Urban Youth In China Modernity The Internet And The Self

Fengshu Liu situates the lives of Chinese youth and the growth of the Internet against the backdrop of rapid and profound social transformation in China. In 2008, the total of Internet users in China had reached 253 million (in comparison with 22.5 million in 2001). Yet, despite rapid growth, the Internet in China is so far a predominantly urban-youth phenomenon, with young people under thirty (especially those under twenty-four), mostly members of the only-child generation, as the main group of the netizens’ population. As both youth and the Internet hold the potential to inflict, or at least contribute to, far-reaching economic, social, cultural, and political changes, this book fulfills a pressing need for a systematical investigation of how youth and the Internet are interacting with each other in a Chinese context. In so doing, Liu sheds light on what it means to be a Chinese today, how ‘Chineseness’ may be (re)constructed in the Internet Age, and what the implications of the emerging form of identity are for contemporary and future Chinese societies as well as the world.

This book examines, in a culturally and contextually sensitive way, the particularity of what it means to be young in post-Mao China undergoing rapid and dramatic transformation by comparing childhood and youth experiences over three generations. The analysis draws on life-history interviews with Beijing young men and women in their last upper secondary year, their parents and their grandparents. The book offers a comprehensive coverage of the various aspects of life pertinent to youth experiences and compares each of these across three generations, treating them as interrelated and mutually affecting processes – childhood, intergenerational relationships, education and future plans, gender and sexuality. By offering both men’s and women’s accounts of their childhood and youth experiences, which for the three generations combined extend over nearly a century, the book sheds useful light on how gender and sexuality have evolved in China. Fengshu Liu concludes that the young generation’s lives feature a ‘maximization desire’, in sharp contrast to the two older generations’ childhood and youth experiences. The book meticulously weaves rich ethnographic details and individual life stories into a larger and unfolding picture of historical, social and cultural trends, while providing critical insight into Chinese modernization and modernity against the backdrop of globalization. It can thus be an enjoyable read also for people beyond the academia interested in China’s social and cultural transformation and its children and youth.

In Contemporary Urban Youth Culture in China: A Multiperspectival Cultural Studies of Internet Subcultures, Jing Sun explores contemporary Chinese urban youth culture through analyses of three Chinese Internet subcultural artifacts--A Bloody Case of a Steamed Bun, Cao Ni Ma, and Du Fu Is Busy. Using Douglas Kellner’s (1995) multiperspectival cultural studies (i.e., critical theory and critical media literacy) as the theoretical framework, and diagnostic critique and semiotics as the analytical method, Sun examines three general themes--resistance, power relations, and consumerism. The power of multiperspectival cultural studies, an interdisciplinary inquiry, lies in its potentials to explore contemporary Chinese urban youth culture from multiple perspectives; explore historical backgrounds and complexity of cultural artifacts to understand contradictions and trajectories of contemporary Chinese urban youth culture; recognize alternative medias as a space for contemporary urban Chinese youth to express frustrations and dissatisfactions, to challenge social inequalities and injustices, and to create dreams and hopes for their future; recognize that the intertexuality among cultural artifacts and subcultures creates possibilities for Chinese urban youth to invent more alternative media cultures that empower them to challenge dominations, perform their identities, and release their imagination for the future; invite Chinese youth to be the change agents for the era but not to be imprisoned by the era; and overcome misunderstanding, misrepresentation, or underrepresentation of contemporary Chinese urban youth cultural texts to promote linguistic and cultural diversity in a multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world. Sun argues that contemporary urban youth need to obtain critical media literacy to become the change agents in contemporary China. They need to be the medium of cultural exchanges in the multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world. In order to best assist contemporary Chinese urban youth in expressing their voices, portraying their hopes, and performing their historical responsibilities as change agents, Sun sincerely hopes more research will be done on the contemporary Chinese urban youth culture, especially on its contradictions and trajectories, with the intent to shed light on more richly textured, nuanced, and inspiring insights into the interconnection between contemporary Chinese urban youth and media power in an increasingly multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world.

In A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century Peter Kelly and Annelies Kamp present an edited collection that explores the challenges and opportunities faced by young people in an often dangerous 21st century. In an increasingly globalised world these challenges and opportunities include those associated with widening inequalities, precarious labour markets, the commodification of education, the hopes for democracy, and with practising an identity under these circumstances and in these spaces. Drawing on contemporary critical social theories and diverse methodologies, contributors to the collection, who are established and emerging scholars from the Americas, Europe, and Asia/Pacific, open up discussions about what a critical youth studies can contribute to community, policy and academic debates about these challenges and opportunities. Contributors are: Anna Anderson, Dena Aufseeser, Judith Bessant, Ros Black, Daniel Briggs, Laurie Browne, David Cairns, Perri Campbell, James Côté, Ann Dadich, Maria de Lourdes Beldi Alacantra, Nora Duckett, Deirdre Duffy, Angela Dwyer, Christina Ergler, Michelle Fine, Madeline Fox, Andy Furlong, Theo Gavrielides, Henry Giroux, John Goodwin, Keith Heggart, Luke Howie, Amelia Johns, Annelies Kamp, Peter Kelly, Fengshu Liu, Conor McGuckin, Majella McSharry, Filipa Menezes, Magda Nico, Pam Nilan, Henrietta O'Connor, Jo Pike, Herwig Reiter, Geraldine Scanlon, Keri Schwab, Michael Shevlin, Adnan Selimovic, Joan Smith, Jodie Taylor, Steven Threadgold, Vappu Tyyskä, Brendan Walsh, Lucas Walsh, Rob Watts, Bronwyn Wood, Dan Woodman, and David Zyngier. A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century is now available in paperback for individual customers.

This book examines the use and culture of digital media in Chinese cities. By examining examples and data from Chinese and global social media platforms, the book argues that digital media facilitate Chinese people’s sense of local self and local identity. In doing so, the book moves on from the polarised debate regarding the democratic function of Chinese internet to instead examine the connection between digital technologies and the country’s history, culture and eventually, people and their everyday lives. It offers a rich analysis of a Chinese city in the digital age, and challenges the nationalistic approach to study China’s digital media culture.

The second and completely revised edition of the Routledge Handbook of Youth and Young Adulthood draws on the work of leading academics from four continents in order to introduce up-to-date perspectives on a wide range of issues that affect and shape youth and young adulthood. It provides a multi-disciplinary overview of a dynamic field of study that offers unique insights on social change in advanced societies. It is aimed at researchers, policy-makers and advanced students on a global level. The Handbook introduces the main theoretical perspectives used within youth studies and sets out future research agendas. Each of the ten sections covers an important area of research – from education and the labour market to youth cultures, health and crime – discussing change and continuity in the lives of young people, introducing readers to some of the most important work in the field, while highlighting the underlying perspectives that have been used to understand the complexity of modern youth and young adulthood.

The Internet and social media are pervasive and transformative forces in contemporary China. The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China explores the changing relationship between China's Internet and social media and its society, politics, legal system, and foreign relations.

In this book, Marcella Szablewicz traces what she calls the topography of digital game culture in urban China, drawing our attention to discourse and affect as they shape the popular imaginary surrounding digital games. Szablewicz argues that games are not mere sites of escape from Real Life, but rather locations around which dominant notions about failure, success, and socioeconomic mobility are actively processed and challenged. Covering a range of issues including nostalgia for Internet cafés as sites of youth sociality, the media-driven Internet addiction moral panic, the professionalization of e-sports, and the rise of the self-proclaimed loser (diaosi), Mapping Digital Game Culture in China uses games as a lens onto youth culture and the politics of everyday life in contemporary China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2015 and first-hand observations spanning over two decades, the book is also a social history of urban China’s shifting technological landscape.