Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China

An examination of how the availability of low-end information and communication technology has provided a basis for the emergence of a working-class network society in China.

The idea of the "digital divide," the great social division between information haves and have-nots, has dominated policy debates and scholarly analysis since the 1990s. In Working-Class Network Society, Jack Linchuan Qiu describes a more complex social and technological reality in a newly mobile, urbanizing China. Qiu argues that as inexpensive Internet and mobile phone services become available and are closely integrated with the everyday work and life of low-income communities, they provide a critical seedbed for the emergence of a new working class of "network labor" crucial to China's economic boom. Between the haves and have-nots, writes Qiu, are the information "have-less" migrants, laid-off workers, micro-entrepreneurs, retirees, youth, and others, increasingly connected by cybercafés, prepaid service, and used mobile phones. A process of class formation has begun that has important implications for working-class network society in China and beyond. Qiu brings class back into the scholarly discussion, not as a secondary factor but as an essential dimension in our understanding of communication technology as it is shaped in the vast, industrializing society of China. Basing his analysis on his more than five years of empirical research conducted in twenty cities, Qiu examines technology and class, networked connectivity and public policy, in the context of massive urban reforms that affect the new working class disproportionately. The transformation of Chinese society, writes Qiu, is emblematic of the new technosocial reality emerging in much of the Global South.

Jack Linchuan Qiu is Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a coauthor (with Manuel Castells, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, and Araba Sey) of Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective (MIT Press, 2006).

Manuel Castells is Professor of Communication and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, as well as Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, Research Professor at the Open University of Catalonia, and Marvin and Joanne Grossman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at MIT. He is the author of, among other books, the three-volume work The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture.

Jack Linchuan Qiu是香港中文大學新聞與傳播學院的助理教授。他與Manuel Castells、Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol和Araba Sey合著了《Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective》（MIT Press，2006）一書。

Manuel Castells是南加州大學安娜伯格傳播學院的傳播學教授和華利斯·安娜伯格傳播技術與社會講座教授，也是加州大學柏克萊分校的社會學和規劃名譽教授，加泰羅尼亞開放大學的研究教授，以及麻省理工學院的馬文和喬安娜·格羅斯曼科技與社會卓越訪問教授。他是多本書的作者，其中包括三卷本的《The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture》。