Matthew Ming-Tak Chew
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 357691 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Matthew Ming-Tak Chew |
| PRENOMES | Matthew Ming-Tak |
| SOBRENOME | Chew |
| ASSINATURA | CHEW M M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Hong Kong Baptist University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5065-5652 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 61 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1996 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Does danmei fiction truly generate feminist impacts? Evidence from Hong Kong fans’ declarative and nondeclarative transformations
This study engages with the debate over whether danmei fiction truly has feminist impacts. Its objective is to contribute to the debate by i) providing the necessary yet often ignored framing of this debate as but one of the many popular feminist sub-debates on various genres of feminist popular culture, ii) substantiating the sympathetic camp of the danmei debate in a more causally immediate, systematic, and direct manner than current studies do…
Culture-led reclaiming of public space
This study explores whether and how culture-led activities staged in urban public space contribute to the reclaiming of such space. It coined the term “culture-led reclaiming of public space” (CLRPS) to designate this phenomenon. It conducts a diachronic analysis of hip-hop urbanism in Hong Kong between 1999 and 2019 to empirically answer the question. The major finding is that Hong Kong’s street-breakdancers repeatedly fought against capitalist,…
Are There Service Work-Games of Resistance? “Work-Play” and Relational Resistance in Dance Club Waitstaff Work
This study tackles an important yet marginalized question in the sociology of work: Are there service work-games of resistance? Sociologists kept trying to find them but had little success. Current studies only find service work-games of consent. Building on Lopez’s idea of “successful social interactions” (SSIs), this study searches for service work-games of resistance. The author finds that worker-customer relations resembling SSIs are already …
The Palgrave Handbook on Decoloniality in Asia
Conclusion
Guanxi Work Processes in Chinese Banquets
This study analyses “guanxi work processes” – strategic practices that initiate, develop, shape, suspend, manipulate, and terminate guanxi relations – in Chinese banquets. It explores (i) different styles of carrying out guanxi work in banquets and (ii) guanxi work processes that are relatively unsuccessful and/or shaped by contingencies. Both are research gaps in the relevant scholarship. Adopting a robust processual perspective, this study anal…
Representing trans in Sinophone films
Re-thinking the decolonisation of knowledge and dismantling of intellectual imperialism
This introduction discusses the articles in our special issue ‘Decolonising Epistemology’, and derives from them several recommendations for decolonisation: (1) Current decolonisation efforts are mainly led by privileged scholars, when they should be spearheaded by oppressed scholars. Scholars holding privilege should focus on supporting roles. (2) Decolonisation should put dismantling the global power structures erected by colonialism front and …
Meso-level processes of intellectual imperialism
The contemporary sociology of knowledge treats meso-level institutions of intellectual production as its primary investigative focus but seldom studies global intellectual inequalities.Decolonial and postcolonial studies of knowledge focus on global intellectual inequalities, but they seldom examine meso-level institutions.This study's research objective is to help bridge the research gap that results from these two fields' disconnection: meso-le…
The strategic and instrumental use of verbal violence by protesters
This is the first dedicated study on how verbal violence is strategically and instrumentally used in social movements. Its primary objective is to contribute to the emerging debate on protest violence. Its secondary objective is to enrich the interdisciplinary field of swearing research by identifying ‘political swearing.’ Based on data on Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Movement, I identify four major instrumental uses of political swearing: attack…
“Globalized traditionalists” and “provincial globalizers” in non-Western intellectual fields
This study’s primary objective is to investigate why “globalized traditionalists” (i.e., intellectuals who are highly globalized but adopt a traditionalist stance) and “provincial globalizers” (i.e., intellectuals who are hardly globalized but adopt a globalizing stance) are prevalent in some non-Western intellectual fields. These two groups feature counterintuitive intellectual characteristics and defy current studies’ findings on intellectual c…
A new way to justice? Multimodal meaning construction in videoconferencing technology-based online criminal courts in China
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese state temporarily locked down physical courtrooms and fully relied on online trials based on videoconference technology. This raises the question of how computer-mediated communication affects the realization of justice. This question is particularly significant for criminal cases, where assessing the credibility of evidence, debating between involved actors, and establishing legal identity heavily affect…
Cybernationalist authoritarianism
This study has two research objectives. The first is to analyse a case of Chinese 'cybernationalist authoritarianism', which I define as the ideological articulation and practical conjoining of cybernationalism and digital authoritarianism. This intriguing case involves the peer production of a virtual celebrity called 'Oppa China' (阿中哥哥) by fangirls (饭圈女孩) in China. The empirical analysis contributes to ongoing debates on whether cybernationalis…
Chinese Gold-Farming in the 2000s
This study investigates how gold-farming contributed to worker empowerment and local development in China in the 2000s. Adopting a critical development studies perspective, I appraise the positive social impact of gold-farming but also explicate how it is constrained by the capitalist economic and authoritarian political contexts. I find that gold-farming offered workers informational mobility and low-overhead entrepreneurship opportunities and t…
The Instrumental Consumption of Ethnic Culture
Under the contemporary circumstances of symbolic consumption, multiculturalism, and accelerated globalization, ethnic cultures have become more available and more attractive to consumers. A consequence is that the instrumental consumption of ethnic culture becomes much more common. This study’s first objective is to clarify it by analyzing the instrumental consumption of the cheongsam, a Chinese traditional dress. This study’s second objective is…
The Significance and Complexities of Anti-Corporate Gamer Activism
Few studies explore the progressive sociopolitical relevance of gamers. This study contributes to this exploration by investigating a common yet neglected type of gamer activism: struggles against the exploitation and control of game-worlds by game publishers. I analyze it with anti-corporate Chinese gamer activism between 2003 and 2010. I found seven recurring battlefronts on which gamers carried out violent protests, clicktivism, media campaign…
Non-digital fan networking
This study has three research objectives. Its major theoretical objective is to theorize the political impact of fan networks in authoritarian contexts. It finds that these fan networks perform the counterhegemonic work of blocking the authoritarian state's preferred solution to ‘the dictator's popular cultural dilemma’. Its major empirical objective is to understand how anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics) disseminated so succe…
Open‐Ended Analyses of the Sociopolitical Impact of Celebrity Change
This study contributes to advancing research on a central problem in the sociology of celebrity: the sociopolitical impact of celebrity change. The paper argues for the need for more open‐ended analyses of the sociopolitical impact of contemporary celebrity change. These analyses utilize non‐Western data, avoid techno‐determinism, prioritize questions of why and how celebrity becomes progressive over monolithic assessments, and emphasize the inve…
Rethinking the Cultural Relations between Hong Kong and China
This is a cultural sociological study of the mainland Chinese reception of the films of Stephen Chow, the popular Hong Kong actor and director. This study’s theoretical objective is to rethink the cultural relations between post-handover Hong Kong and China. Its empirical analysis challenges five major frameworks of studying post-handover Hong Kong culture that interpret Hong Kong–China cultural relations as hegemonic and conflictual. The study’s…
How the 'Commercialized Performance of Affiliative Race and Ethnicity' Disrupts Ethnoracial Hierarchy
This study analyzes how the 'commercialized performance of affiliative race and ethnicity' (CPOARAE) generates boundary processes that disrupt established ethnoracial hierarchies. The CPOARAE involves three parties: managers of a service workplace, workers lowly positioned in the ethnoracial hierarchy, and ethnoracial majority customers. The managers hire workers to carry out affiliative racial and/or ethnic performance to make customers feel tha…
State, market, and the manufacturing of war memory
Remembering the War of Resistance against Japan is central to China’s memory and identity politics. By focusing on the production of China’s War of Resistance television dramas, this study analyzes how collective memory is shaped by market actors and their interactions with the state. The first substantive section investigates how commercial media and the state cooperate in the production of War of Resistance television dramas. The second explica…
How propagames work as a part of digital authoritarianism
“Propagames,” or games with propagandistic content, have been emerging in the past two decades. They operate as a part of digital authoritarianism, together with other forms of new soft propaganda, to legitimate populist authoritarian states around the world. The contemporary democratic struggle against global authoritarian resurgence will require knowledge on how propagames and other digital propaganda work. But knowledge on propagames is seriou…
Discovering the digital Stephen Chow
This study uncovers and analyzes the transborder influence of Stephen Chow’s films in China in the 2010s. This influence takes a form that is new and different from that of the first three fan cultures of Chow’s films. It operates through various online carnivalesque items co-created by Chinese netizens and cultural producers. I document this with an investigation of the online catchphrases, visual memes, and web novels inspired by Chow’s films. …
Reinterpreting How and Why People Consume Counterfeit Fashion Products
This study challenges the dominant pro-business research paradigm on counterfeit fashion products (CFPs). It offers a critical, sociological, and qualitative alternative to the field’s pro-business, psychologistic, and positivist scholarship. To support intellectual property rights claims, the pro-business paradigm presumes that the consumption of CFPs is exclusively driven by consumers’ pursuit of social status and/or fashionability. This study …
Assessing localization with its local sociocultural dynamics
Localization has largely been assessed, by both its supporters and critics, with its local-global sociocultural dynamics. The local sociocultural dynamics of localization have either been ignored or simplistically understood as a ‘preference for the local’ or ‘local empowerment’. This study argues that localization’s local dynamics can be very complex and can yield negative social implications. There are likely multiple subgroups of local consume…
A Critical Cultural History of Online Games in China, 1995-2015
This study critically assesses the Chinese online games industry through problematizing the creativity of Chinese games. I find that between 1995 and 2001, Chinese online games were mostly developed by amateurs, noncommercial, and considerably creative. Between 2002 and 2005, industrial growth allowed some room for local creativity despite commercialization and dominance of imported games. Current scholarly, business, and media discourses unfairl…
How propagames work as a part of digital authoritarianism
“Propagames,” or games with propagandistic content, have been emerging in the past two decades. They operate as a part of digital authoritarianism, together with other forms of new soft propaganda, to legitimate populist authoritarian states around the world. The contemporary democratic struggle against global authoritarian resurgence will require knowledge on how propagames and other digital propaganda work. But knowledge on propagames is seriou…
Towards a Chinese Hip-hop Feminism and a Feminist Reassessment of Hip-hop with Breakdance
Based on data collected through interviewing b-girls (breakdancing girls) and participant observation of b-girling, we analyse gender inequalities confronting women who practise breakdancing in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, document these women’s struggles against gender inequality, and illustrate that these inequalities and struggles differ somewhat from those found in the US context and even from those found in studies of women who practise rap …
Virtual property in China
This study focuses on the social formation of game virtual property through analyzing two of its major stakeholders in China: online gamers and game corporations. Based on analysis of the opinions, stakes, and demands of the Chinese gamers, I argue that they are developing an incipient ‘gamer rights’ awareness composed of gamers’ entitlements to virtual property ownership as well as to virtual property rights protection by the state and game publ…
The Dual Consequences of Cultural Localization
Research Article| May 01 2003 The Dual Consequences of Cultural Localization: How Exposed Short Stockings Subvert and Sustain Global Cultural Hierarchy Matthew Chew Matthew Chew Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (2003) 11 (2): 479–509. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-11-2-479 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Matthew Chew; The Dual Consequences of …
Delineating the emergent global cultural dynamic of ‘lobalization’
This study identifies, delineates, and analyses an emergent global cultural dynamic: lobalization. I coin the term ‘lobalization’ to refer to the cultural dynamic through which locally manufactured cultural products are packaged and circulated in a locality in the guise of prestigious imported products. The theoretical significance of this study is that (i) it uncovers a new cultural phenomenon that is completely unexplored in current theories of…
Research on Chinese Nightlife Cultures and Night-Time Economies
This article is a theoretical map that delineates the fledging field of Chinese night-time economy studies, highlights its significance, and sug-gests possible future directions for its development. It will briefly explicate the night-time economy’s significance for the state, society, and economy
State, market, and the manufacturing of war memory
Remembering the War of Resistance against Japan is central to China’s memory and identity politics. By focusing on the production of China’s War of Resistance television dramas, this study analyzes how collective memory is shaped by market actors and their interactions with the state. The first substantive section investigates how commercial media and the state cooperate in the production of War of Resistance television dramas. The second explica…
New Boundary Work of Rural Migrants
There are powerful symbolic boundaries in urban China that exclude rural migrants. This study identifies and analyzes the new boundary work that aims at remaking these rural-urban boundaries. Based on data on previous cohorts of rural migrants in China and elsewhere, current studies argue that the predominant type of boundary work is personal assimilation. I challenge this finding by documenting how the most recent cohort of young rural migrants …
Rethinking the relationship between intellectuals and nationalism
This study constructs a sociology of knowledge approach to explaining the relationship between intellectuals and nationalism, one that challenges the conventional intellectual historical approach of understanding the relationship through macro and remote factors. The sociological approach conceptualizes knowledge production dynamics as intervening variables that refract macro and remote causal impacts on knowledge contents. This study focuses on …
Open‐Ended Analyses of the Sociopolitical Impact of Celebrity Change
This study contributes to advancing research on a central problem in the sociology of celebrity: the sociopolitical impact of celebrity change. The paper argues for the need for more open‐ended analyses of the sociopolitical impact of contemporary celebrity change. These analyses utilize non‐Western data, avoid techno‐determinism, prioritize questions of why and how celebrity becomes progressive over monolithic assessments, and emphasize the inve…
Hybridity, Empowerment and Subversiveness in Cantopop Electronic Dance Music
This essay examines “Cantopop electronic dance music,” a term that collectively designates the several sub-genres of electronic dance music which originated in Hong Kong. This electronic dance music emerged in 1998 and became the dominating club music in Greater China in the early 2000s. While scholars have positively appraised numerous aspects and subgenres of Cantopop they have never paid attention to local genres of electronic dance music. Pop…
The Subversive Sociocultural Meanings of Cantopop Electronic Dance Music
This study identifies and analyzes the socioculturally subversive characteristics of "Cantopop electronic dance music," a pop music genre that has been completely neglected by scholars. The first characteristic is the music's facilitation of local resistance against the cultural authority of global music producers, audiences, and gatekeepers. The second is its empowering of underprivileged local social groups against local cultural elites. Next i…
Decline of the Rave Inspired Clubculture in China
Important elements of rave culture including the rave party format, Ecstasy use and electronic dance music emerged in the UK in the late 1980s This new clubculture faced a number of problems in the 1990s -clubs were increasingly commercialized and controlled by corporations, electronic dance music has been increasingly mainstreamed, and clubbing was increasingly considered a tourist income generator for city planners and local officials At the sa…
Academic Boundary Work in Non-Western Academies
Is academic boundary work in non-western academies different from that in the modern and contemporary West? In what ways are they different? What are the consequences of these differences for academic production? This study approaches these questions through a comparative-historical analysis of modern Japan and China. The cases show that because non-western academies have the option of importing modern academic institutional formats from the West…
Meso-level processes of intellectual imperialism
The contemporary sociology of knowledge treats meso-level institutions of intellectual production as its primary investigative focus but seldom studies global intellectual inequalities.Decolonial and postcolonial studies of knowledge focus on global intellectual inequalities, but they seldom examine meso-level institutions.This study's research objective is to help bridge the research gap that results from these two fields' disconnection: meso-le…
The strategic and instrumental use of verbal violence by protesters
This is the first dedicated study on how verbal violence is strategically and instrumentally used in social movements. Its primary objective is to contribute to the emerging debate on protest violence. Its secondary objective is to enrich the interdisciplinary field of swearing research by identifying ‘political swearing.’ Based on data on Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Movement, I identify four major instrumental uses of political swearing: attack…
Cybernationalist authoritarianism
This study has two research objectives. The first is to analyse a case of Chinese 'cybernationalist authoritarianism', which I define as the ideological articulation and practical conjoining of cybernationalism and digital authoritarianism. This intriguing case involves the peer production of a virtual celebrity called 'Oppa China' (阿中哥哥) by fangirls (饭圈女孩) in China. The empirical analysis contributes to ongoing debates on whether cybernationalis…
Non-digital fan networking
This study has three research objectives. Its major theoretical objective is to theorize the political impact of fan networks in authoritarian contexts. It finds that these fan networks perform the counterhegemonic work of blocking the authoritarian state's preferred solution to ‘the dictator's popular cultural dilemma’. Its major empirical objective is to understand how anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics) disseminated so succe…
An Alternative Metacritique of Postcolonial Cultural Studies From a Cultural Sociological Perspective
This paper examines some of the current metacritical perspectives to postcolonial cultural studies, and discusses an alternative cultural contextualist perspective through the case of Hong Kong cultural studies. I first demarcate between contextualist and non-contextualist metacritical perspectives as well as between political-economic and cultural-contextualist ones. Then I identify major metacritiques that are currently made against postcolonia…
Rescuing History from the Nation
An Alternative Metacritique of Postcolonial Cultural Studies From a Cultural Sociological Perspective
This paper examines some of the current metacritical perspectives to postcolonial cultural studies, and discusses an alternative cultural contextualist perspective through the case of Hong Kong cultural studies. I first demarcate between contextualist and non-contextualist metacritical perspectives as well as between political-economic and cultural-contextualist ones. Then I identify major metacritiques that are currently made against postcolonia…
The Dual Consequences of Cultural Localization
Research Article| May 01 2003 The Dual Consequences of Cultural Localization: How Exposed Short Stockings Subvert and Sustain Global Cultural Hierarchy Matthew Chew Matthew Chew Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (2003) 11 (2): 479–509. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-11-2-479 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Matthew Chew; The Dual Consequences of …
Academic Boundary Work in Non-Western Academies
Is academic boundary work in non-western academies different from that in the modern and contemporary West? In what ways are they different? What are the consequences of these differences for academic production? This study approaches these questions through a comparative-historical analysis of modern Japan and China. The cases show that because non-western academies have the option of importing modern academic institutional formats from the West…
The Theoretical Quandary of Subjectivity
The quandary of subjectivity — how to square the irreducible qualities of the subjectivity category with the need for objective accessibility and scientific universality — was raised by Max Weber in his action theory. Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz, the most prominent action theorists after Weber, are said to have dealt with the quandary in very different ways. This intellectual historical note investigates the two theorists in terms of how th…
Research on Chinese Nightlife Cultures and Night-Time Economies
This article is a theoretical map that delineates the fledging field of Chinese night-time economy studies, highlights its significance, and sug-gests possible future directions for its development. It will briefly explicate the night-time economy’s significance for the state, society, and economy
The Subversive Sociocultural Meanings of Cantopop Electronic Dance Music
This study identifies and analyzes the socioculturally subversive characteristics of "Cantopop electronic dance music," a pop music genre that has been completely neglected by scholars. The first characteristic is the music's facilitation of local resistance against the cultural authority of global music producers, audiences, and gatekeepers. The second is its empowering of underprivileged local social groups against local cultural elites. Next i…
Decline of the Rave Inspired Clubculture in China
Important elements of rave culture including the rave party format, Ecstasy use and electronic dance music emerged in the UK in the late 1980s This new clubculture faced a number of problems in the 1990s -clubs were increasingly commercialized and controlled by corporations, electronic dance music has been increasingly mainstreamed, and clubbing was increasingly considered a tourist income generator for city planners and local officials At the sa…
Research Note
This article adopts a sociology of knowledge perspective to analyze Japan studies scholarship published in China in the late 1980s. The objective of the analysis is to interpret the significant body of scholarship in terms of three of its sociopolitical implications. Firstly, the role of scholarship in its advocacy of Japan as a development model for China will be examined, thereby uncovering one of the multiple historical sources for the Chinese…
Cultural Localization And Its Local Discontents
Cultural localization has been one of the major research foci in global media studies, sociology of globalization, and cultural anthropology. This chapter aims to enrich the study of it through examining two middle-range aspects - a cultural political aspect and a cultural economic one - of localizing electronic dance music in Hong Kong. It finds that Cantopop electronic dance music was negatively received by local audience because of its cultura…
Delineating the emergent global cultural dynamic of ‘lobalization’
This study identifies, delineates, and analyses an emergent global cultural dynamic: lobalization. I coin the term ‘lobalization’ to refer to the cultural dynamic through which locally manufactured cultural products are packaged and circulated in a locality in the guise of prestigious imported products. The theoretical significance of this study is that (i) it uncovers a new cultural phenomenon that is completely unexplored in current theories of…
Virtual property in China
This study focuses on the social formation of game virtual property through analyzing two of its major stakeholders in China: online gamers and game corporations. Based on analysis of the opinions, stakes, and demands of the Chinese gamers, I argue that they are developing an incipient ‘gamer rights’ awareness composed of gamers’ entitlements to virtual property ownership as well as to virtual property rights protection by the state and game publ…
Hybridity, Empowerment and Subversiveness in Cantopop Electronic Dance Music
This essay examines “Cantopop electronic dance music,” a term that collectively designates the several sub-genres of electronic dance music which originated in Hong Kong. This electronic dance music emerged in 1998 and became the dominating club music in Greater China in the early 2000s. While scholars have positively appraised numerous aspects and subgenres of Cantopop they have never paid attention to local genres of electronic dance music. Pop…
Rethinking the relationship between intellectuals and nationalism
This study constructs a sociology of knowledge approach to explaining the relationship between intellectuals and nationalism, one that challenges the conventional intellectual historical approach of understanding the relationship through macro and remote factors. The sociological approach conceptualizes knowledge production dynamics as intervening variables that refract macro and remote causal impacts on knowledge contents. This study focuses on …
Online games and society in China
It is well known that the market size, revenue, profits, and production volume of the Chinese online games industry is impressive, rivalling global market leaders including the US ( Chung and Fung 2013 ). The small but growing field of Chinese game studies has already provided much information on the business and industrial aspects of Chinese online games ( Chen 2009 ; Chung and Yuan 2009 ; Kshetri 2009 ; MacInnes and Hu 2007 ). However studies i…
Assessing localization with its local sociocultural dynamics
Localization has largely been assessed, by both its supporters and critics, with its local-global sociocultural dynamics. The local sociocultural dynamics of localization have either been ignored or simplistically understood as a ‘preference for the local’ or ‘local empowerment’. This study argues that localization’s local dynamics can be very complex and can yield negative social implications. There are likely multiple subgroups of local consume…
Towards a Chinese Hip-hop Feminism and a Feminist Reassessment of Hip-hop with Breakdance
Based on data collected through interviewing b-girls (breakdancing girls) and participant observation of b-girling, we analyse gender inequalities confronting women who practise breakdancing in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, document these women’s struggles against gender inequality, and illustrate that these inequalities and struggles differ somewhat from those found in the US context and even from those found in studies of women who practise rap …
A Critical Cultural History of Online Games in China, 1995-2015
This study critically assesses the Chinese online games industry through problematizing the creativity of Chinese games. I find that between 1995 and 2001, Chinese online games were mostly developed by amateurs, noncommercial, and considerably creative. Between 2002 and 2005, industrial growth allowed some room for local creativity despite commercialization and dominance of imported games. Current scholarly, business, and media discourses unfairl…
New Boundary Work of Rural Migrants
There are powerful symbolic boundaries in urban China that exclude rural migrants. This study identifies and analyzes the new boundary work that aims at remaking these rural-urban boundaries. Based on data on previous cohorts of rural migrants in China and elsewhere, current studies argue that the predominant type of boundary work is personal assimilation. I challenge this finding by documenting how the most recent cohort of young rural migrants …
Discovering the digital Stephen Chow
This study uncovers and analyzes the transborder influence of Stephen Chow’s films in China in the 2010s. This influence takes a form that is new and different from that of the first three fan cultures of Chow’s films. It operates through various online carnivalesque items co-created by Chinese netizens and cultural producers. I document this with an investigation of the online catchphrases, visual memes, and web novels inspired by Chow’s films. …
Reinterpreting How and Why People Consume Counterfeit Fashion Products
This study challenges the dominant pro-business research paradigm on counterfeit fashion products (CFPs). It offers a critical, sociological, and qualitative alternative to the field’s pro-business, psychologistic, and positivist scholarship. To support intellectual property rights claims, the pro-business paradigm presumes that the consumption of CFPs is exclusively driven by consumers’ pursuit of social status and/or fashionability. This study …
State, market, and the manufacturing of war memory
Remembering the War of Resistance against Japan is central to China’s memory and identity politics. By focusing on the production of China’s War of Resistance television dramas, this study analyzes how collective memory is shaped by market actors and their interactions with the state. The first substantive section investigates how commercial media and the state cooperate in the production of War of Resistance television dramas. The second explica…
How propagames work as a part of digital authoritarianism
“Propagames,” or games with propagandistic content, have been emerging in the past two decades. They operate as a part of digital authoritarianism, together with other forms of new soft propaganda, to legitimate populist authoritarian states around the world. The contemporary democratic struggle against global authoritarian resurgence will require knowledge on how propagames and other digital propaganda work. But knowledge on propagames is seriou…
Chinese Gold-Farming in the 2000s
This study investigates how gold-farming contributed to worker empowerment and local development in China in the 2000s. Adopting a critical development studies perspective, I appraise the positive social impact of gold-farming but also explicate how it is constrained by the capitalist economic and authoritarian political contexts. I find that gold-farming offered workers informational mobility and low-overhead entrepreneurship opportunities and t…
The Instrumental Consumption of Ethnic Culture
Under the contemporary circumstances of symbolic consumption, multiculturalism, and accelerated globalization, ethnic cultures have become more available and more attractive to consumers. A consequence is that the instrumental consumption of ethnic culture becomes much more common. This study’s first objective is to clarify it by analyzing the instrumental consumption of the cheongsam, a Chinese traditional dress. This study’s second objective is…
Sociology (33 obras) · Political science (32 obras) · Law (28 obras) · China (21 obras) · Law (19 obras) · Politics (15 obras) · Asian Culture and Media Studies (14 obras) · Social science (14 obras) · Media studies (11 obras) · Art (8 obras)