The Birth of Social Class Online: the Chinese Precariat on the Internet
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Tilburg University The Birth of Social Class Online Du, Caixia Publication date: 2016 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Du, C. (2016). The Birth of Social Class Online: The Chinese Precariat on the Internet. [s.n.]. 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Download date: 25. sep. 2021 The Birth of Social Class Online: The Chinese Precariat on the Internet The Birth of Social Class Online: The Chinese Precariat on the Internet PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan Tilburg University op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. E.H.L. Aarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties aangewezen commissie in de aula van de Universiteit op maandag 12 september 2016 om 16.00 uur door Caixia Du geboren op 1 februari 1975 te Jimo, Shandong, China Promotoren: Prof. dr. Jan Blommaert Prof. dr. Sjaak Kroon Copromotor: Dr. Piia Varis Overige leden van de promotiecommissie: Prof. dr. Odile Heynders Prof. dr. Sirpa Leppänen Dr. Yuxia Li Dr. Ico Maly Dr. Tereza Spilioti Prof. dr. Guy Standing ISBN 978-94-6299-404-1 Cover design by Karin Berkhout Cover picture adapted from www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/05/29/world/social-issues- world/tiananmen-square-tank-man-anonymous-global-icon/#.Vr_4wzaiG8U Layout by Karin Berkhout Printed by Ridderprint BV, the Netherlands © Caixia Du, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission of the author. Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 3 1 The Chinese precariat 5 1.1 A global precariat? 5 1.2 A precariat in China? 7 1.2.1 China’s contribution to a global precariat 7 1.2.2 Migrant workers as a denizen labor force 8 1.2.3 White-collar – an educated precariat? 10 1.3 Defining features of the educated precariat 17 1.3.1 Employment insecurity 18 1.3.2 Consumption anxiety 22 1.3.3 Denizens 24 1.3.4 Structure of feeling: Anxiety, anomie, alienation and anger 25 1.4 Anomie and social inequality 30 1.5 Formulating an alliance against the power bloc 36 1.6 The absence of a precariat discourse and the Chinese Dream 37 1.6.1 The voicelessness of the Chinese precariat 37 1.6.2 Underground precariat discourses 38 1.6.3 The Chinese Dream 40 1.7 The educated precariat, apolitical or not? 42 1.8 Internet-savvy precariat and the new space 46 1.9 Concluding remarks and research questions 49 2 Theories and methods 53 2.1 Theoretical preliminaries 53 2.1.1 Public transcripts and hidden transcripts 54 2.1.2 Subculture 59 2.2 Methodological preliminaries 62 2.2.1 A critical online ethnography 62 2.2.2 Online vs offline 63 2.2.3 Context-collapse vs recontextualization 67 2.2.4 Ethical issues 69 2.3 Ready for the next step 70 vi The Birth of Social Class Online: The Chinese Precariat on the Internet 3 Memes, the new language 73 3.1 Defining memes 75 3.2 The trajectory of memes, the case of Grass Mud Horse 78 3.3 Styles of Chinese Internet memes 84 3.3.1 Super-diversity 85 3.3.2 Lightness 89 3.3.3 Vulgarity 92 3.4 What do memes mean to the precariat? 96 3.4.1 ‘Kidney trading brothers’ – the consumption-frustrated precariat 97 3.4.2 ‘Tank Man’ – Memeing for political rights 97 3.4.3 Anti-corruption memes and RRSS 103 3.4.4 ‘Er Dai’ and ‘Da Li Ge’ – memeing for community and identity 107 3.5 Concluding remarks 114 4 E’gao, their culture 117 4.1 Defining E’gao 119 4.2 E’gao vs Zheng Gao – Hu Ge’s defense for E’gao 122 4.3 The composition of E’gao: pastiche and bricolage 129 4.3.1 Pastiche 129 4.3.2 Bricolage 130 4.4 E’gao as a light culture 132 4.4.1 A small screen culture 133 4.4.2 Cheapness 135 4.4.3 Lightness 136 4.4.4 Circulating in peripheral and marginalized space 137 4.5 E’gao is subversive 139 4.5.1 Overtly political E’gao 140 4.5.2 E’gao to criticize social problems 140 4.5.3 E’gao to have a say in consumption 144 4.6 E’gao is constructive 147 4.7 What does E’gao mean to the precariat? 149 4.7.1 Providing magical solutions to socio-economic structural problems 149 4.7.2 Offering a form of collective identity different from that of mainstream society 150 4.7.3 Creating space for alternative experiences and scripts of social reality 152 4.7.4 Supplying non-mainstream meaningful leisure activities 153 4.7.5 Suggesting solutions to the existential dilemmas of identity 153 4.8 Concluding remarks 155 Contents vii 5 Diaosi, a bottom-up call to identity 159 5.1 Diaosi image and Diaosi discourses 161 5.1.1 A combination of documentary and literary genre 165 5.1.2 Comparative narration 165 5.1.3 Consumption-oriented 171 5.1.4 Self-belittling erotica 172 5.1.5 Nixi, the illusion of Diaosi’s counterattack 176 5.2 Getting Diaosi offline 179 5.3 Diaosi is not equal with the precariat 182 5.4 Diaosi as a structure of feeling 184 5.4.1 Diaosi is neither a counter-public nor a psychological malaise 184 5.4.2 Diaosi is a structure of feeling 185 5.5 Concluding remarks: Diaosi as a bottom-up joint call for identity 189 6 Conclusions 193 References 199 Summary 217 Acknowledgements After a long period of nearly six years, today is the day: writing this note of thanks is the finishing touch on my dissertation. It has been a period of intense learning for me, not only in the academic arena, but also on a personal level. I would like to reflect on the people who have supported and helped me so much throughout this period. First and foremost I wish to thank Jan Blommaert. You definitely provided me with the tools that I needed to choose the right direction and successfully complete this research. Thank you above all for believing in me from day one until the end. The same goes for my (co)supervisors, Sjaak Kroon and Piia Varis. Sjaak was my tutor when I arrived at Tilburg University and guided me through a university culture very alien to me at first. His vigorous supervision, both of my research Master’s work and my PhD, tremendously improved the final result. As for Piia Varis, my neighbor in the DCU- corridor, no one could have provided better and more sharply focused support in the domain of online social media research, where ultimately I decided to land my PhD. Piia was also present in another capacity, as part of the TRAPS group directed by Odile Heynders. I am deeply grateful to Odile Heynders and the entire TRAPS research group and the School of Humanities, Department of Culture Studies, for the guidance, advice, cooperation, support, patience and help. A big thanks to Karin Berkhout for all the editing work and patience, making this manuscript into a book. In addition, I would like to thank Pika Colpaert for the support, friendship and editing work. Thank you my colleagues and friends, especially Ted, Leo, and Mingyi: we were not only able to support each other by deliberating over our problems and findings, but also happily by talking about things other than just our papers. Thank you to my family, my mother, parents in law, husband, sister and daughter, for reasons so many manifolds. I would need to write another book to express my gratitude. Tilburg, July 2016 Caixia Du Introduction Let me open with a truism. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is going through a period of intense transformations. The past two decades have seen the country shift from a communist economy to a capitalist one. This shift has propelled the country to the center of economic globalization processes and to the status of a global capitalist superpower. This shift has caused massive economic and political changes, but also profoundly affected the social structure of the country, and this book will discuss one aspect of this: the emerging Chinese precariat. Guy Standing (2011a, 2014) described the precariat as ‘the new dangerous class’, a very large and growing mass of ‘white collar’ workers who experience grave socio-economic difficulties and who, in spite of advanced skills and competences, do not enjoy the fruits of economic growth and prosperity. It is my purpose here to describe this emerging precariat in the PRC, and focus on their online behavior.