of contributing to their family and saving money for a dignified life in the future. Ethical labour is essential to their hostess work because it enables them to juggle multiple affective relationships and defer the fundamental ethical conflict. They express ethical labour through the phrase “to be a little more realistic,” making sure that they obtain what they want at a particular moment. But ethical labour does not simply mean pushing ethical questions aside. It is sustained by conscious effort and is overshadowed by fears of ageing and failure to achieve long-term life goals. Prolonged ethical labour often fails to resolve ethical conflict and may intensify one’s stress. My analysis of these women migrants’ situation contributes to the sex-as-work debate regarding women’s agency in work and their subjection to exploitation.

“要现实一点儿”：中国东南部夜场小姐悬浮下的伦理劳动

关键词：伦理劳动, 流动性, 情绪劳动, 小姐, 性工作, 性别, 中国。

本文探讨了悬浮的“伦理劳动”， 即为避免个人当下活动和长期目标之间无法弥合的伦理冲突而有意识地推迟自己的伦理判断和反思的努力。虽然人们在日常社会互动中总是会进行伦理判断和反思，但我在“伦理劳动”这个概念中突出的是在对自我的伦理倾向进行规制时艰辛费力的一面。尽管伦理劳动不能被直接商品化，但它也是一种劳动形式，因为它消耗能量，并且整合于其他形式的——特别是亲密关系和情绪的——劳动中。我对伦理劳动的建构是以对中国东南沿海地区一群在高级夜场服务的年轻外来务工女性进行的长期民族志方法研究为基础的。她们中间很多人从事被社会污名化的工作，目标是为家庭做贡献以及为未来能过上有尊严的生活而积蓄钱财。对于她们做夜场女郎来说，伦理劳动至关重要，因为它能够帮助她们同时应对多种情感性关系，并推迟根本性的伦理矛盾。 通过确保她们能在某一特定时刻得到她们想要的， 她们用“要现实一点儿”的说法来表达伦理劳动。但是伦理劳动并不简单意味着将伦理问题彻底抛开。它需要通过有意识的努力来维持，并且被对衰老和无法成功实现长期生活目标的恐惧所笼罩。持久的伦理劳动通常也并不能解决伦理冲突，还可能加剧个人承受的压力。本文对她们处境的分析对围绕着女性能动性以及她们遭受剥削所进行的关于“性作为工作”的讨论有所贡献。

Translated from English by Li Guo