EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 15 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 183 tivation and management of different aspects of daily life; it involves providing tools for designing plans to putting things in order, and obtaining this goal. Thus, offering individuals the resources for self-governance through mastering techniques to condition, improve, and cultivate the self, reality TV governs from a distance. Its guidelines are practical, everyday technologies of the self. Following De Certeau, I investigate how individuals appropriate these techniques in everyday life. Talking about ‘users’ instead of ‘consumers,’ I show how ordinary Chinese are not mere receivers of televisual messages, but acting agents. Individuals have the power to act, the ‘tactics of consumption\', in environments that are defined by institutional strategies. Ordinary people can enact elements of creative resistance by transforming television into a toolbox of experimentation with different selves. One by-effect of the 超 级女声 (Chaoji nüsheng [Supergirl]) singing contest, was the transformation of winner Li Yuchun into the symbol of LGBT communities around China. Turning to both Supergirl and more contemporary shows, I will show how individuals and communities not only consume, but also appropriate television as a form of creative resistance. Pia Andrea Enrico (London School of Economics and Political Sciences) Fragmented Authoritarianism 3.0: Political Encounters, Engagement and Activism in the Ethnography of Contemporary China Key words: State power, grassroot activism, conflict, authoritarianism, bureaucracy Anthropologists working in China have long been interested in the empirically grounded study of the Chinese state and in the analysis of the effects of its power onto the lives of Chinese citizens. Ethnographic researches in this field have explored the everyday practices and ideals of state workers and the ethics of public services provision. They have addressed the new challenges posed to state power by the exponentially growing numbers of social protest and civil society activism. They have investigated the inception of new forms of public/private partnerships and the subsequent emergence of new modes of govermentality and of subtle forms of indirect state control — what Ong and Li called socialism from afar (2008). Taken together, these contributions cast a new light on the often too simplistic portrayals of state authoritarianism in China and provide new qualitative perspectives on the inner working, the regrouping and the challenges faced today by the Chinese state. Set against this background, this panel welcomes contributions that draw on long-term fieldwork in order to engage with both the grassroots and structural transformations of the Chinese State. To this end, in this panel we wish to dig deeper into the everyday ramifications of state power in contemporary China and into its implications for local notions of citizenship and conflict. We will be particularly interested in con- tributions that address the everyday encounters of common citizens with state agents, their changing knowledge, unstable subjectivities and power practices, and the ways in which these encounters give rise to new interactive ways of performing, engaging with and resisting to the far-from-monolithic entity that is the contemporary Chinese state. On what grounds do ordinary citizens engage with or take on the Chinese States? What new lines of conflict and alternative imaginaries of state power are emerging from these forms of engagement? Saiz Lopez Amelia (Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona) Social Representation of Chinese Migrants in Contemporary Spanish Literature Key words: Chinese diaspora, Chinese in Spain, social representation, cultural production, literature A new cultural diversity has emerged in Spain society since the beginning of the 21th century due to international migration flows. The increase of foreign residents has passed from 3 per cent of the total popu- lation the year 2000 to 11 per cent the year 2014. The visible arrival and settlement of a population with different cultural traditions has changed the fabric of the society, in a process of enrichment and complexity. This phenomenon has drawn the attention of the general cultural production, included the literature creation,