Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China (Information Revolution and Global Politics)
"Contrary to many Information Age pundits and prognosticators, the working class continues to exist; indeed, in contemporary China, it is being reinvented on a gigantic scale and in a new historical form. ICTs, as Jack Linchuan Qiu shows, constitute a vital and fascinating component of this crucial process. Those who assert that class realities have nothing to do with cellphones and Internet services - and vice versa - will have to think again."--Dan Schiller, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana"Jack Linchuan Qiu has written the most insightful, empirically-grounded account to-date of the social role that the Internet and related information and communication technologies have played in the course of China's rapid economic development. Anyone with an interest in the social and economic implications of the Internet in developing economies -- whose citizens make up half of today's Internet users -- should read this book." --William H. Dutton, Director, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford(William Dutton)"[A] fascinating picture of a hitherto almost unknown phenomenon." --Jens Damm,The China Journal"Jack Linchuan Qiu has written the most insightful, empirically grounded account to date of the social role that the Internet and related information and communication technologies have played in the course of China's rapid economic development. Anyone with an interest in the social and economic implications of the Internet in developing economies -- whose citizens make up half of today's Internet users -- should read this book."William H. Dutton, Director, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford