Exchanging Love: College Student Gifts in the Age of Consumption Socializing

Du Jiabing, trainee reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network

Just establish a relationship, the lover will give you a mobile phone as a gift, will you accept it?

Every holiday and anniversary, do you and your lover exchange gifts?

Do you feel lost when you prepare a handmade gift that your lover receives with a mediocre response?

Every step you make here can become evidence of sociological research. In fact, gifts are an important part of the formation and maintenance of social relations, and they are also a classic topic in the field of sociological and anthropological research. What chemistry happens when the sublime theme of love collides with the economic logic of gifts?

Over the past year, Northwestern University's Dawei Liu research team surveyed and interviewed dozens of college students who had been studying and graduating for less than a year, studying the gift exchange behavior and its symbolic significance at different times of love.

Liu Dawei believes that it is in the uninterrupted gift and acceptance that the love relationship can be produced. He proposed the concept of "managing love"—although management is a rational calculation and love is an emotional impulse, such a pair of tension-filled concepts put together just explains the mode of production of couple relations in the era of consumerism.

Courtesy of Visual China

Gifts are "expressive" as well as "instrumental"

Xiaohe had just established a relationship when her boyfriend gave her a mobile phone. The two have just started dating, everything is still uncertain, she feels that the gift is too expensive, so she is reluctant to accept it. But the boyfriend's attitude is resolute, saying that if he doesn't accept it, he will throw away the phone. Xiao He accepted it uneasily, turned around and went to his family to borrow money, and turned the mobile phone money to his boyfriend.

This is one of the cases investigated by Liu Dawei's team. Their research found that in the early stages of a relationship, although the passion of hot love still dominates, the lack of understanding in a short time together still brings uncertainty to the relationship. Unsure of whether the relationship can be maintained over time, the recipient will avoid the tendency to "owe" — that is, to give a gift that is roughly equal, or to reject the gift outright.

Anthropologist Yan Yunxiang divides gifts into "instrumental" and "expressive", instrumental gifts focus on the value of gifts as objects, while expressive gifts follow emotional norms and emphasize the symbolic meaning behind gifts. Perhaps in the eyes of Xiao He's boyfriend, the valuable gift is not only a sincere show of love for seriously starting a relationship, but also creates a certain idealized impression, and even reveals the financial ability of the donor.

"If it's for a boyfriend who has just been together, I'll pay attention to the portion size of the gift, not too cheap, and hopefully be decent. If you talk for a long time and have a high level of trust, it doesn't matter. Just like when I give gifts to good friends, I don't care about the price, I think the level of trust between friends will be higher, more casual, even small things they know my intentions. The girl said softly.

Behind the gift dispute is the problem of the relationship

When couples in the early days of love are still tentatively tempting for gifts, couples in long-term relationships are already having headaches about not knowing what to give. In addition to the fixed gift exchange time nodes - birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, there are now many more festivals that need gifts, such as "5·20", Girls' Day, Boys' Day, Christmas, White Valentine's Day, etc. "There are dozens of festivals throughout the year, probably except for the Qingming and Zhongyuan Festivals, couples come as Valentine's Day." Liu Dawei said.

Compared with the more intimate intimate relationships of previous generations, Liu Dawei found that the intimacy of this generation of young people is more expressive – such as the conspicuous, performance-style show of love presented in the "first cup of milk tea in autumn". "College students are unconsciously involved, and businesses are happy to see it, from the emergence of this stem in 2020 to the fall of 2021, it still continues, indicating that consumerism and intimacy have completed another self-production."

At a particular gift exchange node, if one party forgets to give a gift, it is likely to suffer some kind of emotional "sanction" from the other party, such as expressing dissatisfaction through nagging, cold war, or quarrel. More serious, it will also lead to a breakup.

In the "Douban Persuasion Group", a considerable part of the emotional problem is about gifts. "No christmas presents to consider breaking up?" "Why it is recommended that everyone break up without receiving gifts during the holidays" "Tanabata has no gifts and wants to break up" and other posts often attract attention and discussion, and many couples have conflicts for this reason: one side believes that the gift represents the other party's heart and the importance of feelings, if not, it is "not in love"; the other party is tired of coping, thinking that gifts are not a necessary route to express love.

In Liu Dawei's view, behind the dispute over gifts is the problem of the relationship itself. When Akin recalled his last relationship, he admitted that in the later stages of the relationship, "our relationship was quite unhealthy." At that time, she and her boyfriend were in a long-distance relationship, and she did not send gifts to her boyfriend during the Tanabata Festival. "I always felt that he didn't love me, so I used this way to make him feel that he should love me — you should send me a gift, and I can not send you." 」 Some girls think that when they want a gift, "they don't want that thing, but they want that worry." ”

Most girls are delicate and sensitive, and when the needs of emotion and companionship are not seen and satisfied, the more obvious emotional medium of gifts becomes their "request", or more like a "prayer". Liu Dawei believes that whether from a dominant or emotional point of view, the gift itself is just a medium, a symbol of the heart. "When a feeling needs to be confirmed by constantly asking for gifts, it is bound to be fragile. The taking party is clearly insecure in the relationship and suffers from gain and loss. From a sociological point of view, this pattern of relationships is unhealthy and unstable. ”

Boys always bear more of the cost of gift-giving

Many studies have found that boys are more likely and more likely to give gifts than girls.

Although it is Rou Rou who actively pursues her boyfriend, the first gift exchange is still a gift from a boy. In Akying's last relationship, she confessed that the gifts she gave to each other were not of high value, such as socks, fudge for insomnia, couple sweatshirts, snacks, etc., while she received silver necklaces, lipstick and designer shoes.

Zhou Zhihao of the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, who surveyed 182 students in love at five universities in Chengdu, once again confirmed this asymmetrical gift exchange relationship in his master's thesis, that is, "men always bear more love gifts than women."

He attributed this result to gender performance in the exchange of love gifts: "Because the traditional gender role norm gives men the role and obligation of 'supporting the family', it is easier for men in romantic relationships to show compliance with gender role norms by increasing the expenditure on love gifts; while women try to avoid becoming the more economic contributor in the relationship under the gender division of labor model and social expectations of 'men and women', and show them by controlling and reducing the love gift expenditure" Passive implicit' gender identity. ”

In Liu Dawei's view, the flow of unbalanced gifts is actually the presentation of gender relations in romantic relationships. "Whether it is the pursuit of 'masculinity' or the concept that girls should be pampered, it is fundamentally an identification with the unequal power relations between the sexes. The dominance of gifts is always there, and blindly accepting them will only put you in a dominant position and a disadvantage in the romantic relationship. ”

Of course, some relationships are not as hard and unfair as they sound. Xiao Feng and his girlfriend have been in a long-distance relationship for a year and a half, and there are more than two dozen gifts unilaterally, and he is still happy in it. New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, "5.20", Tanabata, Anniversary, Christmas, birthday, he will send carefully selected gifts on time. In addition to these, "usually I will buy it when I see a good one", buy hats and gloves when it is cold, and buy her favorite short-sleeved shirts when it is hot, these are all ways to express his love for his girlfriend who is far away. Of course, the girlfriend will also give back. In this way, the emotions of the two people are maintained and heated up through gifts.

"Love without gifts" scene: Use up the money together when you go on a date

Xiao Fang and her long-distance boyfriend are engaged in a "giftless love". Because both people are students and have no income, they agreed not to rack their brains to choose gifts for each other, but to save the money and use it together when they meet and date.

"For us, whether there is a gift or not has little impact on the feelings. Feelings are good or bad, how to express love, giving gifts is indeed a way, but it is certainly not the only way. Xiao Fang said that such an emotional state makes her feel very relaxed and has no burden.

Liu Dawei's team found through research that in long-term love, as couples continue to be close, in order to reduce the burden of gifts and gifts, couples will reduce the importance of specific gift exchanges and replace them with more practical behaviors.

Rourou herself is a girl who does not pay attention to gift exchange, and she "does not pin her feelings on things." In her relationship experience, she never received a birthday gift from her boyfriend. "It's a nuisance, and I don't care much, but if you prepare for me, I'm going to be very happy, and if I'm not prepared, I won't be so uncomfortable." Although sometimes lost, the emotions pass quickly. She said.

Liu Dawei also mentioned the case of a boy: he never gives gifts to his girlfriend, and the other party has no opinion. The boy thinks the reason is that there is a girl's worship as the basis of love. Liu Dawei mentioned that there is a view in anthropology that "love is a biological bribe", that is, people themselves can be used as gifts, and marriage is the ultimate exchange of people as gifts. In this sense, the classmate's girlfriend is interested in the unique charm that makes her admire.

There are as many couples as there are ways to fall in love. Whether it is a gift or no gift, the most important thing is that the two people have an exchange of hearts. When a consensus arises, "me and him/her" become "us.".

(At the request of the interviewee, Ajing, Rourou, Xiaofeng, and Xiaofang are pseudonyms)

Source: China Youth Daily client