北大社会学博士成为外卖骑手
以局内人视角，揭示数字控制之下新型的劳动过程和劳动关系
一部专业、真诚、冷静的参与式观察力作
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沈原、佟新作序
刘爱玉、叶敬忠、周飞舟、渠敬东、王天夫、项飙、杨典、雷雅雯诚挚推荐
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写字楼、高校、新老社区环绕的中关村商圈，活跃着一个八百余人的外卖骑手兄弟连。“青铜”新手、深藏不露的“单王”大姐、手握神秘“权力”的站点调度员、身兼多职的“扫地僧”……怀着对高收入和自由生活的向往，他们背井离乡，成为全中国外卖骑手的几千万分之一。
某天，一位北大社会学博士骑上电瓶车，加入兄弟连，与他们并肩疾驰他想了解:看似自由和灵活的表象下，平台如何巧妙地隐对骑手的精细控制与管理?本应让骑手如虎添要的大数据，为何最终织就了一张围困骑手的巨网?当人与代码短兵相接，所谓“打工”，又在经历怎样的变化?
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撕掉逆行与奋斗的温情标语，记录嬉笑怒骂的骑手生活
在田野和理论的互动中，追问数字控制之下劳动的未来图景
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社会学博士“卧底”中关村外卖骑手兄弟连，亲历外卖骑手的真实劳动过程，以回应平台经济背后的劳动秩序何以可能——亦即平台经济中资本如何控制和管理劳动力的问题，以期为劳动者的系统困境寻找出路。
究竟是一种什么样的秩序和规则，在引导着超过千万的外卖骑手，每天井然有序地在各个城 市到处奔波？骑手困境备受关注的当下，我们真的了解骑与算法的互动和博弈吗？平台经济时代，资本控制劳动的方式和手段发生了怎样的改变？
……
结合参与式观察经验和劳动社会学理论研究，作者向我们揭示：随着科技的进步，资本对劳动控制强化而不是削弱，平台系统及其背后的“数字控制”取代了人的管理成为平台经济劳动秩序得以形成的关键所在。

Dr. Dre. Snoop Dogg. Ice Cube. Some of the biggest stars in hip hop made their careers in Los Angeles. And today there is a new generation of young, mostly black, men busting out rhymes and hoping to one day find themselves “blowin’ up”—getting signed to a record label and becoming famous. Many of these aspiring rappers get their start in Leimart Park, home to the legendary hip hop open-mic workshop Project Blowed. In Blowin’ Up, Jooyoung Lee takes us deep inside Project Blowed and the surrounding music industry, offering an unparalleled look at hip hop in the making.
While most books on rap are written from the perspective of listeners and the market, Blowin’ Up looks specifically at the creative side of rappers. As Lee shows, learning how to rap involves a great deal of discipline, and it takes practice to acquire the necessary skills to put on a good show. Along with Lee—who is himself a pop-locker—we watch as the rappers at Project Blowed learn the basics, from how to hold a microphone to how to control their breath amid all those words. And we meet rappers like E. Crimsin, Nocando, VerBS, and Flawliss as they freestyle and battle with each other. For the men at Project Blowed, hip hop offers a creative alternative to the gang lifestyle, substituting verbal competition for physical violence, and provides an outlet for setting goals and working toward them.
Engagingly descriptive and chock-full of entertaining personalities and real-life vignettes, Blowin’ Up not only delivers a behind-the-scenes view of the underground world of hip hop, but also makes a strong case for supporting the creative aspirations of young, urban, black men, who are often growing up in the shadow of gang violence and dead-end jobs.

鑽頭饒舌是他們的希望，卻也讓他們深陷泥沼
★★清大人類所副教授、饒舌團體「參劈」成員林浩立專文導讀★★
這是一個鑽頭饒舌、幫派暴力與微網紅交織在一起的複雜故事。作者花了數年的時間在芝加哥南區與一群自稱為「街角兄弟」（化名）的幫派少年日夜相處，研究他們如何在這個流量至上的時代求生存。
由於治安政策的改變，美國當代的幫派少年已經無法像前輩一樣進入大型幫派組織，受到庇護且靠販毒謀生。低薪服務業看起來是唯一的選項，但難以維持且前途黯淡。因此，當他們看到「酋長基夫」這種跟他們出身背景類似的饒舌歌手藉由描繪幫派暴力成為眾人追捧的網紅、甚至拿到高達六百萬美元的唱片合約時，他們開始有樣學樣，積極創作鑽頭饒舌，內容全都是關於飛車槍擊、炫耀武器與毒品等極度暴力的東西。除了音樂之外，YouTube、臉書與推特等社群媒體才是真正的戰場，因為「有圖／影片有真相」且可以即時打卡，讓他們的日常生活在粉絲眼中看起來超級刺激。雖然，根據作者的觀察，他們的線上內容有很大的成分是在「表演」，網紅世界真真假假，而流量是這個時代唯一的真理。
腥羶色的內容永遠不缺觀眾，因此他們成為微網紅之後確實取得了一些資源，像是粉絲給的金錢與物品、跨刀所拿到的報酬、受到同學的追捧、妹子投懷送抱，聽起來比前輩們在九〇年代所從事的毒品生意好多了——合法、「看起來」風險較低？但真實情況並非如此，因為饒舌講求「做自己」，而微網紅之所以吸引觀眾，也是因為觀眾認為他們「比較真實」，因此這些年輕的鑽頭歌手為了維持自己在網路上的暴力形象，在日常生活中也不得不戒備森嚴，畢竟，倘若在手無寸鐵的情況下被仇敵堵到、被拍下恥辱的影片然後上傳的話，輕則暴力人設崩塌，重則小命不保。此外，他們的數位足跡也引發了強大的後座力，因為網路無遠弗屆，上傳內容永遠不會消失，所以就算想要金盆洗手而搬到別的社區也沒什麼用，仇敵照樣認得他們。此外，執法人員同樣也拿社群媒體上的內容當作呈堂證供，將他們定罪。
這群少年掉進了自己拼命建立起來的「暴力人設」陷阱之中，難以脫身。
本書也剖析了他們的同學鄰居怎麼看待與消費鑽頭音樂。一方面，社區居民與警方指責鑽頭音樂是幫派暴力加劇的罪魁禍首；另一方面，即便是最品學兼優的青少年也很熱愛鑽頭音樂，並且用它來應付生活中面臨的各種狀況。貧民窟以外的聽眾則是出於各種五花八門的理由愛上鑽頭饒舌：有人拿鑽頭音樂來克服日常生活的無聊感、有人與鑽頭歌手一夜情好體驗越界的快感、也有教會領袖利用鑽頭歌手的名氣來拉攏年輕會眾。
暴力很真實，槍擊事件確實層出不窮且常常殃及無辜。鑽頭饒舌與相關的網路內容絕對涉及高度暴力，但它所反映的究竟是赤貧的黑人青少年所身處的絕境、是年輕人在注意力經濟中想要出人頭地、從此脫貧的一線生機，抑或是如政府治安單位所言，真的是暴力事件的源頭，應該徹底掃蕩？
好評推薦
◆「忠實呈現經濟弱勢的黑人青少年在網路世代所面臨的困境。」——老莫ILL MO（致理科技大學應用英語系助理教授、饒舌歌手）
◆「貧民嘻哈的微網紅之路，是一躍高飛還是粉身碎骨？揭露美國芝加哥底層青年黑人社群的鑽頭音樂嘻哈創作，以及他們在注意力經濟時代下的微網紅經營之路，交錯的內容，相同的生存困境！一無所有中，以最少的成本，縱身一搏，終究危機四伏、永無寧日。文化人類學、社會學、傳播學，都需要一看的深度田野調查，檢視貧困、希望勞動、公共窺視/獵奇等當代議題，是危殆階級的數位警鐘，也是一則充滿反思的黑色寓言。」——簡妙如（中正大學傳播學系教授、獨立音樂及次文化研究者）
◆「這本書讓我對於微網紅與年輕世代的文化徹底改觀⋯⋯史都華揭露了社群媒體如何為最弱勢的年輕人同時帶來希望與危險。」——艾許莉・米爾斯（Ashley Mears，《泰晤士高等教育》）
◆「教育工作者、社區工作者與音樂粉絲必讀之作。」——西朗・塔帕爾（Ciaran Thapar，記者）
◆「（史都華）與新興鑽頭饒舌團體中的青少年相處的故事，讀起來扣人心弦。」——亞當・羅伯斯（Adam Roberts，《經濟學人》）

Human beings have been producing more twins, triplets, and quadruplets than ever before, due to the expansion of medically assisted conception. This book analyzes the anticipatory regimes of making multiple babies. With archival documents, participant observation, in-depth interviews, and registry data, this book traces the global and local governance of the assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) used to tackle multiple pregnancy since the 1970s, highlighting the early promotion of single embryo transfer in Belgium and Japan and the making of the world’s most lenient guidelines in Taiwan.

A decade-long study of young adulthood in Malawi that demonstrates the impact of widespread HIV status uncertainty, laying bare the sociological implications of what is not known.

An Epidemic of Uncertainty advances a new framework for studying social life by emphasizing something social scientists routinely omit from their theories, models, and measures–what people know they don’t know. Taking Malawi’s ongoing AIDS epidemic as an entry point, Jenny Trinitapoli shows that despite admirable declines in new HIV infections and AIDS-related mortality, an epidemic of uncertainty persists; at any given point in time, fully half of Malawian young adults don’t know their HIV status. Reckoning with the impact of this uncertainty within the bustling trading town of Balaka, Trinitapoli argues that HIV-related uncertainty is measurable, pervasive, and impervious to biomedical solutions, with consequences that expand into multiple domains of life, including relationship stability, fertility, and health. Over the duration of a groundbreaking decade-long longitudinal study, rich survey data and poignant ethnographic vignettes vividly depict how individual lives and population patterns unfold against the backdrop of an ever-evolving epidemic. Even as HIV is transformed from a progressive, fatal disease to a chronic and manageable condition, the accompanying epidemic of uncertainty remains fundamental to understanding social life in this part of the world.

Insisting that known unknowns can and should be integrated into social-scientific models of human behavior, An Epidemic of Uncertainty treats uncertainty as an enduring aspect, a central feature, and a powerful force in everyday life.

An inside look at how police officers are trained to perpetuate state violence

Michael Brown. Philando Castile. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. As the names of those killed by the police became cemented into public memory, the American public took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to mourn, organize, and demand changes to the current system of policing. In response, police departments across the country committed themselves to change, pledging to hire more women and people of color, incorporate diversity training, and instruct officers to verbally de-escalate interactions with the public.

These reform efforts tend to rely on a “bad apple” argument, focusing the nature and scope of the problem on the behavior of specific individuals and rarely considering the broader organizational process that determines who is allowed to patrol the public and how they learn to do their jobs. In Before the Badge, Samantha J. Simon provides a firsthand look into how police officers are selected and trained, describing every stage of the process, including recruitment, classroom instruction, and tactical training.

Simon spent a year at police academies participating in the training alongside cadets, giving her a visceral, hands-on understanding of how police training operates. Using rich and detailed examples, she reveals that the process does more than test a cadet’s physical or intellectual abilities. Instead, it socializes cadets into a system of state violence. As training progresses, cadets are expected to see themselves as warriors and to view Black and Latino/a members of the public as their enemies. Cadets who cannot or will not uphold this approach end up washing out. In Before the Badge, Simon explains how this training creates a context in which patterns of police violence persist and implores readers to re-envision the future of policing in the United States.

Each year, millions of high school students consider whether to continue their schooling and attend and complete college. Despite evidence showing that a college degree yields far-reaching benefits, critics of higher education increasingly argue that college “does not pay off” and some students - namely, disadvantaged prospective college goers - would be better served by forgoing higher education. But debates about the value of college often fail to carefully consider what is required to speak knowledgeably about the benefits –what a person’s life might look like had they not completed college, or their college counterfactual. In Overcoming the Odds sociologist Jennie E. Brand reveals the benefits of completing college by comparing life outcomes of college graduates with their college counterfactuals.

Drawing on two cohorts of nationally representative data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Longitudinal Surveys program, Brand uses matching and machine learning methods to estimate the effects of college completion across students with varying likelihoods of completing four-year degrees. To illustrate her findings, Brand describes outcomes using matched vignettes of college and non-college graduates. Brand shows that four-year college completion enables graduates to increase wages and household income, while also circumventing unemployment, low-wage work, job instability, poverty, and social assistance. Completing college also increases civic engagement. Most of these benefits are larger for disadvantaged than for more advantaged students, rendering arguments that college has limited benefits for unlikely graduates as flawed. Brand concludes that greater long-term earnings, and less job instability and unemployment, and thus more tax revenue, less reliance on public assistance, and high levels of volunteering indicate that public investment in higher education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds yields far-reaching collective benefits. She asserts that it is better for our society when more people complete college.

Overcoming the Odds is an innovative and enlightening exploration of how college can transform lives.

A startling discovery—that job market success after college is largely random—forces a reappraisal of education, opportunity, and the American dream.

As a gateway to economic opportunity, a college degree is viewed by many as America’s great equalizer. And it’s wealthier, more connected, and seemingly better-qualified students earn exactly the same pay as their less privileged peers. Yet, the reasons why may have little to do with bootstraps or self-improvement—it might just be dumb luck. That’s what sociologist Jessi Streib proposes in The Accidental Equalizer , a conclusion she reaches after interviewing dozens of hiring agents and job-seeking graduates.

Streib finds that luck shapes the hiring process from start to finish in a way that limits class privilege in the job market. Employers hide information about how to get ahead and force students to guess which jobs pay the most and how best to obtain them. Without clear routes to success, graduates from all class backgrounds face the same odds at high pay. The Accidental Equalizer is a frank appraisal of how this “luckocracy” works and its implications for the future of higher education and the middle class. Although this system is far from eliminating American inequality, Streib shows that it may just be the best opportunity structure we have—for better and for worse.

林德夫妇在1929年的著作《中镇》中研究了一个美国典型工业小镇居民的文化信仰和行为，为20世纪20年代的美国生活提供了一幅独特的画像。他们在20世纪30年代大萧条时期再次回到小镇，观察社区的变化，继续描画美国地方小社会的变迁轨迹，研究结果形成了《转变中的中镇》。
本书的主题组织与第一部《中镇》大致相同，涵盖了中镇的经济发展、人们的谋生、住房安家、年轻人教育、休闲活动、宗教以及其他社区活动等领域。同样，也分析与《中镇》中相似的两大主要社会经济阶层——商人和工人。但他们发现，中镇在历经了20世纪20年代至30年代初短暂的繁荣后，遭遇大萧条带来的重大社会转型，发生了结构性变化。他们提出了中镇社会分层的“经营阶级/工人阶级”模式，由此确立了具有典型美国社会特征的地方小社会的分层形态。中镇虽然不再是过去意义上“中产阶级”占据大多数并紧密团结的典型美国社区，但中镇发生的社会变化正是记录美国社会和文化变革的重要窗口。

How are communities uniting against fracking and tar sands to change our energy future? 

Working across Lines offers a detailed comparative analysis of climate justice coalitions in California and Idaho—two states with distinct fossil fuel histories, environmental contexts, and political cultures. Drawing on ethnographic evidence from 106 in-depth interviews and three years of participant observation, Corrie Grosse investigates the ways people build effective energy justice coalitions across differences in political views, race and ethnicity, age, and strategic preferences. This book argues for four practices that are critical for movement focusing on core values of justice, accountability, and integrity; identifying the roots of injustice; cultivating relationships among activists; and welcoming difference. In focusing on coalitions related to energy and climate justice, Grosse provides important models for bridging divides to reach common goals. These lessons are more relevant than ever.

How organizations developed in history, how they operate, and how research on them has evolved

Organizations are all around us: government agencies, multinational corporations, social-movement organizations, religious congregations, scientific bodies, sports teams, and more. Immensely powerful, they shape all social, economic, political, and cultural life, and are critical for the planning and coordination of every activity from manufacturing cardboard boxes to synthesizing new drugs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To understand our world, we must understand organizations. The Power of Organizations defines the features of organizations, examines how they operate, traces their rise over the course of a millennium, and explains how research on organizations has evolved from the mid-nineteenth century to today.

Heather Haveman shows how almost all contemporary research on organizations fits into three general perspectives: demographic, relational, and cultural. She offers constructive criticism of existing research, showing how it can be remade to be both more interesting and influential. She examines how we can use existing theories to understand the changes wrought by digital technologies, and she argues that organizational scholars can and should alter the impact that organizations have on society, particularly societal and global inequality, formal politics, and environmental degradation.

The Power of Organizations demonstrates the benefits and dangers of these ubiquitous foundations of modern society.

A groundbreaking account of how prolonged grassroots mobilization lays the foundations for durable democratization

When protests swept through the Middle East at the height of the Arab Spring, the world appeared to be on the verge of a wave of democratization. Yet with the failure of many of these uprisings, it has become clearer than ever that the path to democracy is strewn with obstacles. Mohammad Ali Kadivar examines the conditions leading to the success or failure of democratization, shedding vital new light on how prodemocracy mobilization affects the fate of new democracies.

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, Kadivar shows how the longest episodes of prodemocracy protest give rise to the most durable new democracies. He analyzes more than one hundred democratic transitions in eighty countries between 1950 and 2010, showing how more robust democracies emerge from lengthier periods of unarmed mobilization. Kadivar then analyzes five case studies—South Africa, Poland, Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia—to investigate the underlying mechanisms. He finds that organization building during the years of struggle develops the leadership needed for lasting democratization and strengthens civil society after dictatorship.

Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustained, nonviolent grassroots mobilization.

An inciteful analysis of the affective rhetoric surrounding Russian anti-LGBTQ violence.

Passed in 2013, Russia’s “gay propaganda” law cemented the nation’s anti-LGBTQ sentiment into legal rhetoric that has since emboldened countless instances of violence against queer people. Based on an analysis of over three hundred criminal cases of anti-queer violence in Russia before and after the introduction of the law, Violent Affections shows how violent acts are framed in emotional language by perpetrators during their criminal trials, thus uncovering the techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence against queer people. Utilizing an original methodology of studying legal memes, this book argues that individual affective states are directly connected to the political and legislative violence aimed at policing queer lives. Alexander Sasha Kondakov expands upon two sets of interdisciplinary literature–queer theory and affect theory–in order to conceptualize what is referred to as neo-disciplinary power. The book traces how affections circulate from body to body as a kind of virus, eventually enabling the turn from a memetic response to violent action.

A rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humor, and a damning argument for when the joke is not just a joke. Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended--laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's expense. The insinuation is that laughter eases social tension and creates solidarity in an overly politicized social world. But do the stakes change when the jokes are racist? In The Souls of White Jokes Raúl Pérez argues that we must genuinely confront this unsettling question in order to fully understand the persistence of anti-black racism and white supremacy in American society today. W.E.B. Du Bois's prescient essay "The Souls of White Folk" was one of the first to theorize whiteness as a social and political construct based on a feeling of superiority over racialized others--a kind of racial contempt. Pérez extends this theory to the study of humor, connecting theories of racial formation to parallel ideas about humor stemming from laughter at another's misfortune. Critically synthesizing scholarship on race, humor, and emotions, he uncovers a key function of humor as a tool for producing racial alienation, dehumanization, exclusion, and even violence. Pérez tracks this use of humor from blackface minstrelsy to contemporary contexts, including police culture, politics, and far-right extremists. Rather than being harmless fun, this humor plays a central role in reinforcing and mobilizing racist ideology and power under the guise of amusement. The Souls of White Jokes exposes this malicious side of humor, while also revealing a new facet of racism today. Though it can be comforting to imagine racism as coming from racial hatred and anger, the terrifying reality is that it is tied up in seemingly benign, even joyful, everyday interactions as well-- and for racism to be eradicated we must face this truth.

In Normalized Financial Wrongdoing, Harland Prechel examines how social structural arrangements that extended corporate property rights and increased managerial control opened the door for misconduct and, ultimately, the 2008 financial crisis. Beginning his analysis with the financialization of the home-mortgage market in the 1930s, Prechel shows how pervasive these arrangements had become by the end of the century, when the bank and energy sectors developed political strategies to participate in financial markets. His account adopts a multilevel approach that considers the political and legal landscapes in which corporations are embedded to answer two questions: how did banks and financial firms transition from being providers of capital to financial market actors? Second, how did new organizational structures cause market participants to engage in high-risk activities? After careful historical analysis, Prechel examines how organizational and political-legal arrangements contribute to current record-high income and wealth inequality, and considers societal preconditions for change.

In Making Women Pay, Smitha Radhakrishnan explores India's microfinance industry, which in the last two decades has come to saturate the everyday lives of women in the name of state-led efforts to promote financial inclusion and women's empowerment. Despite this favorable language, she argues, microfinance in India does not provide a market-oriented development intervention, even though it may appear to help women borrowers. Rather, this commercial industry seeks to extract the maximum value from its customers through exploitative relationships that benefit especially class-privileged men. Through ethnography, interviews, and historical analysis, Radhakrishnan demonstrates how the unpaid and underpaid labor of marginalized women borrowers ensures both profitability and symbolic legitimacy for microfinance institutions, their employees, and their leaders. In doing so, she centralizes gender in the study of microfinance, reveals why most microfinance programs target women, and explores the exploitative implications of this targeting.

Using Marxist critique, this book explores manifestations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education and demonstrates how it contributes to the functioning and existence of the capitalist university. Challenging the idea that AI is a break from previous capitalist technologies, the book offers nuanced examination of the impacts of AI on the control and regulation of academic work and labour, on digital learning and remote teaching, and on the value of learning and knowledge. Applying a Marxist perspective, Preston argues that commodity fetishism, surveillance, and increasing productivity ushered in by the growth of AI, further alienates and exploits academic labour and commodifies learning and research. The text puts forward a solid theoretical framework and methodology for thinking about AI to inform critical and revolutionary pedagogies. Offering an impactful and timely analysis, this book provides a critical engagement and application of key Marxist concepts in the study of AI’s role in Higher Education. It will be of interest to those working or researching in Higher Education.

自2000年代中期以來，中國逐漸從勞動密集、出口導向的製造業，轉向以數位科技為中心的社會發展進程。有些人將中國的後改革時期與美國的鍍金時代來相提並論；本書則認為前者更像是一只鍍金的鳥籠，中國政府與科技資本正使得社會不平等逐日加劇，並製造新形式的社會排斥。在這些矛盾之中，中國的鳥籠經濟演變為一種高度控制的體系，部分群體被排除在成長與繁榮的機會之外，沒有人擁有真正的自由和安全感。
作者描繪這種技術發展體制的輪廓及其產生的國家資本主義形式，並透過針對低端與高端人口，以及從傳統製造業、外送平台到科技公司之間的深入訪談及親身觀察，講述那些因中國迅速崛起成為經濟和科技主導地位而改變生活的人及其背後的故事。

Fires of Gold is a powerful ethnography of the often shrouded cultural, legal, political, and spiritual forces governing the gold mining industry in Ghana, one of Africa’s most celebrated democracies. Lauren Coyle Rosen argues that significant sources of power have arisen outside of the formal legal system to police, adjudicate, and navigate conflict in this theater of violence, destruction, and rebirth. These authorities, or shadow sovereigns, include the transnational mining company, collectivized artisanal miners, civil society advocacy groups, and significant religious figures and spiritual forces from African, Islamic, and Christian traditions. Often more salient than official bodies of government, the shadow sovereigns reveal a reconstitution of sovereign power—one that, in many ways, is generated by hidden dimensions of the legal system. Coyle Rosen also contends that spiritual forces are central in anchoring and animating shadow sovereigns as well as key forms of legal authority, economic value, and political contestation. This innovative book illuminates how the crucible of gold, itself governed by spirits, serves as a critical site for embodied struggles over the realignment of the classical philosophical triad: the city, the soul, and the sacred.

中国式母亲的情感宣言
一本关于道德选择、情感与挣扎的育儿沉思录
家庭里，需要社会化的不再是不成熟的孩子，而是有问题的父母。
在生活的无数变数中，我们如何分辨可控与不可控的边界。
在可控与不可控中，寻找爱与回报的确定性。
《不确定的爱》是一本教育民族志方面的著作，关宜馨在书中探讨了当代中国城市中产阶级父母在育儿上的希望与困惑。将长期的民族志研究和对流行的育儿指南、电视剧以及官方文件的分析相结合，关宜馨见证了普通中国父母的困境，他们在有限资源的现实中努力调和“好父母”的新定义。
关宜馨与昆明的十多户中产家庭结成了超越调查者与被调查者之间关系的长期友谊，在与这些父母、学校的老师等相关人员的交谈和来往中，关宜馨以人类学学者特有的对叙述和细节的敏锐，将田野调查、民族志研究与学术规范相结合，对当代中国城市中产阶级父母雄心勃勃的育儿方式以及他们身处其中的希望与焦虑提供了一种理论性的解释，揭示了在当前中国教育体制下城市中产阶级父母所处的道德困境，以及在急剧变化的现代化进程中家庭这一最基础单位内部的人与人之间的情感经历。
将这些父母的经历置于国家努力提高“人口质量”的历史背景下，《不确定的爱》揭示了经济变革如何在人类最私密的经历中表现出来。本书提供了一种对道德能动性的本质的思考，探讨人们如何在生活无数的意外事件中，辨识什么是可以控制的，什么是不可以控制的。