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

Working-Class Network Society provides an in-depth case study within the framework of the Networked Society identified by Manuel Castells. As Castells’ exstudent, Jack Linchuan Qiu “analyzes the specificity of the network society in China and proposes the concept of working-class network society” (1. X). The significance of the study is not only on the context itself as China is a manufacturing powerhouse in the world, but also on providing insights on the formulation of a working class network society—the incorporation of information and knowledge into the labor force, which forms a new type of working class called “Information Have-Less” in the information age. The book consists of three parts with eight chapters. Part I “Networks Materialized” starts from an introduction summarizing the author’s main arguments and findings. Chapter Two and Chapter Three reveal the developmental trajectory of information and communication technologies (ICT), cybercafés and wireless phones in particular, in urban China and discusses ICT’s role in grassroots network formation. Because the Internet and mobile phones are inexpensive and easy to access while being powerful in communication, low-end ICT technology has made incredible contributions to the emergence of a new working class or “network labor” since the 2000s. Both chapters focus on the means and the technologies in today’s network society in the Chinese context. Chapters Four and Five of Part II “The People of Have-Less” then switch to the low-end-tech users—various groups of the information have-less encompassing a large proportion of the 147 million rural-urban migrants, more than 30 million laid-off workers, 100 million retirees, and a large number of the 189 million youth including students. The book addresses the needs of and access to information of these low-end ICT users and service providers, and emphasizes that their mobility within and between cities is the main factor to booming lowend ICT use. Qiu brings class back into the concept of network society by stating that for the have-less, the process of network-making is at the same time a process of the ICT-based class formation as ICT is no longer just for the elite but a daily tool for the Have-Less class. As a planner, what I am interested in most is Part III “Working Class in the Making” in which the author discusses how Have-Less people and their technologies come together to produce concrete urban places. Working-class communities Journal of Urban Technology, Vol. 17, No. 3, December 2010, 83–86