The Art of Performing Affectation: Manufacturing and Branding an Enterprising Self by Chinese E-Commerce Traders

ABSTRACT

Professional training in self-branding in Western societies usually emphasises the need for authentic self-representation and individual uniqueness. This study explores an equivalent practice in contemporary China called zhuangbi. Although it also invokes a sense of self-enterprise, this practice is openly presented as including pretence or exaggeration, which is why I translate it as “performing affectation”. Chinese e-traders are categorised by the public and themselves as professional zhuangbi performers. The practice works, I argue, as a technology for the e-traders to refashion themselves into enterprising subjects who embody certain dispositions that may establish their status in the Chinese business world. These dispositions, basically concerning how to behave as successful modern internet entrepreneurs, include the appropriate ways to earn or sustain economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. As influenced by Chinese cultural traditions, e-traders often perform affectation in a homogeneous form, which reflects that they have experienced only partial individualisation. By examining how they generate different forms of capital to build their self-enterprises, this article also shows that the flow of different forms of capital can sometimes transcend class boundaries and that lower classes may also contribute to the construction and diffusion of certain types of cultural and symbolic capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-branding
• enterprising self
• entrepreneurship
• market economy
• individualisation
• China

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Luigi Tomba, Jonathan Unger, Sally Sargeson, Xuan Dong, Yayun Zhu and two anonymous reviewers for Asian Studies Review for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. I would like to thank one ASR reviewer for suggesting that this everyday performance of affectation can also be understood as a type of affective labour. E-traders perform this labour to affect both their audience for self-promotion and themselves for constructing an enterprising self. This labour may further produce a contagious effect, helping the disposition of zhuangbi to circulate broadly in and beyond the e-commerce world. In this sense, individual adoption and circulation of zhuangbi practices may provide another example of how affect or emotion is integrated into the larger socioeconomic process (Yang, 2014; 2015).

2. The state still plays an important role in fostering e-commerce development in China and shaping Chinese people’s perceptions of the e-commerce industry, as well as the e-platform giants (Yu, 2017; Zhang, 2020).

3. Wealth and fame have long been regarded by the Chinese as collective representations of individual achievement, and young people are often motivated to achieve these not only for themselves but for the collectives to which they belong, such as families, local communities and the nation. Accordingly, Chinese people are said to be more collective-oriented in achievement motivation than their more individual-oriented Western counterparts (Yu, 1996). Although the younger generation is beginning to consider their subjective well-being as part of individual success, they may still care about their families. As anthropologist Charles Stafford (2015) suggests, the well-being of one’s family is itself a part of Chinese people’s pursuit of individual happiness.

4. WeChat is the most popular messaging and social media app in China today, developed by Tencent. Users can use it to communicate with each other individually or in a group chat. Its Moments imitate Facebook Moments and allow users to post text and images. Since 2013, some people have used it for business.

5. It is worth noting that my informants adopted the term renmai more often than guanxi, although both words refer to interpersonal connections. This choice may be because renmai is a more positive concept in Chinese sociocultural contexts, while guanxi has been stigmatised, as Yang (2002) argued.

6. Alibaba has an online system for e-traders to apply for a quota. This selection is based on a full examination of individual e-shops’ rankings, sales volumes, customer reviews and many other factors. To make selections, Alibaba does not charge any fee from e-traders. But Qin’s quotas were for sale and some e-traders believed that Qin and the Alibaba employee who gave him the quotas were working together.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by a project of the Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province, the People’s Republic of China, entitled “A Study of Chinese E-Commerce Traders’ Laboring Experience and Lifestyle” (19SHC005).