Advertisement

Qualitative Sociology

, Volume 36, Issue 4, pp 383–402 | Cite as

Re-imagining Civil Society in Contemporary Urban China: Actor-Network-Theory and Chinese Independent Film Consumption

  • Seio Nakajima
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Extending recent seminal studies that focus on networks of multiple actors in Chinese civil society instead of state-society dichotomy, this article explores independent film consumption in contemporary urban China. It shows how a collectiveentity composed of independent films, people, and discourses is assembled to become civil society, despite the continuing existence of government restrictions on independently produced films. Relying on data collected through ethnography set in the capital city of Beijing, I use the “three moves” suggested by Bruno Latour’s recent description of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to follow the actors themselves. I first “localize the global” concept of civil society and its attendant notion of state-society relations by discussing an independently organized film festival in which I participated and observed. Second, by discussing an empirical case of DVD stores, through which independent films circulate, I “redistribute the local” by detailing the processes in which particular local sites of the retail spaces of DVDs are connected to “actants” dispatched throughout the globe. Finally, I “connect sites” by putting to work the conceptual tools provided by Latour including “connectors,” “mediators,” and “plasma.” I conclude by arguing that ANT contributes to a seemingly modest, but essential political task of preventing the hasty closure of what is to be included in the collective, as well as how the collective is to be composed. In the case I examine, ANT clears the path for the future reassembling of civil society in contemporary urban China.

Keywords

Actor-Network Theory Ethnography Civil society China Film Consumption 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the guest editors Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Diana Graizbord, Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz, and the editor David Smilde for their insightful feedback and guidance. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Last but not least, I thank Rebecca Hanson for her superb editorial support.

References

  1. Ashiwa, Yoshiko, and David L. Wank. 2009. Making religion, making the state in modern China: an introductory essay. In Making religion, making the state: The politics of religion in modern China, ed. Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank, 1–21. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  2. Berry, Michael. 2004. Speaking in images: Interviews with contemporary Chinese filmmakers. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  3. Berry, Michael. 2005. Wang Xiaoshuai: Banned in China. In Speaking in images: Interviews with contemporary Chinese filmmakers, ed. Michael Berry, 162–180. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  4. Berry, Chris. 2006. Independently Chinese: Duan Jinchuan, Jiang Yue, and Chinese documentary. In From underground to independent: Alternative film culture in contemporary China, ed. Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang, 109–122. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
  5. Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot. 1991/2006. On justification: Economies of worth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  6. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1972/1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  7. Brook, Timothy, and B. Michael Frolic. 1997. The ambigous challenge of civil society. In Civil society in China, ed. Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic, 3–16. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
  8. Callon, Michel (ed.). 1998. The laws of the markets. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
  9. Callon, Michel, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick Barthe. 2001/2009. Acting in an uncertain world: An essay on technical democracy. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
  10. Chamberlain, Heath. 1993. On the search for civil society in China. Modern China 19: 199–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Crossley, Nick. 2011. Towards relational sociology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  12. Czarniawska, Barbara, and Tor Hernes (eds.). 2005. Actor-network theory and organizing. Malmö/Copenhagen: Liber & Copenhagen Business School Press.Google Scholar
  13. Dickson, Bruce. 2000–2001. Cooptation and corporatism in China: The logic of party adaptation. Political Science Quarterly 115(4): 517–540.Google Scholar
  14. Donati, Pierpaolo. 2011. Relational sociology: A new paradigm for social sciences. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  15. Eckholm, Erik. 2006. SARS in Beijing: The unraveling of a cover-up. In SARS in China: Prelude to pandemic? ed. Arthur Kleinman and James L. Watson, 122–130. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  16. Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. Manifesto for a relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology 103(2): 281–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Farías, Ignacio, and Thomas Bender (eds.). 2010. Urban assemblages: How actor-network theory changes urban studies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  18. Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against essentialism: A theory of culture and society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  19. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
  20. Garfinkel, Harold. 2002. Ethnomethodology’s program: Working out Durkheim’s aphorism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
  21. Gomart, Emilie. 2002. Methadone: Six effects in search of a substance. Social Studies of Science 32(1): 93–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. Further reflections on the public sphere. In Habermas and the public sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, 421–461. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  23. Habermas, Jürgen. 1962/1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  24. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981/1984. The theory of communicative action vol. 1: Reason and the rationalization of society. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
  25. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981/1987. The theory of communicative action vol. 2: Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
  26. Hennion, Antoine. 1993. La passion musicale: Une sociologie de la médiation. Paris: Métailié.Google Scholar
  27. Hennion, Antoine, and Line Grenier. 2000. Sociology of art: New stakes in a post-critical time. In The international handbook of sociology, ed. Stella Quah and Arnaud Sales, 341–355. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Huang, Philip. 1993. “Public sphere”/“civil society” in China? The third realm between state and society. Modern China 19: 216–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Johnson, Jim. 1988. Mixing humans and nonhumans together: The sociology of a door-closer. Social Problems 35(3): 298–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Lampland, Martha, and Susan Leigh Star. 2009. Standards and their stories: How quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices shape everyday life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
  31. Landreth, Jonathan. 2011. Zhang Yimou, Feng Xiaogang push Beijing for piracy crackdown. The Hollywood Reporter, 7 March 2011.Google Scholar
  32. Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  33. Latour, Bruno. 1999. On recalling ANT. In Actor network theory and after, ed. John Law and John Hassard, 15–25. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
  34. Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  35. Latour, Bruno. 2005a. From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, or how to make things public. In Making things public: Atmospheres of democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 14–43. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  36. Latour, Bruno. 2005b. Reassembling the social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  37. Latour, Bruno. 1991/1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  38. Latour, Bruno. 2002/2010. The making of law: An ethnography of the Conseil d’Etat. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
  39. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1979/1986. Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  40. Law, John. 1999. After ANT: Complexity, naming and topology. In Actor network theory and after, ed. John Law and John Hassard, 1–14. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
  41. McGrath, Jason. 2008. Postsocialist modernity: Chinese cinema, literature, and criticism in the market age. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  42. McGrath, Jason. 2011. The urban generation: Underground and independent films from the PRC. In The Chinese cinema book, ed. Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward, 167–175. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
  43. Nakajima, Seio. 2010. Watching documentary: Critical public discourses and urban Chinese film clubs. In The new Chinese documentary film movement: For the public record, ed. Chris Berry, Lisa Rofel, and Xinyu Lu, 117–134. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
  44. Nevitt, Christopher Earle. 1996. Private business associations in China: Evidence of civil society or local state power? The China Journal 36: 25–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  45. Pearson, Margaret M. 1994. The Janus face of business associations in China: Socialist corporatism in foreign enterprises. Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 31: 25–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. Perry, Elizabeth. 1995. Labor’s battle for political space: The role of worker associations in contemporary China. In Urban spaces in contemporary China, ed. Deborah Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton, and Elizabeth Perry, 302–325. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  47. Pickowicz, Paul G., and Yingjin Zhang (eds.). 2006. From underground to independent: Alternative film culture in contemporary China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
  48. Spires, Anthony J. 2011. Contingent symbiosis and civil society in an authoritarian state: Understanding the survival of China’s grassroots NGOs. American Journal of Sociology 117(1): 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. Teets, Jessica C. 2009. Post-earthquake relief and reconstruction efforts: The emergence of civil society in China? China Quarterly 198: 330–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  50. Unger, Jonathan, and Anita Chan. 1995. China, corporatism, and the East Asian model. Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 33: 1–28.Google Scholar
  51. Wang, Shiqing. 2003. SARS in Beijing [Beijing xizhan feidian] (film).Google Scholar
  52. Wang, Shiqing. 2004. SARS in Beijing (Beijing xizhan feidian) (director’s statement). Accessed 22 August 2013. http://www.viennale.at/en/films/beijing-xizhan-feidian
  53. Wang, Xiaoshuai. 1997. Frozen [Jidu hanleng] (film).Google Scholar
  54. Wank, David L. 1999. Commodifying communism: Business, trust and politics in a Chinese city. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  55. Yang, Mayfair. 1989. Between state and society: The construction of corporateness in a Chinese socialist factory. Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 22: 31–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  56. Yang, Mayfair Mei-Hui. 1994. Film discussion groups in China: State discourse or a plebeian public sphere? Visual Anthropology Review 10(1): 112–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  57. Yang, Guobin. 2005. Environmental NGOs and institutional dynamics in China. China Quarterly 181: 46–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  58. Yang, Guobin. 2009. Civic environmentalism. In Reclaiming Chinese society: The new social activism, ed. You-tien Hsing and Ching Kwan Lee, 119–139. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  59. Zhang, Zhen (ed.). 2007. The urban generation: Chinese cinema and society at the turn of the twenty-first century. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of SociologyUniversity of Hawai‘i at MānoaHonoluluUSA

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options