The politics of kitchen work: Co-production of a retired man's "hegemonic masculinity" during the COVID-19 quarantine.

ABSTRACT

This article documents the reconstructed domestic masculinity of a retired Chinese man during the COVID-19 quarantine period in China. It is based on participant observation of the man and his family as a case study. It demonstrates how the man turns kitchen work into a "masculine" job, and uses it as a contested terrain for constructing hegemonic masculinity by adopting scientific discourse explicitly and traditional patriarchal discourse implicitly. It also highlights women's conscious and deliberate interactions with the man in contributing to the making of hegemonic masculinity for the sake of their own values of happiness. The author seeks an understanding of the intersection of aging, patriarchal norms, and women's agency through the case of the co-production of a retired man's hegemonic masculinity in the context of the COVID-19 quarantine.