| Change log entry 72856 | |
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| Processed by: | richwarm (2021-06-02 22:50:53 GMT) |
| Comment: |
<< review queue entry 68624 - submitted by 'monigeria' >> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/chinas-involuted-generation The Chinese term for involution, neijuan, which is made up of the characters for “inside” and “rolling,” suggests a process that curls inward, ensnaring its participants within what the anthropologist Xiang Biao has described as an “endless cycle of self-flagellation.” Involution is “the experience of being locked in competition that one ultimately knows is meaningless,” Biao told me. It is acceleration without a destination, progress without a purpose, Sisyphus spinning the wheels of a perpetual-motion Peloton. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006391/how-one-obscure-word-captures-urban-chinas-unhappiness The involution these scholars spoke about and the one used nowadays are very different. But they all convey a sense of “lacking significant progress, and coming up to a dead end.” https://www.whatsonweibo.com/the-concept-of-involution-neijuan-on-chinese-social-media/ What Is ‘Involution’? As explained by Jialing Xie in this top buzzword article on What’s on Weibo, involution describes the economic situation in which as the population grows, per capita wealth decreases. Since recently, this word has come to be used to represent the competitive circumstances in academic or professional settings in China where individuals are compelled to overwork because of the standard raised by their peers who appear to be even more hardworking. ---------------------------------- Editor: 1) 內卷 (embryology) https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%86%85%E5%8D%B7 Nice picture of involution (in the developmental biology sense) Figure 3: types of cell movements during development https://pacific.instructure.com/courses/39845/pages/cleavage-and-gastrulation 2) Neologism: 2017年末，內卷化一詞逐步進入公眾視野，其含義也發生了變化。格爾茨、黃宗智等學者認為內卷是指缺乏經濟競爭導致農耕社會未能進入工業化轉化成資本主義經濟。而在網絡上，內卷這一詞卻出現了語義偏移，用來指代內部惡性競爭。 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%86%85%E5%8D%B7%E5%8C%96 Example: 其实关键在于改变思路，破圈很重要，创新也很重要，比如说今年有900万左右的毕业生，如果大家都想去北上广深都想当白领，那你想想能不内卷吗？ |
| Diff: |
# 內卷 内卷 [nei4 juan3] /involution/the competitive “hamster wheel” of success/ + 內卷 内卷 [nei4 juan3] /(embryology) to involute/involution/(neologism c. 2017) (of a society) to become more and more of a rat race/to become increasingly competitive (due to limited resources)/ |