[ecrea] CFP China Perspectives: "Grassroots makers of China's e-commerce miracle"

<http://www.cefc.com.hk/china-perspectives/submissions/appels-contribution/><http://www.cefc.com.hk/china-perspectives/submissions/appels-contribution/>www.cefc.com.hk/china-perspectives/submissions/appels-contribution/ 

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   CALL FOR PAPERS


       *Special Feature** on “*Grassroots makers of China’s e-commerce
       miracle”**


*Deadline** for proposals: 10** December 2016*

*Guest-edited by Dr Haiqing Yu, The University of New South Wales, 
Australia.*

*Contact: (h.yu /at/ unsw.edu.au) <mailto:(h.yu /at/ unsw.edu.au)>*

China has become the world’s largest e-commerce market almost overnight. 
It has witnessed a powerful shift away from buying and selling at 
traditional brick-and-mortar stores to C2C, B2C, B2B, and O2O 
e-commerce, driven by the diffusion of broadband and smartphone adoption 
in the country. The record-breaking IPO of China’s leading e-commerce 
giant Alibaba on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 is a recognition of 
the coming of age of the world’s largest e-commerce market. China’s 
e-commerce market is huge and diversified. It is common knowledge that 
China is home to the word’s largest and most prolific online shoppers 
and retailers, and that e-commerce trade has soared and remained 
resilient despite an economic slowdown. While online sales and shopping 
continue to grow—not only among the middle and upper middle class and 
affluent households in metropolitan centers but also among hundreds of 
millions of people in less-developed areas (small cities, towns and 
villages), scholarship on China’s e-commerce miracle also increases, 
with a focus on big players, market and consumer analysis, and 
structural and legal issues, often from disciplines in various business 
and law schools.

China’s e-commerce miracle, however, does not only rest on the shoulders 
of big players like Taobao, Tmall, Jingdong, Suning, and a string of 
other established companies. It is also made up by numerous smaller and 
obscure players, such as programmers, e-tailers, designers, and 
resellers. The smaller and less obvious players are often overshadowed 
and pushed to the background by bandwagon leaders, and their roles and 
agencies overlooked in the macro analysis of China’s e-commerce market.

This special issue calls for a paradigmatic shift from the “big guys” 
and the glamorous to smaller players and makers, the mundane and even 
dubious figures and features of China’s e-commerce miracle; from a focus 
on institutions, policies, processes, and efficiency to human agency, 
social impact, and power structure. It seeks to develop a greater 
understanding of the social and cultural implications of e-commerce on 
people of diversified backgrounds in relation to the development, 
management, use, and appropriation of digital communication and 
information technologies and systems for economic purposes.

The special issue invites scholars and students from a polyphonic 
spectrum of disciplines and perspectives across humanities, social 
sciences, and information systems to contribute to a rethinking of 
commercial activities as vehicles to highlight human agency and 
diversity in China’s transformations. It is expected that authors will 
not only provide empirical studies of particular grassroots players or 
makers of China’s e-commerce industry, but also critically discuss their 
role and agency in negotiating the complicated network of power and 
knowledge to create a politics of difference in their daily lives. The 
special issue will redefine the “who” of e-commerce as an unlikely 
collection of unimagined individuals and underrepresented groups; the 
“what” of e-commerce as measured by its social and cultural impact not 
its volume of business and transaction; and the “how” of e-commerce in 
terms of the implication and impact of those grassroots makers’ 
strategies for survival on the precarious condition of human diversity 
in China, along such lines as gender, sexuality, class, age, region, 
religion, ethnicity, and disability.

*The grassroots makers of China’s e-commerce industry may include, but 
are not limited to:*

   * techno-geeks, programmers, mobile app developers
   * web retailers, Taobao shop owners and operators, grassroots
     entrepreneurs
   * daigou (resellers of foreign products)
   * wanghong (web celebrities) and Taobao daren (talents)
   * startup incubators
   * micro-financers
   * web designers
   * customer service providers and subcontractors
   * niche/smaller logistics and supply chain operators

*Format** of submissions*

   * Full name, title and institutional affiliation
     Contact details
     500-word abstract ; 100-word author bio
   * Submissions must be sent to (h.yu /at/ unsw.edu.au) 
<mailto:(h.yu /at/ unsw.edu.au)>.
   * Upon acceptation, full papers of 8,000 words shall be written
     according to /China Perspectives/‘ Style Guide, available here
     <http://www.cefc.com.hk/china-perspectives/submissions/style-guide/>.

*Timeline*

   * 10 December 2016: Abstract submission deadline. Please send a
     500-word abstract and 100-word author bio to the guest editor Dr
     Haiqing Yu ((yu /at/ unsw.edu.au) <mailto:(h.yu /at/ unsw.edu.au)>).
   * Invitation to submit full papers: by 31 January 2017
   * Full paper submission: by 1 June 2017; no more than 8,000 words
     (style guide here
     <http://www.cefc.com.hk/china-perspectives/submissions/style-guide/>)
   * Final decisions on acceptance: by 1 November 2017
   * Early submissions are welcome and will be put into the review
     process as they arrive.
   *

     All full papers will need to pass the double blind peer-review
     process. Final acceptance of papers cannot be confirmed until their
     validation by both peer-reviewers and the editorial committee.



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