Chinas Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces
Presenting the collaborative work of 13 international specialists of contemporary Chinese culture and society, this book explores the spaces of creation, production, and diffusion of youth cultures in China among generations born since the 1980s.
Defining the concept of youth culture as practices and activities that catalyze self-expression and creativity, this book investigates the emergence of new physical spaces, including large avenues, parks, shopping malls, and recreation areas. Building on this, it also examines the influence of non-physical places, especially digital cultures, such as online social networks, shopping platforms, Cosplay, cyberliterature, and digital calligraphy and argues that these may in fact play a more significant role in Chinese civil society today.
As an exploration of how youth can be creative even in a coercive environment, Chinas Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces will be valuable to students and scholars of Chinese society, as well those working on the links between space, youth, and culture.
Vanessa Frangville is Senior Lecturer and Chair holder in Chinese studies at the Universit libre de Bruxelles and the Director of EASt, ULBs Research Centre on East Asia.
Gwennal Gaffric is currently Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the Universit de Lyon, France. He is also translator of Chinese, Hongkongese, and Taiwanese contemporary novels.
Routledge Contemporary Asian Societies
Series Editors: Vanessa Frangville and Frederik Ponjaert
Research Centre on East Asia (EASt), Universit libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
Routledge Contemporary Asian Societies provides an original and distinctive contribution to current debates on evolutions shaping societies, cultures, politics and media across North and South East Atsia. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and the editors welcome proposals across the social sciences and humanities; from political, social, cultural and economic studies to gender, media, literature, anthropology, philosophy and religion.
Chinas Youth Culture and Collective Spaces
Creativity, Sociality, Identity and Resistance
Edited by Vanessa Frangville and Gwennal Gaffric
Chinas Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces
Creativity, Sociality, Identity and Resistance
Edited by Vanessa Frangville and Gwennal Gaffric
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2020 selection and editorial matter, Vanessa Frangville and Gwennal Gaffric; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Vanessa Frangville and Gwennal Gaffric to be identified as the authors of the editorial matter, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-17304-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-05609-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
Elizabeth Brunner is Assistant Professor in the Communication, Media, and Persuasion Department at Idaho State University. She holds a dual MFA in Painting and Art History from Ohio University and a PhD in Communication from the University of Utah. She has also studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Nankai University in Tianjin as the recipient of Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships. Her research focuses primarily on the use of visual and digital rhetorics in activist efforts in China. Her book manuscript, which is currently under review, Becoming Activists: Tracing Chinas Environmental Protest over Wild Public Networks, explores the use of social media in anti-PX protests in China. Her research has been featured in numerous journals and edited collections, including the Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and the International Journal of Communication.
Adam Yuet Chau is an anthropologist specializing in Chinese religion. He is University Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology of Modern China in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow at St. Johns College. He is the author of Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2006) and editor of Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation (Routledge, 2011). He is interested in developing better ways of conceptualizing Chinese religious culture. One of his out-reach ambitions is to stop people from asking the question How many religions are there in China? A much better question would be: How many ways are there for people to do religion in China? He is currently working on book projects investigating hosting as a cultural idiom and forms of powerful writing (text acts) in Chinese political and religious culture. His new book, Religion in China: A Relational Approach, will be published by Polity in 2019.
Stijn Deklerck holds a Masters degree in law and obtained his PhD in Sinology with a visual ethnographic study of activism in Chinas contemporary LGBT movement. He teaches several classes on Chinese law and politics at the universities of Leuven and Lige (Belgium) and conducts research on human rights and social justice issues. He built up extensive activist experience as a core member of various Chinese and international NGOs, and is an accomplished documentary producer.
Jeroen de Kloet is Professor of Globalisation Studies and Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS) at the University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on cultural globalization, in particular in the context of East Asia. He is the principal investigator of a project funder by the European Grant Council (ERC), titled From Made in China to Created in China. A Comparative Study of Creative Practice and Production in Contemporary China. In 2010 he published China with a CutGlobalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music (Amsterdam University Press, 2010). He wrote, together with Yiu Fai Chow, Sonic Multiplicities: Hong Kong Pop and the Global Circulation of Sound and Image (Intellect Ltd, 2013) and edited together with Lena Scheen
