This article investigates the emergence of "erotic entrepreneurs" in China, a new categ... more This article investigates the emergence of "erotic entrepreneurs" in China, a new category of male influencers who engage in erotic activities and target followers of all genders on platforms such as TikTok/Douyin and Bilibili. Through ethnographic research, we examine how these young individuals strategically marketize their private and intimate experiences as a form of aspiration and commerce. We use Foucault’s concept, "docile bodies," to interrogate how these erotic entrepreneurs navigate the power and knowledge systems of the creative economy. We argue that the paradoxical position of these docile male, queer bodies helps to increase their visibility on one hand, whilst renders them vulnerable to exploitation, censorship, and commodification on the other. The findings suggest that this paradox disrupts traditional gender stereotypes and the underlying power structures, but also reinforces the neoliberal and patriarchal order specific to postreform China.
The article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experie... more The article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experienced by the Chinese artistic duo known as Birdhead. Underpinned by the conceptual framework of the “affective turn”, this study reflects upon and addresses how the photographer’s chaotic photo-essay of Shanghai’s new state housing (Xincun, New Village, 2008) can function as a nexus of place-making. With a claim to impetuous emotion in his works, Birdhead’s contemporary photography pervades a plane of subjects, objects, and affections, in which the city is imagined and experienced as space-body performativity. Understanding Birdhead’s everyday urban practices as performative, we claim that the visual performance of these photographs not just materially shapes the bodies, but also acts as a rhizomatic catalyst for both things-in-themselves and webs of social affection inside and outside Shanghai. As a contribution, this article’s theoretical application to Birdhead’s everyday networks of u...
This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China wi... more This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China within globalisation and the ‘media-mix’ fandom, which is to consume and resell media merchandise in opaque packages as probability goods. We re-centre the focus of fandom studies on the then much neglected ‘missing child’ and now the ‘emerging adult’ in a globalising world. We argue the Chinese emerging adult consumes, collects and resells Blind Boxes as a generative and agentic collection and fandom practice, defined as ‘probabilistic and elastic prosumption’ in a quasi-social and quasi-individual manner. We then critically examine and unpack the cultural production and meaning making process undertook by collectors who also accumulate sociality and form identity through affective and economic investments, mediated collection and exchange of figurines in a post-socialist and consumerist society.
International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and imag... more International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-generated content on national images can affect social media users’ perceptions of reality. Content analysis is used to analyze the visual portrayals of Chinese rural culture, including its customs and values, aesthetics, and cultural and scenic places in Li’s vlogs. Discourse analysis is further used to examine user comments and demonstrate her vlog content’s impact on user perceptions of Chinese rural culture. This study sheds light on how a complex and hybrid national image with ‘Chineseness,’ and a personal image with self-Orientalized and...
After recent reports emerged of a third arson attack on stray dog kennels in China’s Shandong pro... more After recent reports emerged of a third arson attack on stray dog kennels in China’s Shandong province, those who have shown both hostility towards and support for the dogs and others involved in this event on Chinese social media have appeared. By analyzing posts and user attitudes on China’s Weibo and Baidu Tieba towards such kinds of media reports of stray dog cruelty, this article answers what the differing outlooks are on cruelty to stray dogs in contemporary Mainland China. The purpose of this article is therefore to attempt to increase a deeper understanding of the portrayal and response to certain forms of misconduct to stray dogs in user-generated contents in social media today. Several thematic demonstrations of cruelty are identified, and criticism/activism, compassion, and animosity are included. These themes are not limited, with some reports including aspects of several themes.
Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2022
This paper examines the inextricable relationship between the uncanny efects of
knocking down Sh... more This paper examines the inextricable relationship between the uncanny efects of
knocking down Shanghai’s central district and their traumatic post-colonial implications. The value of the Chinese ruin, with its apocalyptic and contemporary imagery,
begs to be discussed from a western perspective of ruin admiration as a metaphor
for decadence and melancholy. This points to a new consciousness of globalization as means of conceptualizing well-established post-colonial orders at the heart
of the urban deterioration of cityscapes. As a potential concept to spark a dialogue
of cosmopolitanism between China and the west, urban ruins can be analyzed as a
transnational, creative ethos that reimagines the Chinese city as never before. Taking
the work of the Canadian photographer Greg Girard (born 1955), this article examines how his photograph book presents a cosmopolitan image of Shanghai’s derelict
‘community lanes’ (longtang or lilong) built in the city’s International Concessions
(1842–1949), in which the past, present, and future are interwoven and redeemed.
The authors argue that his ruin photography not only retriggers material knowledge
of the city but also repurposes transcultural and creative expressions of mutually
spectral moments of destruction and production between the east and the west, in
which a myriad of potential features are discovered.
Keywords Post-colonial spaces · Material ruins · Hospitality · Cosmopolitanism ·
Hauntology
In this article, the authors explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that ... more In this article, the authors explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifies the ‘national style’. Expanding the work of other scholars who have demonstrated the changeability of the ‘national style’, here they examine this notion in regard to the way in which Nezha (2019) represents ‘Chineseness’ at this particular socio-political moment. Methodologically, they focus their analysis largely upon the film’s narrative and aesthetics, drawing on a number of reviews as counterpoints for the way in which it was interpreted to situate it in popular discourses. The authors argue that Nezha (2019) presents a national image in which traditions and modernity are interwoven, and the focus upon the ‘technological’ – its digitality – constitutes a refiguring of animation in China as symbolic of modernity. Narratively and aesthetically mediating between the past and the present, Nezha (2019) embodies a ‘national style’ which is on one hand hybrid in its inter/natio...
Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact o... more Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social media. Fang Fang’s diary, originally written as daily entries on Chinese social media platform Weibo, serves as a voice for those suffering during the pandemic, mediating between personal accounts, accounts of friends, family and those living in Wuhan during the pandemic. These flesh out how the virus has not only been disturbing for Chinese people’s lives but also disrupted the death rites and mourning rituals for those who have passed. Our article infuses a digital ontological reading with an anthropological twist that helps to understand how...
Routledge Handbook of Cultural and Creative Industries in Asia
The importation of the creative industries 1 policy and discourse in China in the early twenty-fi... more The importation of the creative industries 1 policy and discourse in China in the early twenty-first century has both reinforced the government’s desire to encourage more innovation and amplified existing tensions over differing conceptions of creativity. Along with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the adoption of policies to develop the creative industries has bolstered the nation’s rapid modernization program. Producers of creative content in China have found themselves having to navigate difficult domestic and international policy domains, where restrictions on content and pressure to project a certain image of China at home have been complicated by a need to produce content which appeals to highly commercial global markets. As this chapter will demonstrate, attempts to resolve this tension have engendered a creative industries policy approach significantly different not only from other continents, but from the rest of Asia too. It is against this background we conducted interviews to explore how and why some of today’s Chinese artists choose to identify themselves as ‘literati’. The literati’s ‘purist’ view of art opens up a space for critical reflection, from the perspective of the Chinese creative producer, on China’s integration into global creative industries discourse and policy making.
In this article we explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifie... more In this article we explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifies the ‘national style’. Expanding the work of other scholars who have demonstrated the changeability of the ‘national style’, here we examine this notion as regards the way in which Nezha (2019) represents ‘Chineseness’ at this particular socio-political moment. Methodologically, we focus our analysis largely upon the film’s narrative and aesthetics, drawing on a number of reviews as counterpoints for the way in which it was interpreted to situate it in popular discourses. We argue that Nezha (2019) presents a national image in which traditions and modernity are interwoven, and the focus upon the ‘technological’ – its digitality – constitutes a refiguring of animation in China as symbolic of modernity. Narratively and aesthetically mediating between the past and the present, Nezha (2019) embodies a ‘national style’ which is on one hand hybrid in its inter/nationality, but also culturally...
Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact o... more Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social media. Fang Fang’s diary, originally written as daily entries on Chinese social media platform Weibo, serves as a voice for those suffering during the pandemic, mediating between personal accounts, accounts of friends, family, and those living in Wuhan during the pandemic. These flesh out how the virus has not only been disturbing for Chinese people’s lives, but also disrupted the death rites and mourning rituals for those who have passed. Our article infuses a digital ontological reading with an anthropological twist that helps to understand h...
This article investigates the emergence of "erotic entrepreneurs" in China, a new categ... more This article investigates the emergence of "erotic entrepreneurs" in China, a new category of male influencers who engage in erotic activities and target followers of all genders on platforms such as TikTok/Douyin and Bilibili. Through ethnographic research, we examine how these young individuals strategically marketize their private and intimate experiences as a form of aspiration and commerce. We use Foucault’s concept, "docile bodies," to interrogate how these erotic entrepreneurs navigate the power and knowledge systems of the creative economy. We argue that the paradoxical position of these docile male, queer bodies helps to increase their visibility on one hand, whilst renders them vulnerable to exploitation, censorship, and commodification on the other. The findings suggest that this paradox disrupts traditional gender stereotypes and the underlying power structures, but also reinforces the neoliberal and patriarchal order specific to postreform China.
The article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experie... more The article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experienced by the Chinese artistic duo known as Birdhead. Underpinned by the conceptual framework of the “affective turn”, this study reflects upon and addresses how the photographer’s chaotic photo-essay of Shanghai’s new state housing (Xincun, New Village, 2008) can function as a nexus of place-making. With a claim to impetuous emotion in his works, Birdhead’s contemporary photography pervades a plane of subjects, objects, and affections, in which the city is imagined and experienced as space-body performativity. Understanding Birdhead’s everyday urban practices as performative, we claim that the visual performance of these photographs not just materially shapes the bodies, but also acts as a rhizomatic catalyst for both things-in-themselves and webs of social affection inside and outside Shanghai. As a contribution, this article’s theoretical application to Birdhead’s everyday networks of u...
This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China wi... more This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China within globalisation and the ‘media-mix’ fandom, which is to consume and resell media merchandise in opaque packages as probability goods. We re-centre the focus of fandom studies on the then much neglected ‘missing child’ and now the ‘emerging adult’ in a globalising world. We argue the Chinese emerging adult consumes, collects and resells Blind Boxes as a generative and agentic collection and fandom practice, defined as ‘probabilistic and elastic prosumption’ in a quasi-social and quasi-individual manner. We then critically examine and unpack the cultural production and meaning making process undertook by collectors who also accumulate sociality and form identity through affective and economic investments, mediated collection and exchange of figurines in a post-socialist and consumerist society.
International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and imag... more International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-generated content on national images can affect social media users’ perceptions of reality. Content analysis is used to analyze the visual portrayals of Chinese rural culture, including its customs and values, aesthetics, and cultural and scenic places in Li’s vlogs. Discourse analysis is further used to examine user comments and demonstrate her vlog content’s impact on user perceptions of Chinese rural culture. This study sheds light on how a complex and hybrid national image with ‘Chineseness,’ and a personal image with self-Orientalized and...
After recent reports emerged of a third arson attack on stray dog kennels in China’s Shandong pro... more After recent reports emerged of a third arson attack on stray dog kennels in China’s Shandong province, those who have shown both hostility towards and support for the dogs and others involved in this event on Chinese social media have appeared. By analyzing posts and user attitudes on China’s Weibo and Baidu Tieba towards such kinds of media reports of stray dog cruelty, this article answers what the differing outlooks are on cruelty to stray dogs in contemporary Mainland China. The purpose of this article is therefore to attempt to increase a deeper understanding of the portrayal and response to certain forms of misconduct to stray dogs in user-generated contents in social media today. Several thematic demonstrations of cruelty are identified, and criticism/activism, compassion, and animosity are included. These themes are not limited, with some reports including aspects of several themes.
Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2022
This paper examines the inextricable relationship between the uncanny efects of
knocking down Sh... more This paper examines the inextricable relationship between the uncanny efects of
knocking down Shanghai’s central district and their traumatic post-colonial implications. The value of the Chinese ruin, with its apocalyptic and contemporary imagery,
begs to be discussed from a western perspective of ruin admiration as a metaphor
for decadence and melancholy. This points to a new consciousness of globalization as means of conceptualizing well-established post-colonial orders at the heart
of the urban deterioration of cityscapes. As a potential concept to spark a dialogue
of cosmopolitanism between China and the west, urban ruins can be analyzed as a
transnational, creative ethos that reimagines the Chinese city as never before. Taking
the work of the Canadian photographer Greg Girard (born 1955), this article examines how his photograph book presents a cosmopolitan image of Shanghai’s derelict
‘community lanes’ (longtang or lilong) built in the city’s International Concessions
(1842–1949), in which the past, present, and future are interwoven and redeemed.
The authors argue that his ruin photography not only retriggers material knowledge
of the city but also repurposes transcultural and creative expressions of mutually
spectral moments of destruction and production between the east and the west, in
which a myriad of potential features are discovered.
Keywords Post-colonial spaces · Material ruins · Hospitality · Cosmopolitanism ·
Hauntology
In this article, the authors explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that ... more In this article, the authors explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifies the ‘national style’. Expanding the work of other scholars who have demonstrated the changeability of the ‘national style’, here they examine this notion in regard to the way in which Nezha (2019) represents ‘Chineseness’ at this particular socio-political moment. Methodologically, they focus their analysis largely upon the film’s narrative and aesthetics, drawing on a number of reviews as counterpoints for the way in which it was interpreted to situate it in popular discourses. The authors argue that Nezha (2019) presents a national image in which traditions and modernity are interwoven, and the focus upon the ‘technological’ – its digitality – constitutes a refiguring of animation in China as symbolic of modernity. Narratively and aesthetically mediating between the past and the present, Nezha (2019) embodies a ‘national style’ which is on one hand hybrid in its inter/natio...
Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact o... more Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social media. Fang Fang’s diary, originally written as daily entries on Chinese social media platform Weibo, serves as a voice for those suffering during the pandemic, mediating between personal accounts, accounts of friends, family and those living in Wuhan during the pandemic. These flesh out how the virus has not only been disturbing for Chinese people’s lives but also disrupted the death rites and mourning rituals for those who have passed. Our article infuses a digital ontological reading with an anthropological twist that helps to understand how...
Routledge Handbook of Cultural and Creative Industries in Asia
The importation of the creative industries 1 policy and discourse in China in the early twenty-fi... more The importation of the creative industries 1 policy and discourse in China in the early twenty-first century has both reinforced the government’s desire to encourage more innovation and amplified existing tensions over differing conceptions of creativity. Along with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the adoption of policies to develop the creative industries has bolstered the nation’s rapid modernization program. Producers of creative content in China have found themselves having to navigate difficult domestic and international policy domains, where restrictions on content and pressure to project a certain image of China at home have been complicated by a need to produce content which appeals to highly commercial global markets. As this chapter will demonstrate, attempts to resolve this tension have engendered a creative industries policy approach significantly different not only from other continents, but from the rest of Asia too. It is against this background we conducted interviews to explore how and why some of today’s Chinese artists choose to identify themselves as ‘literati’. The literati’s ‘purist’ view of art opens up a space for critical reflection, from the perspective of the Chinese creative producer, on China’s integration into global creative industries discourse and policy making.
In this article we explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifie... more In this article we explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifies the ‘national style’. Expanding the work of other scholars who have demonstrated the changeability of the ‘national style’, here we examine this notion as regards the way in which Nezha (2019) represents ‘Chineseness’ at this particular socio-political moment. Methodologically, we focus our analysis largely upon the film’s narrative and aesthetics, drawing on a number of reviews as counterpoints for the way in which it was interpreted to situate it in popular discourses. We argue that Nezha (2019) presents a national image in which traditions and modernity are interwoven, and the focus upon the ‘technological’ – its digitality – constitutes a refiguring of animation in China as symbolic of modernity. Narratively and aesthetically mediating between the past and the present, Nezha (2019) embodies a ‘national style’ which is on one hand hybrid in its inter/nationality, but also culturally...
Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact o... more Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social media. Fang Fang’s diary, originally written as daily entries on Chinese social media platform Weibo, serves as a voice for those suffering during the pandemic, mediating between personal accounts, accounts of friends, family, and those living in Wuhan during the pandemic. These flesh out how the virus has not only been disturbing for Chinese people’s lives, but also disrupted the death rites and mourning rituals for those who have passed. Our article infuses a digital ontological reading with an anthropological twist that helps to understand h...
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Papers by Joaquin Lopez-Mugica
knocking down Shanghai’s central district and their traumatic post-colonial implications. The value of the Chinese ruin, with its apocalyptic and contemporary imagery,
begs to be discussed from a western perspective of ruin admiration as a metaphor
for decadence and melancholy. This points to a new consciousness of globalization as means of conceptualizing well-established post-colonial orders at the heart
of the urban deterioration of cityscapes. As a potential concept to spark a dialogue
of cosmopolitanism between China and the west, urban ruins can be analyzed as a
transnational, creative ethos that reimagines the Chinese city as never before. Taking
the work of the Canadian photographer Greg Girard (born 1955), this article examines how his photograph book presents a cosmopolitan image of Shanghai’s derelict
‘community lanes’ (longtang or lilong) built in the city’s International Concessions
(1842–1949), in which the past, present, and future are interwoven and redeemed.
The authors argue that his ruin photography not only retriggers material knowledge
of the city but also repurposes transcultural and creative expressions of mutually
spectral moments of destruction and production between the east and the west, in
which a myriad of potential features are discovered.
Keywords Post-colonial spaces · Material ruins · Hospitality · Cosmopolitanism ·
Hauntology
knocking down Shanghai’s central district and their traumatic post-colonial implications. The value of the Chinese ruin, with its apocalyptic and contemporary imagery,
begs to be discussed from a western perspective of ruin admiration as a metaphor
for decadence and melancholy. This points to a new consciousness of globalization as means of conceptualizing well-established post-colonial orders at the heart
of the urban deterioration of cityscapes. As a potential concept to spark a dialogue
of cosmopolitanism between China and the west, urban ruins can be analyzed as a
transnational, creative ethos that reimagines the Chinese city as never before. Taking
the work of the Canadian photographer Greg Girard (born 1955), this article examines how his photograph book presents a cosmopolitan image of Shanghai’s derelict
‘community lanes’ (longtang or lilong) built in the city’s International Concessions
(1842–1949), in which the past, present, and future are interwoven and redeemed.
The authors argue that his ruin photography not only retriggers material knowledge
of the city but also repurposes transcultural and creative expressions of mutually
spectral moments of destruction and production between the east and the west, in
which a myriad of potential features are discovered.
Keywords Post-colonial spaces · Material ruins · Hospitality · Cosmopolitanism ·
Hauntology