Scaling Chinese Media: A Geographic Turn to Future Research

Abstract

Trained in critical media and cultural studies, and having taught undergraduate courses in media and communication in the tertiary sector in Australia for over a decade, I have always been interested in identifying simple, effective ways of teaching analytical methods and concepts.In this process, I have found cultural theorist Richard Johnson's (1986) notion of the "circuit of culture" useful.His circuit features four dimensions -production, texts, readings, and lived cultures -all of which are articulated in relation to one another, and are subject to conditions of social relations.A decade on from Johnson's schema, a group of cultural studies scholars headed by du Gay and Hall (1997) took on board the circuit of culture, refining it further.The new circuit of culture now features five processes -representation, identity, production, consumption, and regulation -which any analysis of a cultural text or artifact must consider if it is to be adequately studied.These five processes are articulated, forming a linkage whose relationship is variable and contingent, rather than determined or inevitable.Therefore, a concern with one particular process in this "circuit of culture" requires examining all the others in their articulations.As much as I am appreciative of the simplicity and elegance of this model in cultural studies, especially for the purpose of teaching, at the same time (and as a student of the Chinese media, which is arguably one of the most dynamic and fastest-changing fields of study around), I have found the model to be increasingly inadequate.This is because I see the exceptionally large-scale movement of people, capital, technologies, and media images in China as having resulted in an array of reconfigured scales of media production, representation, regulation, and consumption, as well as identify formation.And furthermore, the changing nature of the Chinese state means that, in addition to these factors, one can never comfortably reconcile the relationship between the national interest and various local, provincial interests.This thought piece is driven by a desire to "renovate" this circuit of culture by adding a scaffolding that is structured around, and informed by, a spatial perspective, all in the hope of nuancing each of the five processes, as well as their articulations. A Geographic TurnEconomic reforms over the past three decades have wrought profound social stratification in China, so much so that, in order to fully understand its impact and implications, we have no choice but to

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