Discursive Activism: How Independent Booksellers in China Resist and Exercise Independence

• In Event: Power, Resistance, Professonalism, and Internationalization in China's Media Industries

Abstract

Even in the digital age, institutions like bookshops still play a significant role in the intellectual, public and political life of society. The rise of online booksellers like Amazon may have changed the ways in which physical booksellers play such role, bookshops as important social and public institutions, however, remain pertinent to social progress and public good. Researchers have found that independent booksellers in Western liberal democracies have a long history of participating in and promoting progressive social, literary or political movements and collective action of various kinds. Little, however, is known about the relationship between booksellers and activism in societies of an authoritarian nature. This paper fills this gap by examining how independent booksellers in China engage in 'activism'. It argues that while the government's surveillance and control in the book industry prevents the independents from performing action-based activism, through the activities of selecting books and decorating stores, independent booksellers can exercise text-based, or discursive, resistance/activism on a day-to-day basis.

Author

• Zheng Liu, U of Cambridge