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Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China: From the cultural to the digital revolution in Shanghai
Ort / Verlag
UCL Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2023
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
If we want to understand contemporary China, the key is through
understanding the older generation. This is the generation in China
whose life courses almost perfectly synchronised with the emergence
and growth of the 'New China' under the rule of the Communist Party
(1949). People in their 70s and 80s have double the life expectancy
of their parents' generation. The current oldest generation in
Shanghai was born in a time when the average household could not
afford electric lights, but today they can turn their lights off
via their smartphone apps. Based on 16-month ethnographic fieldwork
in Shanghai, Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China
tackles the intersection between the 'two revolutions' experienced
by the older generation in Shanghai: the contemporary
smartphone-based digital revolution and the earlier communist
revolutions. We find that we can only explain the smartphone
revolution if we first appreciate the long-term consequences of
these people's experiences during the communist revolutions. The
context of this book is a wide range of dramatic social
transformations in China, from the Cultural Revolution to the
individualism and Confucianism in Digital China. Supported by
detailed ethnographic material, the observations and analyses
provide a panoramic view of the social landscape of contemporary
China, including topics such as the digital and everyday life,
ageing and healthcare, intergenerational relations and family
development, community building and grassroots organizations,
collective memories and political attitudes among ordinary Chinese
people.