UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Living on E-Commerce: The Politics and Ethics of E-Trading in a Chinese City

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.25911/5d514294cdf38

Authors

Qian, Linliang

Reported year

2018

Reported language

und · en_AU

Source type

Thesis (PhD)

First detected

2026-11-09T19:08:45.202432+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:08:45.202432+00:00

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Documentary abstract — original language

Based on thirteen-month fieldwork in the city of Yiwu, an emergent e-commercial hub in Southeast China, this dissertation looks at the making of a neoliberal e-commerce economy and its political, economic, social, and cultural impacts on e-traders in the locality. Despite some state developmental endeavors, this new economy is largely fostered by grassroots market players and facilitated by large e-platform giants, such as the Alibaba Group. The expansion of this new economy has given individual Chinese e-traders new opportunities to generate wealth and cultural capital, achieve upward social mobility and construct an enterprising subjectivity. Yet, the domination of e-platform giants in this economy has also created a precarious condition for the grassroots e-traders, in which they have to adapt to the changing environment and find creative strategies and tactics to ensure their economic security. Through investigations of their self-reliant discourses and business practices in opposition to state intervention in economy and in individual life, their negotiations over independence and justice under the hegemony of e-platform giants, their struggles for social recognition in urban Chinese society, their moral agency in negotiating and contesting ethics in business encounters, and their employment of self-enterprising and self-disciplining measures in dealing with economic and social uncertainties, this dissertation illustrates how the ongoing formation of the digital regime of accumulation generates an anxious yet flourishing life for the e-traders under neoliberalism as well as speaks to the culturally specific process of subjectivization in China.

Identifiers

DOI

10.25911/5d514294cdf38

HANDLE

1885/148755

OAI

oai:openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au:1885/148755

Documentary context

Documentary family

Thesis

Source-reported types

Thesis (PhD)

Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources

CN

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

Repository · Record 1 · Record 2 · Record 3

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.25911/5d514294cdf38
• Handle · https://hdl.handle.net/1885/148755
• Document · https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstreams/12f8cf05-40c0-4838-8667-d8018d6e397c/download

Documentary status

Relevance pending

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