Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10714324
Other| November 01 2023 Contributors positions (2023) 31 (4): 919–921. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10714324 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Contributors. positions 1 November 2023; 31 (4): 919–921. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10714324 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search Juyeon Bae is a research associate professor at the Critical Global Studies Institutes, Sogang University, South Korea. She is also an executive committee member at Seoul International Women's Film Festival. She earned her doctoral degree from the Department of Culture, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her PhD thesis examined the representation of Asian migrants such as the Korean diaspora, North Korean defectors, and labor/marriage migrants in contemporary Korean cinema. Her research interests include women's memory writing, migration within Asia, genocide in postcolonial Asia, nationalism, and transnationalism in East Asian cinema.Peter J. Bloom is professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work focuses on French and British media from a postcolonial and global perspective, with an emphasis on West Africa and Southeast Asia. Most recently, his work has addressed the contemporary effects of colonial history, with an emphasis on... You do not currently have access to this content.
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10714324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10714324","url":null,"abstract":"Other| November 01 2023 Contributors positions (2023) 31 (4): 919–921. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10714324 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Contributors. positions 1 November 2023; 31 (4): 919–921. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10714324 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search Juyeon Bae is a research associate professor at the Critical Global Studies Institutes, Sogang University, South Korea. She is also an executive committee member at Seoul International Women's Film Festival. She earned her doctoral degree from the Department of Culture, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her PhD thesis examined the representation of Asian migrants such as the Korean diaspora, North Korean defectors, and labor/marriage migrants in contemporary Korean cinema. Her research interests include women's memory writing, migration within Asia, genocide in postcolonial Asia, nationalism, and transnationalism in East Asian cinema.Peter J. Bloom is professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work focuses on French and British media from a postcolonial and global perspective, with an emphasis on West Africa and Southeast Asia. Most recently, his work has addressed the contemporary effects of colonial history, with an emphasis on... You do not currently have access to this content.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"137 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135714604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10441339
Other| August 01 2023 Contributors positions (2023) 31 (3): 731–732. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10441339 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Contributors. positions 1 August 2023; 31 (3): 731–732. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10441339 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search Daria Berg, DPhil (Oxford) in Chinese studies, is Chair Professor (Ordinaria) of Chinese Culture and Society at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. She has published extensively on Chinese literature, visual art, and culture, and she has won international prizes for research, including the International Convention of Asia Scholars 2015 Specialist Publication Accolade for her monograph Women and the Literary World in Early Modern China, 1580–1700 (2013) and, with Giorgio Strafella, the China Information Best Article Prize 2015. Her current research explores visual art, media, literature, and culture in traditional and contemporary China. Her latest book, coedited with Giorgio Strafella, is China's Avant-garde, 1978–2018 (2022).Nora Hui-Jung Kim is a professor of sociology at University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Her research interests include international immigration, multiculturalism, race and ethnicity, nationalism, citizenship, and East Asia. She has published several book chapters and journal articles. Her articles... You do not currently have access to this content.
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10441339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10441339","url":null,"abstract":"Other| August 01 2023 Contributors positions (2023) 31 (3): 731–732. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10441339 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Contributors. positions 1 August 2023; 31 (3): 731–732. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10441339 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search Daria Berg, DPhil (Oxford) in Chinese studies, is Chair Professor (Ordinaria) of Chinese Culture and Society at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. She has published extensively on Chinese literature, visual art, and culture, and she has won international prizes for research, including the International Convention of Asia Scholars 2015 Specialist Publication Accolade for her monograph Women and the Literary World in Early Modern China, 1580–1700 (2013) and, with Giorgio Strafella, the China Information Best Article Prize 2015. Her current research explores visual art, media, literature, and culture in traditional and contemporary China. Her latest book, coedited with Giorgio Strafella, is China's Avant-garde, 1978–2018 (2022).Nora Hui-Jung Kim is a professor of sociology at University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Her research interests include international immigration, multiculturalism, race and ethnicity, nationalism, citizenship, and East Asia. She has published several book chapters and journal articles. Her articles... You do not currently have access to this content.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136065101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10300253
Mun Young Cho
Abstract:With the simultaneous growth of the manufacturing and service industries and the rapid expansion of information and communication technology, what do Chinese workers actually do in order to survive, and what methodological approaches are useful for exploring their subjectivity? In this article, the labor trajectory of Zuo Mei, a young migrant woman, is traced over six and a half years. The author relates Zuo's experience to what Mario Tronti calls the "social factory," where the extraction of surplus occurs not just on the factory floor but also through social relations inside and outside multiple workplaces; at the intersection of factory, service, volunteer, and domestic labor; encompassing urban and rural, waged and unwaged, (re)productive and distributive, and on-and offline work. By detailing the interactions between these multiple forms of labor, the article argues that Zuo's suffering does not end outside the factory but extends to wherever social relations are capitalized, unveiling how alienation results from the resistance to that alienation.
{"title":"Intersecting Labor in the Social Factory: Trajectory of a Migrant Woman in South China","authors":"Mun Young Cho","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10300253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300253","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:With the simultaneous growth of the manufacturing and service industries and the rapid expansion of information and communication technology, what do Chinese workers actually do in order to survive, and what methodological approaches are useful for exploring their subjectivity? In this article, the labor trajectory of Zuo Mei, a young migrant woman, is traced over six and a half years. The author relates Zuo's experience to what Mario Tronti calls the \"social factory,\" where the extraction of surplus occurs not just on the factory floor but also through social relations inside and outside multiple workplaces; at the intersection of factory, service, volunteer, and domestic labor; encompassing urban and rural, waged and unwaged, (re)productive and distributive, and on-and offline work. By detailing the interactions between these multiple forms of labor, the article argues that Zuo's suffering does not end outside the factory but extends to wherever social relations are capitalized, unveiling how alienation results from the resistance to that alienation.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"84 1","pages":"379 - 402"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80879805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10441326
Tani E Barlow, Suzy Kim
After thirty years at the helm of positions, founding editor Tani Barlow steps down, and Suzy Kim takes the wheel as editor. Like the rest of the journal’s work, the transition has been animated by mutual mentorship and collective responsibility to continue the journal’s remarkable journey. Among our many topics of conversation, we include reflections on the first three decades and futures ahead.
{"title":"From the First Thirty to the Next Thirty Years of positions: A Conversation between Editors","authors":"Tani E Barlow, Suzy Kim","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10441326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10441326","url":null,"abstract":"After thirty years at the helm of positions, founding editor Tani Barlow steps down, and Suzy Kim takes the wheel as editor. Like the rest of the journal’s work, the transition has been animated by mutual mentorship and collective responsibility to continue the journal’s remarkable journey. Among our many topics of conversation, we include reflections on the first three decades and futures ahead.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"5 1","pages":"709 - 729"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89593987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10300347
Other| May 01 2023 Contributors positions (2023) 31 (2): 523–527. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300347 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. positions 1 May 2023; 31 (2): 523–527. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300347 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search Max Bohnenkamp is an independent scholar of modern Chinese literature and culture and a freelance translator specializing in Chinese scholarly writings in the humanities and social sciences. He holds a PhD in Chinese literature from the University of Chicago and has research interests in conceptions of popular and mass cultures in China, the adaptation of Chinese folklore for modern and contemporary literature and performing arts, the reception of Western and Soviet literary and dramatic aesthetics in China, and the relationship of creative expression to politics and critical social theory. He is currently completing a book-length study of the cultural, literary, and political origins of the famous Chinese revolutionary musical drama The White-Haired Girl. His most recent translated work is a collection of essays by Chinese scholars of religion, entitled Beyond Indigenization: Christianity and Chinese History in a Global Context (2023).Mun Young Cho is a professor in the Department... Issue Section: Contributors You do not currently have access to this content.
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10300347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300347","url":null,"abstract":"Other| May 01 2023 Contributors positions (2023) 31 (2): 523–527. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300347 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. positions 1 May 2023; 31 (2): 523–527. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300347 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search Max Bohnenkamp is an independent scholar of modern Chinese literature and culture and a freelance translator specializing in Chinese scholarly writings in the humanities and social sciences. He holds a PhD in Chinese literature from the University of Chicago and has research interests in conceptions of popular and mass cultures in China, the adaptation of Chinese folklore for modern and contemporary literature and performing arts, the reception of Western and Soviet literary and dramatic aesthetics in China, and the relationship of creative expression to politics and critical social theory. He is currently completing a book-length study of the cultural, literary, and political origins of the famous Chinese revolutionary musical drama The White-Haired Girl. His most recent translated work is a collection of essays by Chinese scholars of religion, entitled Beyond Indigenization: Christianity and Chinese History in a Global Context (2023).Mun Young Cho is a professor in the Department... Issue Section: Contributors You do not currently have access to this content.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"87 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135145491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10441312
Gerda Wielander
Abstract:Built on visual and running/walking ethnography, this article analyzes visual traces left on remnant danwei walls in postsocialist China. The article considers danwei walls as yiji (remnant traces) that serve as loci of political memory and as a medium to host other visual traces by a variety of different actors. Drawing on a range of concepts from cultural studies and visual ethnography, the article provides a close reading of these traces, treating them as important historical documents and examples of how human actors interact with the built environment during China's postsocialist transformation. The article is built around three case studies, each of which captures different stages of the physical decay of the danwei as represented in the materiality of the walls in varying states of (dis)repair and the different nature of the visual traces local actors have left on them. The analysis of traces—understood as signs on the walls as well as the walls themselves—reveals a story of the ways in which humans interact with a very specific part of China's built environment at a moment of transition and of how relationships between these human actors change in the process. The article provides a reading of visual social phenomena, contributing to the understanding of signifying practices in postsocialist urban China.
{"title":"Running and Reading Remnant Danwei Walls in China's Postsocialist City","authors":"Gerda Wielander","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10441312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10441312","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Built on visual and running/walking ethnography, this article analyzes visual traces left on remnant danwei walls in postsocialist China. The article considers danwei walls as yiji (remnant traces) that serve as loci of political memory and as a medium to host other visual traces by a variety of different actors. Drawing on a range of concepts from cultural studies and visual ethnography, the article provides a close reading of these traces, treating them as important historical documents and examples of how human actors interact with the built environment during China's postsocialist transformation. The article is built around three case studies, each of which captures different stages of the physical decay of the danwei as represented in the materiality of the walls in varying states of (dis)repair and the different nature of the visual traces local actors have left on them. The analysis of traces—understood as signs on the walls as well as the walls themselves—reveals a story of the ways in which humans interact with a very specific part of China's built environment at a moment of transition and of how relationships between these human actors change in the process. The article provides a reading of visual social phenomena, contributing to the understanding of signifying practices in postsocialist urban China.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"21 1","pages":"677 - 708"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82918769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10300280
Yang Zhan
Abstract:This article conceptualizes storytelling as epistemic labor that is critical to the everyday meaning-making and future-making of Chinese rural migrants. Compared to stories told by scholars and migrants turned writers and artists, those told by migrants in a quotidian setting are largely overlooked because of their lack of representational value. However, narratives of success, fortune, and the future that circulate on China's urban fringe are essential in three ways: (1) stories, rather than numbers and calculations, help rural migrants make sense of their economic reality; (2) storytelling allows rural migrants to cope with unexpected events; and (3) stories are often imbued with moral sentiment through which moral boundaries and group identities are established. Overall, epistemic labor makes the present sensible, reality tolerable, and the future imaginable under conditions of hyper-uncertainty in which spatial instability negates routinized time and linear accumulation is denied by dramatic market fluctuations and unpredictable displacement. Epistemic labor proves that migrant agency not only resides in eventful resistance but also in constant negotiations.
{"title":"Epistemic Labor: Narratives of Hyper-Uncertainty and Future-Making on China's Urban Fringe","authors":"Yang Zhan","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10300280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300280","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article conceptualizes storytelling as epistemic labor that is critical to the everyday meaning-making and future-making of Chinese rural migrants. Compared to stories told by scholars and migrants turned writers and artists, those told by migrants in a quotidian setting are largely overlooked because of their lack of representational value. However, narratives of success, fortune, and the future that circulate on China's urban fringe are essential in three ways: (1) stories, rather than numbers and calculations, help rural migrants make sense of their economic reality; (2) storytelling allows rural migrants to cope with unexpected events; and (3) stories are often imbued with moral sentiment through which moral boundaries and group identities are established. Overall, epistemic labor makes the present sensible, reality tolerable, and the future imaginable under conditions of hyper-uncertainty in which spatial instability negates routinized time and linear accumulation is denied by dramatic market fluctuations and unpredictable displacement. Epistemic labor proves that migrant agency not only resides in eventful resistance but also in constant negotiations.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"9 1","pages":"431 - 450"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84158041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10300334
Dezhi Wang, C. Ting, Max Bohnenkamp
{"title":"How to Create a New Workers' Culture Together: An Interview with Wang Dezhi","authors":"Dezhi Wang, C. Ting, Max Bohnenkamp","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10300334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300334","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"25 1","pages":"507 - 521"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74598171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10300266
Wanning Sun
Abstract:Many migrant workers in China are widely reported to experience difficulty in finding a conjugal partner or maintaining conjugal intimacy. Despite this widely shared perception, firsthand data about the love lives of migrant workers are hard to access. Yet, to have such knowledge is important, since these domains, though intimate and private, are crucial sites of socioeconomic exchange. In light of such challenges, how can ethnographers "get at" the emotional experiences of rural migrants outside standard frameworks? This article engages with this question through the intimate lives of one hundred women factory workers in China's Pearl River delta. Their experiences are documented—in poetic form—in Stories of Migrant Women written by China's best known rural migrant poet Zhang Xiaoqiong. The article approaches Zheng the poet as a de facto social science researcher, whose accounts of migrant women present myriad counter points to the government, media and cultural elites, and scholars. It also reads her poems about as ethnographic material, which, the article demonstrates, enriches, expands, and in some cases challenges scholarly research. Situated in a China-specific social and political context, the article's discussion goes beyond the call for a "literary turn" in anthropology. Instead, it argues that for scholars who are serious about understanding the emotional cost of social inequality in China, seeking partnership with China's subaltern writers is not just desirable; it is essential.
{"title":"The Worker-Poet as the Ethnographic Partner: Documenting the Emotional Pain of Rural Migrant Women","authors":"Wanning Sun","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10300266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300266","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Many migrant workers in China are widely reported to experience difficulty in finding a conjugal partner or maintaining conjugal intimacy. Despite this widely shared perception, firsthand data about the love lives of migrant workers are hard to access. Yet, to have such knowledge is important, since these domains, though intimate and private, are crucial sites of socioeconomic exchange. In light of such challenges, how can ethnographers \"get at\" the emotional experiences of rural migrants outside standard frameworks? This article engages with this question through the intimate lives of one hundred women factory workers in China's Pearl River delta. Their experiences are documented—in poetic form—in Stories of Migrant Women written by China's best known rural migrant poet Zhang Xiaoqiong. The article approaches Zheng the poet as a de facto social science researcher, whose accounts of migrant women present myriad counter points to the government, media and cultural elites, and scholars. It also reads her poems about as ethnographic material, which, the article demonstrates, enriches, expands, and in some cases challenges scholarly research. Situated in a China-specific social and political context, the article's discussion goes beyond the call for a \"literary turn\" in anthropology. Instead, it argues that for scholars who are serious about understanding the emotional cost of social inequality in China, seeking partnership with China's subaltern writers is not just desirable; it is essential.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"18 1","pages":"403 - 429"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74668663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-01DOI: 10.1215/10679847-10300201
Yurou Zhong
Abstract:Since its inception in 2002, the Beijing New Worker Band has become a representative art group formed by and dedicated to migrant workers. Changing its name three times in twenty years, the band has demonstrated a strong capacity to adapt to uncertain political tides, subsisting in the exploration and expression of art and culture with a new working-class consciousness in postsocialist China. The status of the group has been bolstered by an array of artistic output, such as theater productions, literary writings, and Spring Festival galas. Although overshadowed by some of the better publicized, more successful creative activities, music has been the group's steadiest form of self-expression. Appropriating Roland Barthes's concept of musica practica, this article interrogates the unique status that music has enjoyed in this group and explores three interrelated aspects — album writing, live performances, and community and relationship building — with an emphasis on "practice." It investigates how musica practica constitutes a pivotal mechanism that enables the group to form and transform as main stakeholders in the making of the new working class, and to imagine and experiment with what cultures of labor in the twenty-first century could sound like.
{"title":"Musica Practica: The Sound of the Beijing New Worker Band","authors":"Yurou Zhong","doi":"10.1215/10679847-10300201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10300201","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Since its inception in 2002, the Beijing New Worker Band has become a representative art group formed by and dedicated to migrant workers. Changing its name three times in twenty years, the band has demonstrated a strong capacity to adapt to uncertain political tides, subsisting in the exploration and expression of art and culture with a new working-class consciousness in postsocialist China. The status of the group has been bolstered by an array of artistic output, such as theater productions, literary writings, and Spring Festival galas. Although overshadowed by some of the better publicized, more successful creative activities, music has been the group's steadiest form of self-expression. Appropriating Roland Barthes's concept of musica practica, this article interrogates the unique status that music has enjoyed in this group and explores three interrelated aspects — album writing, live performances, and community and relationship building — with an emphasis on \"practice.\" It investigates how musica practica constitutes a pivotal mechanism that enables the group to form and transform as main stakeholders in the making of the new working class, and to imagine and experiment with what cultures of labor in the twenty-first century could sound like.","PeriodicalId":44356,"journal":{"name":"Positions-Asia Critique","volume":"108 1","pages":"281 - 301"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81465327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：