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OverviewAn examination of how the availability of low-end information and communication technology has provided a basis for the emergence of a working-class network society in China.The idea of the ""digital divide,"" the great social division between information haves and have-nots, has dominated policy debates and scholarly analysis since the 1990s. In Working-Class Network Society, Jack Linchuan Qiu describes a more complex social and technological reality in a newly mobile, urbanizing China. Qiu argues that as inexpensive Internet and mobile phone services become available and are closely integrated with the everyday work and life of low-income communities, they provide a critical seedbed for the emergence of a new working class of ""network labor"" crucial to China's economic boom. Between the haves and have-nots, writes Qiu, are the information ""have-less""- migrants, laid-off workers, micro-entrepreneurs, retirees, youth, and others, increasingly connected by cybercafes, prepaid service, and used mobile phones. A process of class formation has begun that has important implications for working-class network society in China and beyond. Qiu brings class back into the scholarly discussion, not as a secondary factor but as an essential dimension in our understanding of communication technology as it is shaped in the vast, industrializing society of China. Basing his analysis on his more than five years of empirical research conducted in twenty cities, Qiu examines technology and class, networked connectivity and public policy, in the context of massive urban reforms that affect the new working class disproportionately. The transformation of Chinese society, writes Qiu, is emblematic of the new technosocial reality emerging in much of the Global South. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Jack Linchuan Qiu (Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) , Manuel Castells (Professor of Communication and Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society, University of Southern California) , Carolyn CartierPublisher: MIT Press Ltd Imprint: MIT Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.567kg ISBN: 9780262170062ISBN 10: 026217006 Pages: 320 Publication Date: 30 January 2009 Recommended Age: From 18 years Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Out of Print Availability: In Print  Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock. Table of ContentsReviews[A] fascinating picture of a hitherto almost unknown phenomenon. -- Jens Damm The China Journal Contrary to many Information Age pundits and prognosticators, the working class continues to exist; indeed, in contemporary China, it is being reinvented on a gigantic scale and in a new historical form. ICTs, as Jack Linchuan Qiu shows, constitute a vital and fascinating component of this crucial process. Those who assert that class realities have nothing to do with cellphones and Internet services--and vice versa--will have to think again. --Dan Schiller, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Jack Linchuan Qiu has written the most insightful, empirically grounded account to date of the social role that the Internet and related information and communication technologies have played in the course of China's rapid economic development. Anyone with an interest in the social and economic implications of the Internet in developing economies--whose citizens make up half of today's Internet users--should read this book. --William H. Dutton, Director, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford [A] fascinating picture of a hitherto almost unknown phenomenon. —Jens Damm, The China Journal Author InformationJack Linchuan Qiu is Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a coauthor (with Manuel Castells, Mireia Fernandez-Ard vol, and Araba Sey) of Mobile Communication and Society- A Global Perspective (MIT Press, 2006). Manuel Castells is Professor of Communication and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, as well as Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, Research Professor at the Open University of Catalonia, and Marvin and Joanne Grossman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at MIT. He is the author of, among other books, the three-volume work The Information Age- Economy, Society, and Culture. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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