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- Convenors:
-
Xinyuan Wang
(University College London (UCL))
Jolynna Sinanan (University of Manchester)
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- Chair:
-
Daniel Miller
(University College London (UCL))
- Discussant:
-
Anne-Christine Trémon
(Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/012
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel will deal with a range of evolving commoning practices in the fields such as healthcare, sexuality, migration, and religion, drawn on ethnographies in China and beyond, with a focus on the digital possibilities facilitated by the proliferation of the smartphone.
Long Abstract:
A disproportionate amount of discussions around commoning are based on Western norms and Western histories. The very notions of a public sphere and public goods, of the role of the state and terms such as neoliberalism, have tended to ignore the degree to which the world’s largest population is not simply an exception but a hugely important and different set of configurations. Even the transformative results of Covid-19 will have had almost diametrically different consequences as can be seen from how the Chinese state makes claims for its response contrasted with others. We are still far too dependent upon the projections upon China that maintain an orientalist, even colonialist set of moral and other assumptions.
As a major global force in digital technologies, China is shaping and being shaped by digital technologies at a breath-taking speed and scale. Furthermore, the all-encompassing role of the Party-state, along with the traditional Chinese cosmology, makes China a special case with regards to commoning practices among various groups, including Chinese immigrants. Digital anthropology, with its strength in understanding digital practices in daily life, provides an ideal perspective to make sense of the evolving commoning in the digital age.
This panel will deal with a wide range of evolving commoning practices in the fields such as healthcare, sexuality, migration, and religion. Also, with a focus on the digital possibilities facilitated by the proliferation of personal digital devices, such as the smartphone, the discussion of digital commoning practices will be always situated in wider offline practices.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This essay examines the role of period-tracking apps in the making and remaking of the culture of menstruation, reproductive health, and sexuality in China, drawing on an ethnographic study of how users of period-tracking apps collect, interpret, and utilize their bodily data.
Paper long abstract:
This essay examines the role of period-tracking apps in the making and remaking of the culture of menstruation, reproductive health, and sexuality in China, drawing on an ethnographic study of how users of period-tracking apps collect, interpret, and utilize their bodily data. Situated within a wider social-cultural context of the understanding of the menstrual, reproductive and sexual body in the Chinese culture, it explores the way in which the use of period-tracking apps simultaneously blend with the local culture and preexistent practices of the body while offering new opportunities for the reimagination of the female body and bodily practices with its digitalized and datafied new affordances. In focusing on the main motivations and purposes for using period-tracking apps, including, recording menstrual cycle, contraception, and preparing for pregnancy, I show how the functions of period-tracking apps, including tracking the date of menstruation and sexual behaviours, predicting future menstruation and ovulation, and online forum for discussing reproductive health, are used, and how the body is both controlled and liberated, burdened and lightened and eventually, reimagined.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I draw on digital ethnographic research into Tibetan Buddhism’s spread in Han Chinese society to explore the implications of approaching the blogging activities of Sino-Tibetan Dharma propagators as ‘commoning practices.’
Paper long abstract:
Since the onset of China’s smartphone era in the early 2010s, thousands of grassroots Tibetan Buddhist teachers and Han Chinese followers have embraced the technological and communicative affordances of WeChat to publicly propagate Tibetan Buddhism among Chinese-speaking audiences. Drawing on an age-old emic tradition of ‘spreading the Dharma and benefiting beings’ via the dissemination of Buddhist texts and images, contemporary Sino-Tibetan Dharma propagators have energetically engaged in creating WeChat ‘official accounts’ (intraplatform microblogs) to share Tibetan Buddhist content on a mass scale. The aggregate effect of these decentralised altruistic efforts, one could argue, has been the burgeoning of a ‘Dharma knowledge commons’ within WeChat’s digital ecology that any user of the platform has been free to draw from or contribute to.
In this paper, I draw on digital ethnographic research into Tibetan Buddhism’s spread in Han Chinese society to explore the implications of approaching the blogging activities of Sino-Tibetan Dharma propagators as ‘commoning practices.’ While observing a shared commitment among creators of Tibetan Buddhist official accounts to making their respective content freely accessible to all, I question whether their discourse and agencies have ever coalesced around the idea or project of nurturing a collective Dharma resource. In this connection, I highlight the role of the platform and Chinese state in regulating religionists’ commoning space, and religionists’ attendant alienation from the possibility and process of self-governing the resources they collectively produce.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on the ethnography in Shanghai, this paper unpacks the concept of‘ filial piety’ and argues that what matters most in kinship practice within China is not so much an issue of kin classification but a practical distinction between sentiment and obligation.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on the ethnography of migrant care workers looking after the elderly in Shanghai, this paper unpacks the concept ‘filial piety’ to focus on the notion and practice of ‘filial heart’. The ethnography provides the perspective of care workers play as active agents in developing symbolic trajectories for claiming kinship through visualizing ‘filial heart’. The paper argues that what matters most in kinship practice within China is not so much an issue of kin classification but a practical distinction between sentiment and obligation. By understanding how this detachable element of filial piety can be used to constitute a novel form of kinship relation, the paper also shows how kinship is evolving to become better aligned to contemporary urban life in China.