Jeroen de Kloet

Will the Real Weibo Please Stand Up? Chinese Online Contention and Actor-Network Theory

Social media platforms have become key participants in Chinese political contention. Global media eagerly report on cases involving social media, often celebrating them as signs of political change. This article analyzes the involvement of Sina Weibo in two instances of political contention: one concerns the Huili picture scandal of June 2011, and the other a controversy around the popular rally racer and novelist Han Han that started in December 2011. Drawing inspiration from actor-network theory (ANT), we show how Sina Weibos particular technological features, the related user cultures, and the platforms systematic self-censorship practices, in addition to the occasional government interventions, mutually articulate each other. By tracing how technological features and emerging practices become entangled, we gain insight into how new publics are constituted and how symbolic reconfigurations unfold.

Sonic Sturdiness: The Globalization of “Chinese” Rock and Pop

To theorize further global and regional flows of popular culture, this article provides a critical analysis of “authentic” rock music from Beijing as well as “commercial” pop from Hong Kong. Following Appadurai, I theorize rock as a hard cultural form, which, under the scrutinizing eyes of the West, demands localization when it travels to places outside its perceived homeland, the West. By comparing hardcore punk from Beijing to Cantopop, I discuss whether the soft relates to the hard as pop does to rock. I conclude it does not. The transient, intertextual, and multivocal opaque voice of pop demands a different theorization. I therefore recast Appadurais hard–soft distinction into a clear–opaque dualism as a more accurate theoretical tool for understanding cultural globalization.To theorize further global and regional flows of popular culture, this article provides a critical analysis of “authentic” rock music from Beijing as well as “commercial” pop from Hong Kong. Following Appadurai, I theorize rock as a hard cultural form, which, under the scrutinizing eyes of the West, demands localization when it travels to places outside its perceived homeland, the West. By comparing hardcore punk from Beijing to Cantopop, I discuss whether the soft relates to the hard as pop does to rock. I conclude it does not. The transient, intertextual, and multivocal opaque voice of pop demands a different theorization. I therefore recast Appadurais hard–soft distinction into a clear–opaque dualism as a more accurate theoretical tool for understanding cultural globalization.

Gendering China Studies: Peripheral Perspectives, Central Questions

This article explores the connections between the field of China studies and the field of gender and sexuality studies. It engages with three questions. First, why is it that theoretical, conceptua...

The spectre of Europe: Knowledge, cultural studies and the ‘rise of Asia’

This introduction starts with an exploration of the ambiguity of the idea of Europe. In particular, two tropes – Europe-as-theory and Europe-as-power – continue to haunt knowledge production and cultural studies in Asia. How to proceed? What should cultural studies do if it is to embrace this historical conjuncture of shifting modes of knowledge and power production, how to deal with its Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism? While this special issue allies itself with attempts to unsettle Eurocentrism in knowledge production, it is not making any plea for regionally-rooted practices or theories. It argues for better understanding, dialogue and cross-fertilisation between cultural studies and area studies. The former needs the latter’s sensibility to spatial and cultural context as much as the latter needs the former’s theorisations. This introduction is an opening. It opens up not only to the ensuing articles but, more importantly, an occasion for the inevitable encounter argued for in this special issue.

Crossing the threshold: Chinese cinema studies in the twenty-first century

Abstract This article proposes three trajectories for future studies on Chinese cinema. It argues, first, for an inclusive, cosmopolitan and comparative approach that critically interrogates the alleged ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese cinema. Second, in the context of a current bias towards art cinema, it argues to study the more popular, vernacular kind of Chinese cinemas. Third, it proposes a broader framework of analysis, one that includes the production of the cinematic text as well as its reception. It is argued that the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese cinema is not just located in the text or its auteur, but also in its cinematic production and reception.

Introduction: At home in Asia? Place-making, belonging and citizenship in the Asian century

For the authors of this introduction, home is not always or only sweet home. For us, it is constructed with contradictions, ruptures and anxieties. Indeed, the world never fails to present us with ‘real’ people with ‘real’ issues of home. After ‘rescuing’ the idea of home from its two assumed arch-enemies ‘mobility’ and ‘urbanization’, we will proceed to formulate our appeal to reconceptualize ‘home’ and explicate why and how to do so. We have cited instances from Hong Kong, Beijing and Asia at large, not only because the empirical core of this special issue is on Asia, but, more fundamentally, also because we want to take issue with the Eurocentric bias in the debates on home hitherto. We conclude by making a modest plea – or more accurately, to configure various trajectories of thinking on ‘home’ into a plea – to bracket home as (making) place, (not) belonging and (flexible) citizenship.

Europe as façade

In China, numerous buildings employ an overtly baroque style, alluding to a hyperEurope. In the context of an intensification of nationalistic Chinese sentiments that help maintain the Chinese nation-state, Europe remains an important constitutive outside. What cultural translations from Europe to China are at stake here, when Europe is turned into a facade? Inspired by the work of Rey Chow and Michel Foucault, this article reads these facades as constitutive mirrors, both heterotopian and utopian, that open up possibilities to rethink the notion of culture and its geopolitical manifestations. To analyse the imagination of Europe in such models, websites of real estate developers are analysed, showing how for them, Europe is a fantasy to capitalise on, signifying craftsmanship and a pastoral and rich and full life. In contrast, the artwork Mirage City by Amsterdam-based artist Meiya Lin questions the presence and perpetual multiplication of a hyper-Europe in today’s China. In the final part of this article the author reflects upon the ways in which the presence of Europe in China interpellates him.In China, numerous buildings employ an overtly baroque style, alluding to a hyper-Europe. In the context of an intensification of nationalistic Chinese sentiments that help maintain the Chinese nation-state, Europe remains an important constitutive outside. What cultural translations from Europe to China are at stake here, when Europe is turned into a façade? Inspired by the work of Rey Chow and Michel Foucault, this article reads these façades as constitutive mirrors, both heterotopian and utopian, that open up possibilities to rethink the notion of culture and its geopolitical manifestations. To analyse the imagination of Europe in such models, websites of real estate developers are analysed, showing how for them, Europe is a fantasy to capitalise on, signifying craftsmanship and a pastoral and rich and full life. In contrast, the artwork Mirage City by Amsterdam-based artist Meiya Lin questions the presence and perpetual multiplication of a hyper-Europe in today’s China. In the final part of this article the author reflects upon the ways in which the presence of Europe in China interpellates him.

Umbrellas and Revolutions: The Aesthetics of the Hong Kong Protests

This chapter analyses the unfolding of the Umbrella movement in Hong Kong along the conceptual lines of identity, aesthetics, and connectivity. First, the Umbrella movement of Hong Kong may look like a typical social mobilization event, one in which a clear goal—democracy—manages to unite thousands of people. A closer look reveals, however, that it is more accurate to view the movement as semi-post-identitarian, as constantly reinventing itself during the struggle. Second, aesthetics play a crucial role in this continuous process of negotiation: both a spectacular aesthetics and an aesthetics of cleanliness and proper behavior. Following Ranciere, these aesthetics are read as effecting a redistribution of the sensible. Third, drawing on Bennett and Segerberg (Information, Communication & Society 15 (5): 739–768, 2012), the chapter shows how the movement combines a logic of collective action with a logic of connective action. It concludes with an attempt to counter those who claim that this movement has failed, arguing that it can be read as exploring a politics of possibility.

A Patchwork of Potential: A Survey of the European Game Industry

Nieborg and de Kloet surveys the expansion of the game industry in Europe and argue that what binds national game industries within the European Union is cooperation on a cultural and policy level. The chapter shows government’s creative-industry policies have played a vital role in the industry’s ascendance. Numerous government-issued reports have quantified the volume of the Dutch game industry and as well as its growth potential. Yet, less attention has been paid to how this growth has come to be and its implications for issues of labor security.

Music and Politics

also frozen in June 2012 when the elected government was dissolved. In this respect, the chapter discusses the need to rethink transparency, ethical and quality control in a multimedia convergent society. This involves encouraging an institutional model, independent from business and government control, to represent journalists and protect the profession from repression and partiality. Sakr’s concluding chapter provides vital measures and recommendations to help shape Egypt’s media transformations in a time of changing political dynamics. Among the central recommendations proposed by Sakr, she highlights the urgent need for freedom of expression and association, compounded by an end to control over journalism by the government, military and security forces. The recommendations also encourage a coherent, manageable and independent approach to journalism run by the journalists serving the needs of the people. Sakr also stresses that Egyptian journalism should see an end to criminal sanctions towards media practitioners who put governmental figures under critical scrutiny. This, she argues, will enhance transparency, ethics and accountability, and safeguard the profession from government intervention. In line with Egypt’s international commitments, trade union pluralism is also essential towards a viable Egyptian media landscape. Transformations in Egyptian Journalism is valuable on two fronts: its temporal significance to the current media landscape as well as its conceptual relevance to the growing literature on citizen journalism, micro-blogging and User Generated Content (UGC). However, the book would have benefited from first-hand interviews with the many journalists, bloggers and activists detailed in the narrative. A more intimate relationship with the many actors would have served the purpose of this book better in exploring the dayto-day hardships of being a journalist in a country undergoing extreme transformation in its political, economical and social dynamics. Although the book provided a well-needed detailed historical approach to the analysis, it was sometimes incoherent in terms of readability. As the title of the book suggests, a more sequential structure outlining the transformations of Egyptian journalism would have been useful. The book offers a well-rounded introduction to Egyptian journalism before, during and after the Mubarak era and can act as the basis for further studies exploring online activism as powerful tools for reform and media regulation. Further explorations can look to compare media systems in culturally proximate climates – one example could look at Tunisia or Libya and benchmark the results with the analysis provided in this book. An audience study examining the Egyptian’s public perceptions and confidence of new media technologies and tools would also contribute to this debate.