Abstract
The concluding chapter draws out the themes of uncertainty and relationality that pervade the empirical chapters of this book. I suggest that the lives of gay men in Hainan are characterised by multiple forms uncertainty and are lived through dynamics of social and material relationality. Such uncertainties extend to the question of whether being gay, homosexual, tongzhi and/or in the scene constitute ways of living and to what extent such ways of living are possible under social and material conditions of heteronormativity. I suggest that these insights into the productive role of uncertainty in everyday life and the importance of social and material relationalities provide directions for future cross-cultural research on sexuality, or issues that might otherwise be addressed under that term, as well as for social research more broadly. I end with a consideration of the extent to which these issues of uncertainty and relationality might be specific to Hainan, or to gay lives beyond the PRC's leading cities, by reflecting on some distinctive features of this book in comparison to the existing literature on non-heterosexual lives in the PRC.
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Cummings, J. (2022). Conclusion. In: The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92253-5_6
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