Working-class Network Society: Communication Technology And The Information Have-less In Urban China
by Jack Linchuan Qiu /
2009 / English / PDF
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This book is so insightful and sobering. Qiu illustrates so many nuanced observations about the have-less, working poor people of China, he creates an glaring map for the direction most countries are quietly following, America included. The concept of the middle-class is a bit of a fluke and will undoubtedly continue to dwindle, as its usefulness subsides. Qiu shows us how the working class are creating a separate network for themselves so they can continue to gain information, connect with others, find jobs and housing and participate in second tier society of their own creation. Very sobering trajectory of events.
Review
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 Dutton, Director, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford)
[A] fascinating picture of a hitherto almost unknown phenomenon.
(Jens Damm The China Journal)
