A fascinating ethnography on female migrant worker
2013-04-17
This is an extremely rich and insightful ethnographic work on contemporary Chinese society through the unique lens of female migran workers' uses of mobile communication technologies.
The author furthered our understanding of the intertwined relationships among technology, culture, gender, class, etc. with detailed ethnographic field work and an elaborate theoretical foundation.
The major argument-- "immobile mobility"-- vividly captured the multiple, sometimes paradoxical, implications of mobile technologies on female migrant workers' everyday life, the opportunities, the constraints, the dilemmas, the creativity, the harship, the pleasure, the discipline as well as the resistence. Both the workers' agency and transcendence of physical, cultural, and social constrains, and the persistence of structural limitation on social and economic mobility are mapped out with this main theme.
The argument is also embeded in the author's deep understanding of Chinese contemporary society, from the rual-urban dual system to the telecommunication development, from the labor market to socio-cultural zeitgeist.
This s a valuable contribution to the scholarship of the cultrual studies of mobile technology and studies on contemporary China. Also, it is a heart-felt dedication to the elating and the heart-wrenching moments of those female migrant workers in China.
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