Producing Value Out of the Invaluable: A Critical/Cultural Perspective on the Live Streaming Industry in China

This paper extends the critique of informational capitalism to increasingly commercialised cyberspace in China by examining the case of live streaming. Informed by Marxist and neo-Marxist theories, I set out to investigate how live streaming ushers in flexible paid labour online, and how informational capitalism cashes in on users’ affective engagement, locking them into a constant process of value production. Diving into the structure and affordances of live streaming platforms as well as users’ practices, I argue that live streaming in China manifests an emerging trend of capitalist enclosure in cyberspace, which has dire implications for people’s subjectivities and interactions. Three major implications are discussed, namely the reconfiguration of time and space for the production of value; the instrumentalisation of affects, bodies and human interactions; and the erosion of users’ freedom and individuality.

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Religious and Ritual Space in New Media World: A Study of “Internet Zazenkai” in Japan

KnE Social Sciences ◽

10.18502/kss.v3i20.4927 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Duan Yiwen

Keyword(s):

New Media ◽

Modern Society ◽

Virtual Space ◽

The Internet ◽

Live Streaming ◽

Time And Space ◽

Media Technologies ◽

Ritual Space ◽

Soto Zen ◽

New Type

Zazenkai, also known as Zen meditation or Zen Mindfulness, is held in Japan for the general public, usually with time, place and procedures set by a Buddhist Zen Temple. With the emergence of the Internet and new media, several Zen Temples have started to hold Zazenkai by utilizing these media technologies including online live streaming. This new type of Zazenkai is known as Internet Zazenkai. Compared with traditional Zazenkai that are held at a certain time and place, the application of new media enables Internet Zazenkai to go beyond the spatial and temporal limits of nature, where Zen practitioners in different global locations participate together using webcam. Individuals spatially separated from each other could share the same time and space of Zazenkai on the Internet. While the new media technologies open up new opportunities for Zazenkai, they also invite examinations into religious meanings of time and space for Zen practitioners. This paper is based on the study and examination of Internet Zazenkai regularly held by Treeleaf Zendo, a Soto Zen temple in Tsukuba. Its homepage Treeleaf.org is a virtual space where live streaming of Zazenkai is provided, its recorded videos are kept, web podcast of lectures and talks are heard, and so on. By analyzing the techno-ritual phenomenon, this paper attempts to analyze the role of Zen masters and participants in the process of Internet Zazenkai and to examine the differences and similarities between traditional Zazenkai and Internet Zazenkai. This paper will shed new light on the influence of new media upon religious and ritual space in modern society.

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Trunk Calls in Antiquity

Mega Mammals in Ancient India ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190120412.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 239-301

Author(s):

Shibani Bose

Keyword(s):

Time And Space ◽

Human Interactions ◽

Destructive Potential

Scattered across the texts of early India are glimpses embodying diverse facets of human interactions with elephants. Chapter 5, thus, carves out a narrative of the fortunes of the animal within religious and secular traditions separated in time and space. The animal is known for the dexterity of its trunk as well as the phenomenon of musth. Also interspersed are images of the pachyderm in its benevolent as well as malevolent forms. Its might and grandeur is recognized, and so is its destructive potential, suggesting that the elephant is perhaps the best exemplar of a relationship fraught with harmony as well as discord.

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