Shuang Frost The rise in economic inequality associated with technological displacement is one of the defining issues of our time. Last year the White House reported that recent advances in AI will result in the obsolescence of millions of low and medium-skill jobs and the depression of wages for ordinary workers. This prediction echoes an emerging consensus […]
SEAA Highlights from Cyberspace to Asia
The Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) promotes discussion and shares information on diverse topics related to the anthropology of East Asia broadly conceived. We are committed to developing international channels of communication among anthropologists throughout the world who share an interest in East Asia both as a topic of academic inquiry and as a […]
Japanese Radiation Refugees in Malaysia
Society for East Asian Anthropology Shiori Shakuto Editors’ note: This is the sixth and final piece of the series “In and Out of Japan.” On March 11, 2011, the great Tohoku earthquake shook Japan. A few days later, nuclear reactors on the northeastern coast experienced meltdowns. Since then, a growing number of so-called houshanou nanmin (“radiation refugees”) have […]
Making Money Visible: Digital Money and Financial Precarity amongst Chinese Migrant Workers
Tom McDonald In the summer of 2016, I and my students were in the industrial city of Shenzhen, South East China, conducting a small exploratory study aimed at gaining an overview of migrant factory workers’ attitudes towards digital money platforms. Over two weeks, we had spoken to many migrant factory workers, uncovering a range of […]
Situated Digitalization
Introduction to the Series of “Digital Anthropologies in East Asia” Yi Zhou In 2012, the Google policy analyst Andy Yee claimed that East Asia finally began a second digital revolution which was transforming the region from manufacturing digital hardware to creating digital content and services. According to Yee, this second stage of digitalization was more […]
Digital Outsourcing and Japanese Call Center Workers in Dalian, China
Society for East Asian Anthropology Kumiko Kawashima May 16, 2017 Editors’ note: This is the fifth piece of the series “In and Out of Japan.” In 2003, the first Japanese-staffed call center opened in Dalian, a north-eastern city of six million people dubbed China’s “Green Silicon Valley.” Thousands of Japanese workers have served consumers […]