Jonathan Sullivan (University of Nottingham): Contemporary Chinese Society: Celebs, Sport, Drugs, and Sex syllabus Course dates: 9. 4. – 13. 4. 2018 Course schedule: Lecture 1 Contemporary Chinese society Lecture 2 China’s Millennials Lecture 3 Consumption Lecture 4 Internet and Gaming Lecture 5 Celebrity industry Lecture 6 Celebrity culture & fandoms Lecture 7 LGBTQ, gender and feminism Lecture 8 Sex Lecture 9 Underground music Lecture 10 Drugs and gangs Lecture 11 Football ultras Lecture themes and readings: Lecture 1: Introduction to contemporary Chinese society This lecture establishes the social, political and economic context in which all other topics covered in the module take place. It will explore how the transition to market socialism and partial retreat of the state have created a freer, more individualistic and wealthier society, but also one in which the decline of socialist ideology and collectivist ways of life and previous certainties in the organization of life have affected attitudes and behaviours. The lecture will establish the socio-political parameters in which social expression and lifestyles are experienced, survey key processes such as urbanization and migration, and introduce concepts such as “liquid modernity” to help explain people’s responses. Core Reading: Jacka, Tamara, Andrew B. Kipnis, and Sally Sargeson. Contemporary China: Society and social change. Cambridge University Press, 2013. Recommended Reading: Perry, Elizabeth J., and Mark Selden, eds. Chinese society: Change, conflict and resistance. Routledge, 2003. Barmé, Geremie R. In the red: On contemporary Chinese culture. Columbia University Press, 2000. Latham, Kevin. 2007. Pop Culture China! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Link, Perry, Richard P. Madsen, and Paul G. Pickowicz. 2001. Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers[DEL: :DEL] Further Reading: Bakken, Børge. 2000. The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jeffreys, Elaine. 2009. China's Governmentalities: Governing Change, Changing Government. London: Routledge. Kipnis, Andrew B. 2001. "The Flourishing of religion in Post‐Mao China and the anthropological category of religion." The Australian Journal of Anthropology 12(1), 32-46. Lecture 2: China’s Millennials This lecture explores the attitudes and behaviours of the cohorts who were born under the “one child policy” and during China’s economic take-off. It identifies the concerns, lifestyles and aspirations of the post-80s and post-90s generation and the implications for Chinese society. Core Reading: Fish, Eric. China's Millennials: The Want Generation. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Moore, Robert L. "Generation ku: Individualism and China's millennial youth." Ethnology (2005): 357-376. Recommended Reading: Fong, Vanessa L. Only hope: Coming of age under China's one-child policy. Stanford University Press, 2004. Han Han, This Generation. (Schuster, 2012). Li, Siling. 2009. "The turn to the self: From “big character posters” to YouTube videos." Chinese Journal of Communication 2(1), 50-60. Further Reading: Sima, Yangzi, and Peter C. Pugsley. 2010. "The Rise of a 'me culture' in Postsocialist China youth, individualism and identity creation in the blogosphere." International Communication Gazette 72(3), 287-306. Yang, Lijun, and Yongnian Zheng. 2012. "Fen qings (angry youth) in contemporary China." Journal of Contemporary China 21(76), 637-653. Leslie T. Chang, Factory Girls (Picador, 2009). Pun Ngai. 2005. Made in China: Women factory workers in a global workplace. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Sun, Wanning. Maid in China: Media, morality, and the cultural politics of boundaries. Routledge, 2009. Lecture 3: Consumption This lecture explores consumption patterns in post-reform China, discussing how greater wealth has changed attitudes toward material well-being, spending habits and lifestyles. It situates consumption within the broader context of the transition to market socialism, changing social attitudes and commercialization of the media and emergence of the internet. It looks at e-commerce, one of the most dynamic and innovative sectors in the Chinese economy, and the rapidly professionalizing advertising industry. Core Reading: Yu, LiAnne. Consumption in China: How China's new consumer ideology is shaping the nation. John Wiley & Sons, 2014. Recommended Reading: Wallis, Cara. 2015. Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones. New York: New York University Press. Wang, Jing. 2008. Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Xu, Janice Hua. "Brand-new lifestyle: consumer-oriented programmes on Chinese television." Media, Culture & Society29.3 (2007): 363-376. Erisman, Porter. Alibaba's World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business. Pan Macmillan, 2016. Further Reading: Kevin Latham, Jakob Klein and Stuart Thompson (eds.), Consuming China: Approaches to Cultural Change in Contemporary China. Abingdon: Routledge Dong, Lily, and Kelly Tian. "The use of Western brands in asserting Chinese national identity." Journal of Consumer Research 36.3 (2009): 504-523. Wallis, Cara. 2015. Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones. New York: New York University Press. Lecture 4: Internet and Gaming This lecture sets out the development of the internet in China and discusses the social ramifications of social media. It looks at internet cultures, including cybernationalism, hacking, and memes. It covers China’s enormous gaming industry, from economic, social and cultural perspectives. Core Reading: David Herold and Peter Marolt (eds.), Online Society in China: Creating, Celebrating, and Instrumentalising the Online Carnival. Abingdon: Routledge Wallis, Cara. "New media practices in China: Youth patterns, processes, and politics." International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 31. Nie, Hongping Annie. "Gaming, Nationalism, and Ideological Work in Contemporary China: online games based on the War of Resistance against Japan." Journal of Contemporary China 22.81 (2013): 499-517. Recommended Reading: Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China (Columbia, 2009). *Hardcopy available in Hallward Library* Zhang, Lin, and Anthony YH Fung. "Working as playing? Consumer labor, guild and the secondary industry of online gaming in China." new media & society 16.1 (2014): 38-54. Lindtner, Silvia, et al. "A hybrid cultural ecology: world of warcraft in China." Proceedings of the 2008 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. ACM, 2008. Sun, Wanning. Subaltern China: Rural migrants, media, and cultural practices. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Further Reading: Lee Ambrozy, Ai Weiwei’s Blog. (MIT, 2011). Strafella, Giorgio, and Daria Berg. 2015b. "The making of an online celebrity: A critical analysis of Han Han’s blog." China Information 29, 1-25. Jonathan Sullivan (2014) China’s Weibo: Is faster different? New Media & Society 16(1): 24-37. Available at http://bit.ly/1wco0CF Szablewicz, Marcella. "A Realm of Mere Representation?“Live” E-Sports Spectacles and the Crafting of China’s Digital Gaming Image." Games and Culture 11.3 (2016): 256-274. Lecture 5: Celebrity industry This lecture introduces frameworks for understanding celebrity in contemporary culture and shows how different elements of the celebrity industry in China work. It demonstrates how the state controls and uses celebrity to advance its own agenda of promoting modernity, traditional values and patriotism. Core Reading: Turner, Graeme. 2013. Understanding Celebrity. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. Edwards, Louise, and Elaine Jeffreys. 2010. Celebrity in China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press Recommended Reading: Rojek, Chris. 2001. Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books. Marshall, P. David. 1997. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Zhao, Yuezhi. 2008. Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Further Reading: Jeffreys, Elaine. 2015 “Political celebrities and elite politics in contemporary China”. China Information 30(1) 1-23. DeCordova, Richard. 2001. Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Susan Shirk (ed), Changing Media, Changing China (Oxford, 2011). *Electronic copy available* Keane, Michael. Creative industries in China: Art, design and media. John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Lecture 6: Celebrity culture & fandoms This lecture explores the forms that celebrity culture takes in China, how fandoms have emerged in response to the growth of the celebrity industry and the internet, and the motivations for celebrity fandoms in China. It introduces general theoretical frameworks for understanding the role of celebrity fandom in contemporary societies, and provides comparative counterpoints. Core Reading: Edwards, Louise, and Elaine Jeffreys. 2010. Celebrity in China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press (1 hard copy in Hallward Library) Recommended Reading: Chow, Rey. 2007. Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility. New York: Columbia University Press. Zhao, Jamie J. 2016. “A splendid Chinese queer TV? “Crafting” non-normative masculinities in formatted Chinese reality TV shows.” Feminist Media Studies, 16(1), 164-168. Farquhar, Mary, and Yingjin Zhang. 2010. Chinese Film Stars. Abingdon: Routledge. Zhang, Weiyu. The Internet and New Social Formation in China: Fandom Publics in the Making. Routledge, 2016. Further Reading: Berry, Christopher J., and Mary A. Farquhar. 2006. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press. Gold, Thomas B. 1993. "Go with your feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwan popular culture in Greater China." The China Quarterly 136, 907-925. Lecture 7: LGBTQ, Gender, and Feminism [DEL: :DEL] This lecture examines the politics and possibilities of sexuality and gender in Contemporary China. It explores how the emergence of LGBTQ identities and practices, and feminist activists negotiate state, market and transnational cultural flows in everyday life, and the various opportunities and challenges this presents. Core Reading: Engrebretsen, Elisabeth L. and William F. Schroder (eds.) (with Hongwei Bao). 2015. Queer/Tongzhi China: New Perspectives on Research, Activism and Media Cultures. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Tan, Jia. 2017. “Digital masquerading: Feminist media activism in China.” Crime, Media, Culture 13(2), 171 -186. Recommended Reading: Yang, Ling and Yanrui Xu. 2016. “Danmei, Xianqing, and the making of a queer online public sphere in China.” Communication and the Public 1(2), 251 -256. Fincher, Leta Hong. 2016. China’ Feminist Five. Dissent 63(4), 84-96. Cara Wallis. 2015. “Gender and China's online censorship protest culture” Feminist Media Studies Vol. 15(2), 223-238. Engebretsen, Elisabeth L.2014. Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography. New York: Routledge. Rofel, Lisa. 2004. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality and Public Culture. Durham: Duke University Press. Susan Brownell and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (eds.) 2002. Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press. Further Reading: Fincher, Leta Hong. Leftover women: The resurgence of gender inequality in China. Zed Books Ltd., 2016. Zheng, Tiantian. 2015. Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kam, Lucetta Yip Lo. 2013. Shanghai Lalas: Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Liu, Lydia H., Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko (eds.) 2013. The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New York: Colombia University Press. Evans, Harriet. 1997. Women and Sexuality in China: Dominant Discourses of Female Sexuality and Gender Since 1949. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lecture 8: Sex This lecture looks at how sexual culture in China has changed since the country’s shift to a more market-based economy. Exploring how new ideas of romance, leisure, and free choice are redefining ideas of sex in China today, we will also discuss changing attitudes and public discussions of sex and pornography, and how it is governed by state and market. Core Reading: Jeffreys, Elaine and Haiqing Yu. 2015. Sex in China. Cambridge: Polity Press. Evans, Harriet. 2008. Sexed Bodies, Sexualized Identities, and the Limits of Gender. China Information 22(2), 361-386. Recommended Reading: Jacobs, Katrien. 2015. The Afterglow of Women’s Pornography in Post-Digital China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jian, Ma. The Dark Road. Random House, 2013. Kong, Travis S.K. 2012. “Reinventing The Self Under Socialism: Migrant Male Sex Workers (“Money Boys”) in China.” Critical Asian Studies 44(2), 283-308. Zheng, Tiantian. 2009. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Farrer, James. 2002. Opening Up: Youth Sex, Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Further Reading: Burger, Richard. Behind the red door: Sex in China. Earnshaw Books, 2012. Kaufman, Joan. "HIV, sex work, and civil society in China." Journal of Infectious Diseases 204.suppl_5 (2011): S1218-S1222. Steinfeld, Jemimah. Little Emperors and Material Girls: Youth and Sex in Modern China. IB Tauris, 2015. Lecture 9: Underground Music This lecture explores the cultural politics of underground popular music in contemporary China. Through examples of non-commercial popular music such as hip hop, folk, and rock scenes, we will discuss how musicians and their music challenge and resist the aesthetics and ideologies of mainstream music and culture in urban China, and how they engage with questions of identity. Core Reading: De Kloet, Jeroen. 2010. China with a Cut: Globalization, Urban Youth and Popular Music. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Liu, Chen. 2014. “Noise in Guangzhou: The Cultural Politics of Underground Popular Music in Contemporary Guangzhou.” Area 46(3), 228 -234. Recommended Reading: Wong, Chuen-Fung. 2013. “Singing Muqam in Uyghur Pop: Minority Modernity and Popular Music in China.” Popular Music and Society 36(1), 98-118. Barrett, Catrice. 2012. “Hip-Hopping Across China: Intercultural Formulations of Local Identities.” Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 11(4), 247-260. Morcom, Anna. 2008. “Getting Heard in Tibet: Music, Media and Markets.” Consumption, Markets and Culture 11(4), 259-285. Huang, Hao. 2003. “Voices from Chinese Rock, Past and Present Tense: Social Commentary and Construction of Identity in Yaogun Yinyue, from Tiananmen to the Present.” Popular Music and Society 26(2), 183-202. De Kloet, Jeroen. 2006. “Authenticating Geographies and Temporalities: Representations of Chinese Rock in China.” Visual Anthropology 18(2-3), 229-255. Further Reading: Ho, Wai-Chung. 2016. Popular Music, Cultural Politics and Music Education in China. New York: Routledge. Harris, Rachel, Rowan Pease and Shzr Ee Tan (eds.) 2013. Gender in Chinese Music. Woodbridge: University of Rochester Press. Li, Yan-Ning and Emma H. Wood. 2013. “Music Festival Motivation in China: Free the Mind.” Leisure Studies 35(3), 332-351. Khan, Katy. 2009. “Chinese Hip hop music: negotiating for cultural freedoms in the 21st century. Muziki: Journal for Music Research in Africa 6(2), 232-240. Baranovitch, Nimrod. 2003. China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978-1997. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lecture 10: Drugs and gangs This lecture looks at illegal drugs in China and organized crime, particularly triad gangs. It discusses the growth in recreactional drug use and China’s own opioid crisis and public health consequences. Core Reading: Chen, An. "Secret societies and organized crime in contemporary China." Modern Asian Studies 39.1 (2005): 77-107. Chin, Kolin, and Roy Godson. "Organized crime and the political-criminal nexus in China." Trends in Organized Crime 9.3 (2006): 5. Recommended Reading: Dikötter, Frank, Lars Peter Laamann, and Zhou Xun. Narcotic culture: a history of drugs in China. Hong Kong University Press, 2004. Chu, Yiu-kong. The triads as business. Routledge, 2002. Pyrooz, David C., and Scott H. Decker. "Delinquent behavior, violence, and gang involvement in China." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 29.2 (2013): 251-272. XIA, Ming "Organizational Formations of Organized Crime in China: perspectives from the state, markets, and networks." Journal of Contemporary China 17.54 (2008): 1-23. Hazlehurst, Kayleen M., and Cameron Hazlehurst, eds. Gangs and youth subcultures: International explorations. Transaction Publishers, 1998. Further Reading Yang, Dali L. "Illegal drugs, policy change, and state power: The case of contemporary China." The Journal of Contemporary China2.4 (1993): 14-34. Zhou, Yongming. Anti-drug crusades in twentieth-century China: Nationalism, history, and state building. Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Cochrane, Johanne, et al. "Alcohol use in China." Alcohol and Alcoholism 38.6 (2003): 537-542. Yangwen, Zheng. The social life of opium in China. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Lo, T. Wing. "Beyond social capital: triad organized crime in Hong Kong and China." The British Journal of Criminology 50.5 (2010): 851-872. Lecture 11: Football ultras The final lecture looks at the culture of football fandom in China. It describes the development of football in China, the connection between football and nationalism and football and violence. It uses transnational fandom as a vehicle for interrogating Chinese attitudes towards the west. Core Reading: Gong, Yuan. "Online discourse of masculinities in transnational football fandom: Chinese Arsenal fans’ talk around ‘gaofushuai’and ‘diaosi’." Discourse & Society 27.1 (2016): 20-37. Dong, Jinxia, and J. A. Mangan. "Football in the new China: Political statement, entrepreneurial enticement and patriotic passion." Soccer and Society 2.3 (2001): 79-100. Recommended Reading: Jones, Ian. "A model of serious leisure identification: The case of football fandom." Leisure Studies 19.4 (2000): 283-298. Kennedy, David. "A contextual analysis of Europe’s ultra football supporters movement." Soccer & Society 14.2 (2013): 132-153. Best, Shaun. "Liquid fandom: neo-tribes and fandom in the context of liquid modernity." Soccer & Society 14.1 (2013): 80-92. Further Reading Benkwitz, Adam, and Gyozo Molnar. "Interpreting and exploring football fan rivalries: an overview." Soccer & Society 13.4 (2012): 479-494. Bridges, Brian. "Football, Nationalism, and Fan Violence in China." Journal of Current Chinese Affairs-China aktuell 37.2 (2008): 60-82. Giulianotti, Richard. "Supporters, followers, fans, and flaneurs: A taxonomy of spectator identities in football." Journal of sport and social issues 26.1 (2002): 25-46.