Chinese Daigou: An Ethnography of Brokerage Practices and Mobility Politics in Globalized China

Xie, Zhuoxiao

  • 出版商: Palgrave MacMillan
  • 出版日期: 2024-12-29
  • 售價: $6,210
  • 貴賓價: 9.5$5,900
  • 語言: 英文
  • 頁數: 390
  • 裝訂: Hardcover - also called cloth, retail trade, or trade
  • ISBN: 9819773474
  • ISBN-13: 9789819773473
  • 尚未上市,無法訂購

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商品描述

This book is an ethnography of Chinese daigou (cross-border shopping on the behalf of mainland Chinese customers) and their mobilities practices. Daigou practitioners, predominantly women, engage in selling, purchasing, and delivering goods between mainland China and overseas regions. With the rise of the platform economy and mobile technologies, daigou has evolved into a niche market, contributing to the "her economy" and consumerism in China. This ethnography provides a comprehensive exploration of the gendered-technological practices of mobile communication and mobility politics between mainland China and Hong Kong, depicting micro-entrepreneurship, place-making, and border-crossing activities in three intersecting scenes. Theoretically, this book synthesizes the literature on mobilities, science and technological studies, service labor, and mobile communication. It offers a fresh perspective by focusing on the (mobile) communication that both produces and is produced by mobilities of people, data, objects, and technologies. The study expands theories of mobility politics by developing a heuristic model of brokerage, theorizing the communication processes through which daigou, as brokers, influence, manage, or facilitate multiple forms and meanings of mobilities in globalized China.

From a feminist science and technology perspective, the book examines how daigou scenarios embed gender-specific concepts into technological practices, reinforcing entrenched unequal gender relations in service labor and family contexts. It interrogates the mechanisms of unequal mobilities associated with the logic of brokerage, which strengthens the differentiation of gender, technology, and labor among different parties. These brokerage processes multiply the discrepancies in mobilities, exacerbating gaps in structural relationships and becoming significant mechanisms of inequality.

商品描述(中文翻譯)

這本書是關於中國代購(代表中國大陸顧客進行跨境購物)的民族誌,探討其流動性實踐。代購從業者主要是女性,她們在中國大陸與海外地區之間進行商品的銷售、購買和配送。隨著平台經濟和移動技術的興起,代購已演變為一個利基市場,對中國的「她經濟」和消費主義做出了貢獻。本民族誌全面探討了中國大陸與香港之間的性別化技術實踐、移動通信和流動性政治,描繪了微型創業、地方建構和跨境活動的三個交織場景。在理論上,本書綜合了流動性、科學與技術研究、服務勞動和移動通信的文獻。它通過聚焦於(移動)通信,提供了一個新視角,該通信既產生又被人員、數據、物品和技術的流動性所產生。本研究通過發展一個啟發式的中介模型,擴展了流動性政治的理論,理論化了代購作為中介者的通信過程,這些過程影響、管理或促進了全球化中國中多種形式和意義的流動性。

從女性主義科學與技術的角度,本書檢視了代購場景如何將性別特定的概念嵌入技術實踐中,強化了服務勞動和家庭背景中根深蒂固的不平等性別關係。它質疑與中介邏輯相關的不平等流動性的機制,這些機制加強了不同方之間性別、技術和勞動的區分。這些中介過程使流動性之間的差異倍增,加劇了結構關係中的差距,成為不平等的重要機制。

作者簡介

Zhuoxiao Xie is an Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Nanjing University. Her research interests include media anthropology, science and technology studies, and cultural studies. She has been conducting an ongoing ethnographic project about disability, media technologies, and mobilities experiences among the visual impaired people in China.

作者簡介(中文翻譯)

Zhuoxiao Xie 是南京大學新聞與傳播學院的助理教授。她的研究興趣包括媒體人類學、科學與技術研究以及文化研究。她正在進行一項持續的民族誌研究,探討中國視障人士的殘疾、媒體技術和流動性經驗。