UCLA

Co-living, an emerging living arrangement embraced by Chinese youth in urban areas, embodies self-determination, sharing, communication, and intimacy among residents. Through extensive year-long ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two co-living houses in Shanghai, this dissertation illuminates the collective lifestyle established by residents and the challenges they encountered. Residents devised democratic mechanisms for discussing collective affairs, fostered quasi-familial intimacy, and organized public activities in shared spaces to cultivate social connections. The co-living experience is shadowed by gender conflicts, state surveillance, and national risks like the lockdown during COVID-19, and residents collectively navigate these challenges. Through the exploration of co-living life in urban China, I argue that the collectivity co-living residents established is underscoring the collective coping mechanisms inherent in co-living amidst the material and psychological pressures of urban life, including soaring housing costs and social isolation. Here, the collective life serves as a tool for pursuing individual interests. Such interplay between collective life and individual interests sheds light on a special re-embedment mechanism of the individualization process amongst Chinese youth, highlighting the concept of "collective individualization" within Chinese society. This study argues that Chinese youth engage in co-living as a strategic response to societal pressures, representing a unique re-embedding mechanism amidst the broader process of individualization. Unlike a return to socialist collectivism or complete atomization, co-living reflects an intricate interplay between individual agency and cultural norms. This phenomenon demonstrates a nuanced pathway of individualization deeply rooted in Chinese culture and society. Furthermore, this research enriches the understanding of co-living practices by elucidating their complex interaction with local cultural norms such as family dynamics, gender relations, and youth culture in the Chinese context.