Mobile immobility:an exploratory study of rural women’s engagement with e‑commerce livestreaming in China  

作　　者：Yanning Huang Zi Yang Kuan Chang 

机构地区：[1]Department of Media and Communication,Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University(XJTLU),Suzhou,China [2]Department of Media and Communications,London School of Economics and Political Sciences,London,UK [3]Social Media and Digital Communication,University of Westminster,London,UK

出　　处：《The Journal of Chinese Sociology》2024年第1期87-104,共18页中国社会学杂志(英文)

摘　　要：Based on our fieldwork in Yunnan Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region,this paper explores the different ways in which Chinese rural women engage with the ris-ing industry of e-commerce livestreaming related to agricultural products and villages.Our analytical framework is informed by feminist political economy,which pays heed to the gendered social settings,operation of power,and entanglement between wom-en’s domesticity and productivity that underpin people’s economic activities.We argue that Chinese rural women’s simultaneous empowerment and disempower-ment by e-commerce livestreaming are characterized by“mobile immobility”,a term inspired by Wallis’s(2013)research on rural women’s technological empowerment by mobile phones a decade ago.On the one hand,this latest form of e-commerce has created an apparently accessible path for rural women,who tend to be geographi-cally immobile,to achieve social mobility by becoming professional webcasters and/or vloggers.On the other hand,this enablement is in fact classed,aged,and precon-ditioned on in-laws’support and willingness to share these women’s domestic duties,which are not guaranteed.The urban-oriented digital economy of e-commerce livestreaming capitalizes on rural young women’s femininity,docile bodies and labor as well as the reproductive labor performed by their family members at the microlevel,reinforcing the urban–rural disparity at the macrolevel.The paper ends with reflec-tions on the role of information and communication technologies and e-commerce in the development of rural China.

关 键 词：E-commerce Livestreaming Female empowerment Urban–rural disparity Chinese rural women 

分 类 号：F42[经济管理—产业经济]