European Journal of Cultural Studies

This article sheds light on the intricate relationship between the revival of Hanfu, traditional couture from the Han Dynasty, and rising Chinese nationalism among Chinese youth living in the United Kingdom. Mobilizing the theoretical tool ‘affective economies’, we explore how particular feelings and values are assigned and attached to Hanfu, and thereby circulate among young Chinese migrants. We begin by examining the Hanfu movement to interrogate how Hanfu is reinvented based on a selective historicity of the past, serving as a specific cultural product for China’s rejuvenation. We then move on to analyze a series of in-depth interviews conducted between December 2019 and July 2020. We probe the lived experiences of young Hanfu supporters, who are members of the UK Han Culture Association, and the cultural events organized by the Association, in order to scrutinize the ways Hanfu conjures up an imagined community suffused with nationalism. Drawing upon on the affective economies of Hanfu, we discern the following three key findings: First, we argue that there are both positive and negative affective attachments to Hanfu, such as homesickness, loneliness, alienation, happiness, pride and beauty, which impinge on migrant bodies, assigning values to Hanfu and the Hanfu-related cultural events. Second, we show through the analysis of the fieldwork materials the paradoxical desire for chuguo (going abroad) and huiguo (returning to the nation) in the hearts of the young migrants. Finally, we argue that Hanfu circulates as a ‘mnemonic thing’ that signifies a specific imaginary of Ancient China, where young migrant’s aiguo (love of the nation) sentiments are then ‘stuck’ to this reinvented fashion.

Chen Fan

Penn Tsz Ting Ip

‘When showing Hanfu to foreigners, I feel very proud’: The imagined community and affective economies of Hanfu (Chinese traditional couture) among Chinese migrant youth in the United Kingdom

“向外国人展示汉服时，我感到非常自豪”：在英国的中国移民青年中，汉服（中国传统服饰）的想象共同体与情感经济

This article argues that ‘beauty apps’ are transforming the arena of appearance politics and foregrounds a theoretical architecture for critically understanding them. Informed by a feminist-Foucaultian framework, it argues that beauty apps offer a technology of gender which brings together digital self-monitoring and postfeminist modalities of subjecthood to produce an hitherto unprecedented regulatory gaze upon women, which is marked by the intensification, extensification and psychologization of surveillance. The article is divided into four sections. First, it introduces the literature on digital self-tracking. Second, it sets out our understanding of neoliberalism and postfeminism. Third, it looks at beauty and surveillance, before offering, in the final section, a typology of appearance apps. This is followed by a discussion of the modes of address/authority deployed in these apps – especially what we call ‘surveillant sisterhood’ – and the kinds of entrepreneurial subjectivity they constitute. The article seeks to make a contribution to feminist surveillance studies and argues that much more detailed research is needed to critically examine beauty apps.

Ana Sofia Elias

Rosalind Gill

Beauty surveillance: The digital self-monitoring cultures of neoliberalism

美丽监控：新自由主义的数字自我监控文化

Danmei culture, a Chinese literary genre that foregrounds male–male romances and/or erotica, has received significant attention in academia. Studies have investigated how it enables women to resist heteronormativity or forms the escapist route for women to express their desires. Danmei culture has evolved into a transmedia landscape and cultural industry, exploited by the logic of capital. However, to date, danmei writers have not been considered as affective laborers living with precariousness in the cultural industry. Drawing on data from interviews with danmei writers foregrounding the datafication of qing (affects and desires), this article examines the writers’ ambivalent affective labor. The findings illustrate the emergence of an increasingly formulaic writing: by searching, selecting, appropriating, and combining elements from the qing database, danmei writers generate a male homoerotic love story that invokes readers’ affects and desires for better monetization. Pleasure and pain mingle, consolidating the precariousness of the labor. However, affects and desires cannot be fully manipulated, for qing embodies transformative momentum.

Liang Ge

Ambivalent affective labor: The datafication of qing and danmei writers in the cultural industry

矛盾的情感劳动：文化产业中情与耽美作家的数据化

Moulay Driss El Maarouf

Book review: Cristina Moreno-Almeida, Memes, Monsters, and the Digital Grotesque

书评：克里斯蒂娜·莫雷诺-阿尔梅达，《模因、怪物与数字怪诞》

This contribution discusses what we term the globalization of difference: the fluency with which subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix move between different cultural universes while remaining a distinctive point of anchorage for (local) audiences. We argue that, in the streaming era, the use of diversity and the emphasis on categories of differences has become an aspect of conspicuous localism, a way of articulating a strong sense of local authenticity with a cosmopolitan outlook on the world. Therefore, this contribution explores how global narratives around diversity—gender and sexuality in particular—are tailored to local contexts and audiences. Based on a textual analysis of three Netflix teen original series, we highlight how, as subscription video-on-demand service such as Netflix balance global dimension with local ambitions, cultural diversity becomes a key tool of transnational expansion, supporting the transnational circulation of texts while appealing to the distinct concerns and preferences of local audiences.

Axelle Asmar

Tim Raats

Leo Van Audenhove

Netflix teen series and the globalization of difference

Netflix青少年系列剧与差异的全球化

Haifa Souilmi

Book Review: Mohamed Zayani and Joe F Khalil, The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East

书评：穆罕默德·扎亚尼和乔·F·哈利勒，《数字双重困境：中东的变革与停滞》

This article examines the film Barbie as an embodiment of the ambivalence of Western popular feminism. The article argues that Barbie demonstrates two forms of ambivalence – performative resistance and aestheticized conflicts. Defining performative resistance as the tendency of cultural products to articulate progressive ideas while integrating oppressive ideologies into their world-building and diegesis, the article focuses on three aspects of performative resistance demonstrated in the film: its simultaneous celebration and critique of consumerism and normative feminine beauty, its ambivalent attitude toward the patriarchal logic of domination and its inclusion of people with disabilities and people of color as part of its ableist and postracial ideologies, showing that the film’s progressive statements often conceal its incorporation of oppressive ideologies. Defining aestheticized conflicts as cultural products’ representation of conflicts and power struggles in a pleasing and appealing manner to create a happy and harmonious atmosphere, the article examines the aestheticization of diegetic conflicts between Barbies and Kens, among Kens, between capitalists and consumers, and between capitalists and workers, finding that the film’s exposure of conflicts paradoxically contributes to their weakening, and downplays both gender and class conflicts. Through a textual and critical discourse analysis of Barbie, the article hopes to show that regressive elements in Western popular feminist discourses can be intimately intertwined with progressive ideas and often reinforce, reproduce and perpetuate themselves by masquerading as progressive, suggesting that Western popular feminism may be entering a new phase in which structural problems are increasingly obscured by their exposure.

Qianqian Li

Performative resistance and aestheticized conflicts: Barbie’s ambivalent feminist practice

表演性抵抗与审美化冲突：《芭比》的矛盾女性主义实践

Researchers have begun to focus on the esports player community and suggest that governments and industries take external means to address the difficulties of players. In contrast, this study investigated the subjectivity of professional players and technologies of the self in neoliberal esports. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with active and retired Chinese esports players, we found that esports players typically employ three self-technologies when facing challenges, namely practices of (fluctuating) confidence, (cruel) optimism and (limited) effort. These technologies construct players’ autonomy and legitimacy but can result in self-deception. We suggest that the self-technologies of esports players and the remote governance of China’s sports sector are two different perspectives on the same situation. Finally, we argue that exploring China’s esports industry can also promote understanding of the nature of Chinese neoliberalism.

Zhongxuan Lin

Yifan Zhong

Yupei Zhao

Technologies of the self(-deception): Confidence, optimism and effort of Chinese esports players

自我（欺骗）技术：中国电竞选手的信心、乐观与努力

Abbreviation	Eur. J. Cult. Stud.
Journal Impact	2.01
Quartiles(Global)	CULTURAL STUDIES(Q1)

ISSN	1367-5494, 1460-3551
h-index	56

Publication Information	Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 1998，Proportion of original research papers: 96.30%，Self Citation Rate:5.30%， Gold OA Rate: 48.18%

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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‘When showing Hanfu to foreigners, I feel very proud’: The imagined community and affective economies of Hanfu (Chinese traditional couture) among Chinese migrant youth in the United Kingdom

Beauty surveillance: The digital self-monitoring cultures of neoliberalism

Ambivalent affective labor: The datafication of qing and danmei writers in the cultural industry

Book review: Cristina Moreno-Almeida, Memes, Monsters, and the Digital Grotesque

Netflix teen series and the globalization of difference

Book Review: Mohamed Zayani and Joe F Khalil, The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East

Netflix teen series and the globalization of difference

Performative resistance and aestheticized conflicts: Barbie’s ambivalent feminist practice

Book review: Cristina Moreno-Almeida, Memes, Monsters, and the Digital Grotesque

Technologies of the self(-deception): Confidence, optimism and effort of Chinese esports players