A Coffeehouse Neo-Tribe in the Making: Exploring a Fluid Cultural Public Space in Post-Reform Chinese Urbanism

Lv, Zuyi; Qian, Junxi

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-68207-5_4

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The alluring façade of the job, however, barely concealed its precarious condition: employees had no formal, legal labor contract, or social security and received low monthly incomes (waiters received between 3000 and 4000 RMB—between US$450 and US$600, while the manager's salary reached 6000 RMB—approximately US$900) 7 . But if “coffeehouses provide collective spaces that satisfy a myriad of needs to a new generation of young wealthy and trendy urban consumers” (Lv and Qian 2018, 52), they also offer young migrants a legitimate place of one's own in the city. Cafés, as a workplace, provide, a window onto “society,” a space of encounters with both Chinese urbanites and foreigners.…”

Section: Senses Of the Possiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Malaise of Indolence: (Dis)Engagements with the Future among Young Migrants in Shanghai

Richaud¹

2022

Ethos

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Rural-to-urban migrants in China have often been portrayed as striving subjects, living in "suspension" for the sake of the entrepreneurial futures they desire. Drawing on fieldwork conducted alongside young café workers in Shanghai, this article highlights more ambivalent engagements with the future obscured by emphases, within the social sciences, on the intentional, active aspects of subjectivity. Relatedly, it analyzes moments of purposelessness as more than emotional downsides of precarity, in a context where official discourses of the "Chinese Dream" coexist with vernacular celebrations of indolence. Purposelessness is a form of refusal, allowing young migrants to dwell in the present, if only momentarily. Yet, the very act of articulating unwillingness through playful idioms of indolence does not mean embracing disengagement as a norm. Rather, it nurtures a sense of ethical discomfort and self-responsibility. This malaise of indolence might prevent the translation of temporary disinvestment into a clear politics of refusal. [ambivalence, aspirations, neoliberal subjectivity, post-reform China, purposelessness]

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Section: Senses Of the Possiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Malaise of Indolence: (Dis)Engagements with the Future among Young Migrants in Shanghai

Richaud¹

2022

Ethos

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“…Here, we pursue the theme of the future in the everyday, by considering the lived experience of a group of young migrants as they move through the spaces of the inner city to nourish their sense of “progression” ( jinbu ) and “striving” ( nuli ) as well as their quest for cosmopolitan citizenship. This newly established “bijou” café is explicitly cosmopolitan, “a locus of encounter between globalised cultural repertoires and locally mediated practices” typical of urban China's new coffee house culture (Lv & Qian, 2018, p. 52), in a way alluring also to its low‐paid employees. Here too, though the subjects manage to avoid the disorientation we have described above, their spatial experience – as migrants – is not always one of just reward, but is instead tempered with many pushbacks and small injuries encountered every day owing to their assigned identity.…”

Section: Familiarised Aspirationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress and the ecology of urban experience: Migrant mental lives in central Shanghai

Amin

Richaud

2020

Trans Inst British Geog

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Responding to claims in urban studies and epidemiology that modern urban living negatively affects the mental health of the poor and newcomers to the city, this paper offers a different account based on an ethnography of a neighbourhood in central Shanghai, where precarious rural migrant lives unfold. Drawing on the concept of "ecologies of experience" to recognise the making of everyday sensibilities and affective tensions in urban dwelling, it focuses on subjectivity formed in habits of negotiating the urban environment, in coping with troubled thoughts and feelings posed by precariousness. The paper considers ecologies of experience arising in distinct prosaic locationsa public library, a large bookstore, and a caféfound to be important in the everyday spatial practices of migrants, grounding to different degrees of success hopes for their present and future in the city. In such dwelling, the stresses to mental healthconsistently described by migrants as "pressure" (yali)seem to be moderated through varied forms of respite, slowing-down, and "moments of being," though always in ambivalent ways. In recognising the everyday materiality of urban living, the paper looks beyond the tendency in studies of China's internal migration to read off migrant mental health outcomes from structural disadvantages related to work, welfare, and living conditions. Conceptually, it opens new ground in thinking by acknowledging the role of the felt qualities of lived experience in managing mental states, building on work in geography, sociology, and anthropology attentive to the affective resonances of place and to practices of urban negotiation. K E Y W O R D S ecologies of experience, ethnography, internal migration, mental health, urban China, urban public space 1 | INTRODUCTION In the history of writing on the effects of modern metropolitan life on mental health, an influential line of thought with roots in urban sociology argues that the stresses and strains faced by vulnerable populations such as the urban poor, combined with challenging urban conditions such as overcrowding, and sensory overstimulation, make for mental disorders such as anxiety, stress, depression, and schizophrenia (see

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Cross-Disciplinary Applications and Conceptualisations of Theory of Neo-Tribes: An Investigation

Hardy

2020

Consumer Tribes in Tourism

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A Coffeehouse Neo-Tribe in the Making: Exploring a Fluid Cultural Public Space in Post-Reform Chinese Urbanism

Cited by 3 publications

References 19 publications

Malaise of Indolence: (Dis)Engagements with the Future among Young Migrants in Shanghai

Malaise of Indolence: (Dis)Engagements with the Future among Young Migrants in Shanghai

Stress and the ecology of urban experience: Migrant mental lives in central Shanghai

Cross-Disciplinary Applications and Conceptualisations of Theory of Neo-Tribes: An Investigation

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