While the processes of production and consumption are increasingly interrelated in society, there is a bourgeoning literature on consumers' increased power through the prosumption process and its evolutions and manifestations in various industries, markets and social contexts. This article challenges the theoretical assumption that all types of 'prosumers' become directly empowered by digital technology or have an equal opportunity to participate in the production process through Web 2.0. By extending Ritzer's reconceptualised idea of prosumption beyond the Global North, our research analysed two specific East Asian cases of fashion consumers whose countries shared rapidly rising economic status and cultural significance yet underwent different sociocultural trajectories. Using focus group interview, we investigated how these consumers interact differentially with the existing social structure, cultural values and other emergent social agents, and the extent to which they are able to exert an influence on the production of immaterial fashion. Contesting the expressivist take of the 'cultural turn' which overemphasises consumers' awareness of and control over symbolic fashion, this article's major theoretical contribution relates to symbolic consumption in the case of fashion -as a unique case blending material, immaterial and symbolic consumptionamong young Chinese and Korean consumers geographically located out of the global fashion centres. We explored prosumption's vicissitudes and limits as a theoretical concept, challenging its universality across different cultures, political-economic models and product categories, also demonstrating the multifaceted relationships and dissimilar types of power balances between production/producer and consumption/

Purpose This study aims to examine how the organizational structure of arts groups and their administrative personnel’s socio-demographic attributes affect the working conditions of and create tensions for their staff. Recent discussion about the cultural industries and labor has pursued two strands – macro-level research expounds on the organization of cultural industries and labor market; and micro-level studies focus on the work and employment of cultural practitioners. Very few of them, however, articulate the relationships between the two levels. This study contributes to the literature with a multilevel framework that examines the interplay between the structural conditions and personal factors in which labor–capital relationships evolve. Design/methodology/approach This study applies a qualitative approach to collect and analyze data. It conducted 39 in-depth interviews with arts managers and administrators from a sample of 18 performing arts organizations across four performing arts sectors in Hong Kong, namely, drama, music, dance and opera. The stratified sample covers arts organizations of different funding models – the public “nationalized” form, the mixed-economy form, and the privatized form. Findings This study shows that the funding and organization model of arts organizations resulted in various forms of job structure, and that the practitioners’ socio-demographic background shapes their career expectations. The job structure and career expectations together affect the labor turnover and influence organization strategies. Originality/value This study’s methodological contribution lies on its application of a multilevel framework to analyze the relationships between the macro- and the micro-level factors underpinning the working conditions of labor in the cultural industries. Besides, it contributes to the discussion about “labor precariousness” with empirical evidence from a comparative study of arts managers and administrators from organizations across four performing arts sectors.

With sport becoming increasingly mediatized in the global arena that further criss-crosses with the promotion of globalization and Western discourses surrounding manhood and identities, there has been, in contemporary China, a rise of alternate theorizations of masculinities that deviate from hegemonic masculine practices surrounding ‘wen’ (文) and ‘wu’ (武) as well as Maoist ideologies. While such accounts, focusing on demonstrating individuality and individualization, cultivating entrepreneurial spirit and possessing wealth, career success and conspicuous consumption, advocate for a greater understanding of masculinities that call for the diversity and fluidity of Chinese gender roles and male identities, there has also been a revival of traditional masculine ideologies associated with the Chinese Dream, a doctrine established and conveyed by President Xi Jinping, which seeks to highlight China’s quest for modernization and national power while placing ‘wu’ masculine values and culture at the forefront of its agenda. Against such a backdrop, this article, drawing on interviews with and observations of male badminton athletes from Mainland Chinese provincial professional and university teams, argues that, in contemporary China, both traditional and newly emerged masculine values and endeavours are integral to the theorization of masculinities of Chinese men, which are contended to be multiple, pluralized and individualized. With a dearth of academic literature that focuses on the co-presence of and inter-relationships between traditional and new masculinities which are embodied by modern Chinese men, this paper contributes renewed theoretical insights into how the various forms of masculinities coexist, intermix and, ultimately, negotiate with one another to reconstruct Chinese contemporary masculinities, in line with the gender order and hierarchy so upheld within China.

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