Reconfiguring the boundaries of self and state in the PRC: Metaverse, Social Credit, and Ethnicity

重新配置中华人民共和国的自我和国家边界：元宇宙、社会信用和种族

• 批准号: 2742805
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Brunel University London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2742805
• 关键词: Reconfiguring; boundaries; self; state; PRC

China is already the world's most deeply integrated and technologically advanced society. The citizen's identity and agencyare coded about a singular government-issued ID. This then ties to everything from one's bank account and social creditscore to one's messaging and social media profiles and so reconfigures the boundary of what we might consider the'person'. In the purest sense, this is the definition of 'metaverse': a virtual realm mapped onto quotidian reality, from which'legitimate operators' can move seamlessly back and forth. Continuing my masters research into the Chinese metaversewith those at its limits in Hong Kong and Taiwan, I plan to show how the unique perspective of the Tujia minority providesan ideal delimitation within which to chart the boundaries of the cybernetic human in China today, and so present onepossible future for the internet globally.The Tujia are greatly understudied. Millions live within the vicinity of Chongqing, arguably China's largest, leastwesternised,and yet most technologically advanced megacity. There has been no community ethnography of the Tujia inChongqing, and no studies into how they have been affected by rapid sociotechnological changes, such as the recentroll-out of 5G, soon to be felt everywhere.Given the rising tides of nationalism in the PRC and their intersection with rapid urbanisation, new media, and thedeethnicisation of public discourse, I ask how does Tujia ethnicity modulate the interface of selfhood with the state? Giventhe prime role played by AI and algorithmic logic in China's technocracy, how do new technologies further mediate thisprocess? Using online and offline participant observation, semi-structured interviews, network-mapping, and linguistic GISdata, I will build upon the theoretical concept of 'cybernesis' that I have developed through my previous research to explainhow sociotechnological evolution reconfigures the boundaries of self and state.

中国已经是世界上一体化程度最深、技术最先进的社会。公民的身份和机构均通过政府颁发的唯一身份证件进行编码。然后，这与从一个人的银行账户和社会信用评分到一个人的消息传递和社交媒体资料的所有内容相关联，从而重新配置了我们可能认为的“人”的边界。从最纯粹的意义上来说，这就是“元宇宙”的定义：映射到日常现实的虚拟领域，“合法操作者”可以在其中无缝地来回移动。继续我对中国元宇宙及其在香港和台湾的限制的硕士研究，我计划展示土家族的独特视角如何提供一个理想的界限，在其中绘制当今中国控制论人类的边界，从而为全球互联网呈现一个可能的未来。土家族的研究还很不足。数百万人居住在重庆附近，可以说，重庆是中国最大、西化程度最低、但技术最先进的特大城市。目前还没有关于重庆土家族的社区民族志研究，也没有研究他们如何受到快速的社会技术变革的影响，例如最近推出的5G，很快就会随处可见。考虑到中国民族主义的高涨及其与快速城市化、新媒体和公共话语去民族化的交叉，我想问土家族如何调节自我与国家的界面？鉴于人工智能和算法逻辑在中国技术统治中发挥的主要作用，新技术如何进一步调解这一过程？我将利用线上和线下的参与观察、半结构化访谈、网络制图和语言地理信息系统数据，以我之前的研究中发展起来的“控制论”理论概念为基础，解释社会技术进化如何重新配置​​自我和国家的边界​​。