Frontiers in sociology · 2026
The dialectic of human-object relations in Chinese urban television drama: a reification-theoretical reading.
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Liang Wen
Аннотация
BACKGROUND: Lukács's theory of reification describes a social order in which relations among people appear as relations among things. It offers a productive way to read urban television narratives, where housing, consumption, professional performance, and intimate life regularly become measures of social worth.
OBJECTIVE: This article examines how Chinese television dramas make reification visible through objects, space, and the body. It also asks how people-centered narration is constructed as a textual possibility for questioning those relations.
METHODS: The study uses qualitative close reading of three urban dramas - Fake It Till You Make It, Nothing But Thirty, and Women in Beijing - and Meet Yourself, a contrastive case that begins with urban workplace pressure before relocating its protagonist to a rural community. Plot events, dialogue, character action, settings, and recurring motifs are examined through object alienation, reified space, the reified body, and dereifying practice.
RESULTS: Across the urban cases, luxury goods, exclusive residences, professional schedules, and intimate calculations turn social value into visible and comparable signs. The contrastive case frames a partial interruption of that logic through care, shared activity, and a changed relation to work. These are narrative resolutions, not demonstrations of institutional transformation.
CONCLUSION: The article connects reification theory to the close analysis of Chinese television narrative. It argues that people-centered narration is most useful as an analytical term when it names concrete formal and relational practices rather than a general moral quality.
OBJECTIVE: This article examines how Chinese television dramas make reification visible through objects, space, and the body. It also asks how people-centered narration is constructed as a textual possibility for questioning those relations.
METHODS: The study uses qualitative close reading of three urban dramas - Fake It Till You Make It, Nothing But Thirty, and Women in Beijing - and Meet Yourself, a contrastive case that begins with urban workplace pressure before relocating its protagonist to a rural community. Plot events, dialogue, character action, settings, and recurring motifs are examined through object alienation, reified space, the reified body, and dereifying practice.
RESULTS: Across the urban cases, luxury goods, exclusive residences, professional schedules, and intimate calculations turn social value into visible and comparable signs. The contrastive case frames a partial interruption of that logic through care, shared activity, and a changed relation to work. These are narrative resolutions, not demonstrations of institutional transformation.
CONCLUSION: The article connects reification theory to the close analysis of Chinese television narrative. It argues that people-centered narration is most useful as an analytical term when it names concrete formal and relational practices rather than a general moral quality.