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Theme: 5. Transmitting Knowledges: Institutions, Objects and Practices
Tommy Tse
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tommy Tse
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tommy Tse
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Rishuai Chen
African Studies Centre Leiden, Netherlands
Wei Wang
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Shengjun Jin
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Qidi Feng
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
The surge of China’s global power has caught the interest of the general public. The nation’s cultural and creative industries (CCI) have been at the top of the Chinese government’s strategic development agenda to export its cultural power to the world. As part of CCI, fashion is recognised as a significant cultural and economic force globally. Besides, with the economic development in various African countries and the growth of China-Africa international trade, there is a new model of informal linkages between the Global South that remain un-influenced by the West, along which fashion travels directly between “peripheries.” Our project “China Africa Fashion Power” asks: How is China’s global power exercised and negotiated through the Chinese-African networks and social interactions involved in the production, trade, retailing and consumption of ordinary fashion, and what are the entailed meanings and forms of creativity, authenticity, cultural mediation, and consumer agency? This European Research Council-funded project tries to present a theoretical case distinct from the existing literature of fashion studies that remains ethnocentric to the point of systematically ignoring, mistaking, and excluding those fashion circuits and consumption practices of billions of people in the Global South, which do not operate via “the West” or seek legitimacy from it.
Meanwhile, this project will give a detailed account of global China with Africa. The Chinese-African networks became especially relevant to understand global China after 2013, when the Chinese government introduced the contested BRI. In the past years, a frenzy of BRI-related, highly visible Chinese infrastructure and construction projects on the African continent has raised concerns about the influence of China on African governments and economies particularly. Has China successfully become a “neocoloniser” exporting both its cultural and economic power to the world based on the country’s neonationalist, soft power building agenda? Or has China become a white knight who enables South-South cooperation, leading to co-dependent economic growth and cultural exchange and a more egalitarian world? What other impacts has China’s new global power created across the South? Through rethinking the Western-centric theorisations of authenticy, creativity, cultural mediation and consumer agency, we aim to show how China’s power is manifested, negotiated or resisted in people’s daily life in a South-South, cross-national setting with a full analysis of China’s new global power structure and expansion in order to understand its actual economic, political, social, cultural, and affective impacts.
Institutional panel by: Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam
Presenter: Tommy Tse – University of Amsterdam
Presenter: Rishuai Chen – African Studies Centre Leiden
Presenter: Wei Wang – University of Amsterdam
Presenter: Shengjun Jin – University of Amsterdam
Presenter: Qidi Feng – University of Amsterdam