For a Possible Socialist Explication of Digital Labor:An Extended Case Study of E-commerce at Jian-chuan Village
After becoming a hot topic in the academic community,the study of digital labor has fallen into the tri-ple-dilemma of confusing concepts,duplicating analytical frameworks,and inapplicable contextual transplanta-tion.Drawing upon the transcultural political economy of communication framework,this paper conducts an ex-tended case study of the"e-commerce street"in Jianchuan Village,Jinyun County,Zhejiang Province,and finds that,unlike the passive and atomized"digital labor"in the existing literature,the"e-commerce street"consti-tutes rural-returning,active,and collective labor against the logic of global digital capitalism.The paper argues that the discussion of digital labor should engender an alternative explanatory possibility in the context of the sinification of Marxist theory and practice.First of all,this entails the break-down of the"capital-labor"dichoto-my through an engagement with the four major stakeholders of external big capital,local small capital,laborers,as well as national and local party-state authorities.Secondly,without overlooking confrontation,this entails more attention to the cooperation and interdependence among these multiple stakeholders.Finally,it needs to be stressed that the construction of China's autonomous knowledge system on digital labor concerns not only the sinification of the Marxist concept of labor in the new era,but also a conscientious socialist positionality on knowledge production.
digital labore-commerce in rural Chinatranscultural political economy of communicationautono-mous knowledge system
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