ORCID Profile
0000-0002-9771-3626
Current Organisation
University of Nottingham Ningbo China
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Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-2021
DOI: 10.1177/20594364211041683
Abstract: Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social media. Fang Fang’s diary, originally written as daily entries on Chinese social media platform Weibo, serves as a voice for those suffering during the pandemic, mediating between personal accounts, accounts of friends, family and those living in Wuhan during the pandemic. These flesh out how the virus has not only been disturbing for Chinese people’s lives but also disrupted the death rites and mourning rituals for those who have passed. Our article infuses a digital ontological reading with an anthropological twist that helps to understand how the diary mitigates the disturbances to mourning rituals inside and outside the confines of digital metaphysics. We argue that the digital diary mitigates these disruptions by allowing Chinese people to nourish their sorrow by identifying with the symbolic rites of passage and mourning rituals online at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan. In doing so, this article examines three stages of rite of passage, including separation, liminality and integration as they unfold in the diary, through which discourses and subjectivities based on collective and in idual traumatic experiences are built, as a form of digital mourning that could reconcile both the official and the alternative voices of anonymous narratives about the handling of this crisis.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 14-11-2022
DOI: 10.1177/20594364221140812
Abstract: This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China within globalisation and the ‘media-mix’ fandom, which is to consume and resell media merchandise in opaque packages as probability goods. We re-centre the focus of fandom studies on the then much neglected ‘missing child’ and now the ‘emerging adult’ in a globalising world. We argue the Chinese emerging adult consumes, collects and resells Blind Boxes as a generative and agentic collection and fandom practice, defined as ‘probabilistic and elastic prosumption’ in a quasi-social and quasi-in idual manner. We then critically examine and unpack the cultural production and meaning making process undertook by collectors who also accumulate sociality and form identity through affective and economic investments, mediated collection and exchange of figurines in a post-socialist and consumerist society.
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 04-2022
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-08-2023
DOI: 10.1057/S41599-023-02006-0
Abstract: This article investigates the emergence of "erotic entrepreneurs" in China, a new category of male influencers who engage in erotic activities and target followers of all genders on platforms such as TikTok/Douyin and Bilibili. Through ethnographic research, we examine how these young in iduals strategically marketize their private and intimate experiences as a form of aspiration and commerce. We use Foucault’s concept, "docile bodies," to interrogate how these erotic entrepreneurs navigate the power and knowledge systems of the creative economy. We argue that the paradoxical position of these docile male, queer bodies helps to increase their visibility on one hand, whilst renders them vulnerable to exploitation, censorship, and commodification on the other. The findings suggest that this paradox disrupts traditional gender stereotypes and the underlying power structures, but also reinforces the neoliberal and patriarchal order specific to postreform China.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 18-10-2022
DOI: 10.1186/S40711-022-00173-2
Abstract: International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-generated content on national images can affect social media users’ perceptions of reality. Content analysis is used to analyze the visual portrayals of Chinese rural culture, including its customs and values, aesthetics, and cultural and scenic places in Li’s vlogs. Discourse analysis is further used to examine user comments and demonstrate her vlog content’s impact on user perceptions of Chinese rural culture. This study sheds light on how a complex and hybrid national image with ‘Chineseness,’ and a personal image with self-Orientalized and performed ‘soft but independent’ Chinese rural female image, is constructed by a social media influencer Li Ziqi with affective associations. At a conceptual and practical level, the findings of this study contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussions on how China engages with the globalized world through cultural diplomacy from the bottom-up, while existing research primarily takes a top-down approach.
No related grants have been discovered for Thomas Whyke.