Book Talk: Professor Cara Wallis

This event is organized by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC), the Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS), and the Center for the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC).

Talk Overview

In contemporary China, the party-state goes to great lengths to summon the populace into the Chinese Dream – or the revitalization of China technologically, economically, militarily, spiritually – through encouraging “positive energy,” creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurialism but also through engaging in harsh coercive measures. How do those who are socially, economically, and/or politically disenfranchised make their way in this evolving milieu? Cara Wallis discusses this question in her current book, Social Media and Ordinary Life. This long-term ethnographic study examines how digital media infrastructures and platforms are woven into the rhythms of ordinary, everyday life across geographic locales in China. Focusing on four differently disadvantaged groups—young creatives, rural micro-entrepreneurs, domestic workers, and young feminists—Wallis foregrounds the entanglement of affect, emotion, ordinary ethical decisions, and desires as these are articulated to social media. She specifically highlights how social media is used for self-expression, economic livelihood, self-representation, maintenance of community, and fights for equality. Amid daunting forces – big data, artificial intelligence, massive surveillance – Wallis centers the “small,” showing how structural inequality, the urban/rural divide, patriarchal gender norms, generational differences, and varying levels of social, cultural, and economic capital can lead to contradictory or ambivalent outcomes of technology use. For these marginalized individuals, social media is also deeply intertwined with struggles for voice and aspirations for a better future.

About the Speaker

Cara Wallis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. In addition to her current book, she is the author of Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones (NYU Press, 2013) and multiple articles and book chapters on gender and digital media in China.

Host or Publisher CDCS