September 2007 September 2006 September 2005

Speaker of the lecture: Dr. Eric Ma Associate Professor School of Journalism and Communication The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, HKSAR Abstract of the lecture: This presentation describes how Chinese urban dwellers acquire global consumerist lifestyles not known to them before. The first part focuses on the ways in which rural migrant workers are left exposed to the contradictory regimes of rural and urban intimacy. The sensuous bodies of the workers have become the central stage for them to experience and perform competing sets of discourses about sex, love and happiness. It is neither a product of discursive discipline in the Foucaultian sense, nor is it an active body learning a socially acceptable presentation of self in the Goffmanian sense. Rather, it is a ‘communicative body’ which is in the process of making itself. To use a theoretical metaphor, they are ‘naked’ in the transient condition of urban modernity.   As we discuss the particular ‘nakedness’ of rural migrant bodies in South China, we may also see in it a remarkable similarity to the momentary ‘nakedness’ of other modern bodies caught up in the rapidly globalizing and pluralized discourses on what is a good life. The second part of the presentation focuses on the cultural formation of the urban middle class. It is a series of portraits of trendsetters in Beijing. Somewhat similar to the rural migrant workers, they are excited by new lifestyles mediated by consumerist magazines and other popular media. They are “naked” in the sense that they are, using Giddens’ terms, constantly de-skilling and re-skilling lifestyle tactics in the quest for, and the reproduction of, identities in an imagined modern/ global /urban community.      Methodologically speaking, this is a visual ethnographic project combining fieldwork and interpretative photography. In order to be more multi-vocal, I invited veteran photographer Ducky Tse to joint the research team. I told Ducky about the research, the background of the informants and my own preliminary thesis. Ducky was free to make his own interpretation in the research sites and was not asked to shoot specific items. After the photo trips, I was presented with “new” images from the field. The lifeworld of the informants were re-interpreted afresh. Unexplored dimensions were re-examined. Some photos were re-taken after discussion. The dialectics between the imagined and visual actuality can enhance multi-vocal interpretation and lessen the illusion of ethnographic authenticity. Against the assumption that visuals are intuitive and less theoretical, Ducky’s photos had actually helped crystallize my theoretical arguments. Since I had immerged into the field for an extended period of time, re-reading the representation of that familiar field through unfamiliar visual means provided me with a critical and analytic distance for more flexible and reflexive theorizing. Group photos: Year 1 Students Year 2 Students Year 3 Students