Suchergebnisse

Explores the increasingly intimate relationship between China and wireless technology, taking the wave as a central conceptProvides a new theoretical apparatus that reimagines key issues around technological evolution in a shifting geopolitical landscapeOffers a corrective to certain myopias of Western media theoryPresents a deep, historical engagement with issues and debates surrounding Chinese cybercultureBrings together contemporary media theory with modern Chinese philosophical thoughtIn the 21st century city, wireless waves constitute an imperceptible, immersive, all-encompassing environment. Nowhere is this more so than in China, where a hyperdense network of mobile media has restructured daily life.Anna Greenspan re-imagines the relationship between China and wirelessness by synthesising contemporary media theory with modern Chinese thought. It focuses specifically on the work of three critical figures: Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 (1865-1898), Xiong Shili 熊十力 (1885-1968) and Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909-1995)

China is in the midst of the fastest and most intense process of urbanization the world has ever known, and Shanghai -- its biggest, richest and most cosmopolitan city -- is positioned for acceleration into the twenty-first century. Yet, in its embrace of a hopeful -- even exultant -- futurism, Shanghai recalls the older and much criticized project of imagining, planning and building the modern metropolis. Today, among Westerners, at least, the very idea of the futuristic city -- with its multilayered skyways, domestic robots and flying cars -- seems doomed to the realm of nostalgia, the sadly comic promise of a future that failed to materialize. Shanghai Future maps the city of tomorrow as it resurfaces in a new time and place. It searches for the contours of an unknown and unfamiliar futurism in the city's street markets as well as in its skyscrapers. For though it recalls the modernity of an earlier age, Shanghai's current re-emergence is only superficially based on mimicry. Rather, in seeking to fulfill its ambitions, the giant metropolis is reinventing the very idea of the future itself. As it modernizes, Shanghai is necessarily recreating what it is to be modern. -- Provided by publisher

China is in the midst of the fastest and largest process of urbanisation in history. Alongside the dynamism of the region's hyperdense cities, however, are alarming levels of air pollution, recurrent stories of toxic food, contaminated waterways and intensifying popular protests concerning polluting factories and plants. Issues surrounding a sustainable urban ecology have thus become paramount in the construction of Asia's metropolitan future. This paper, which focuses particularly on the Shanghai region, suggests that the ideas and practices of "cultivation" might be of value in the creation and imagination of a future ecological metropolis. We examine self-cultivation concretely, as a set of situated embodied practices in specific places and specific historical conditions. We also explore the abstract conceptual idea, by looking at how the modern philosopher Mou Zongsan articulated the idea of "cultivation" as a guide for life. Ultimately, we are interested in how the embodied cultural practices of cultivation can be harnessed as a strategy of re-enchantment, with the power to reconfigure urban nature in the Chinese megacity of the 21st century.

AbstractThis qualitative research documents the educational strategies of international migrants to Shanghai who are attempting to raise their children as cosmopolitans through immersion in local Chinese schools. We distinguish this localizing educational strategy from the established network of international schools designed to serve the families of corporate expatriates. Instead, our research subjects consist of self‐initiated expatriates, or 'middling transnationals', who have chosen to prioritize immersion in the language and culture of China by sending their children to local schools. This localized, or Sinocentric, model exposes non‐Chinese children to a challenging and nationalistic Chinese curriculum. Our analysis of these practices as a form of cosmopolitan education challenges both the goal of teaching a universal and placeless ethical cosmopolitanism and the assumption that a meaningful cosmopolitan education must take place in the idealized setting of a liberal cosmopolitan school system. We also highlight the difficulties families face in this approach, describing this as an 'entangled cosmopolitanism', an enriching but uncomfortable engagement with both local and home‐country educational cultures.