Epistemic Labor
Narratives of Hyper-Uncertainty and Future-Making on China's Urban Fringe
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12423924 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helina S Woldekiros (0000-0002-7790-0686), Yang Zhan (0000-0001-7357-7861, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 431-450 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | positions asia critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1067-9847 • E-ISSN: 1527-8271 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/10679847-10300280 |
| OpenAlex | W4377247091 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 28 |
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
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · China · Displacement (psychology · Epistemology · Literature · Meaning (existential · Narrative · Negotiation · Political science · Resistance (ecology · Social science · Sociology · Storytelling · Value (mathematics · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
Subaltern China
Contesting Citizenship in Urban China
How To Do Things With Words
Debts
Theses on the Philosophy of History
Speaking Bitterness
Transcending Boundaries
Cultural production in the working-class resistance
“My life is elsewhere”
Speaking Bitterness
When It's Dark in the East, It's Light in the West”
New Masters, New Servants
Suspension 2.0
Desiring China
Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism
Blogging Alone
Culture, Globalization, Mediation
Suspension
Dead zones of the imagination
Putting transnational labour process in its place
Speaking Bitterness
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |