global voices, one world

Sunny Lam thinks that ICTs can be used as a way of strengthening familial solidarity. He brings us this paper based several post-1978 economic reforms, including the “four modernizations” which led to enterprise reform and loose hukou zhidu, education system reform (1977), and China’s one-child policy (since 1979).

He wonders whether ICTs as new channels for communication can help establish what he calls a “translocal familial solidarity” between generations, especially as young family members become more socially and spatially mobile.  He also wants to know whether ICT models can tackle social tensions within this area.  He pulls from theoretical frameworks and literature on media and migration, “network of solidarity” (Castells), and translocality. We can think of “modernity as motivation,” he tells us, and “translocality mobilizes people to take social action.”

The findings, Sunny tells us, show  a dissolution of traditional family ties in translocal China and the “Chinese singletons” effect of the one-child policy (leading to social pressure from intra-generational competitions, pressure to care for aging parents), but also new channels of communication through mobile phones and the Internet.

The Internet is a highly contextualized and socializable multimedia.  For example, one subject, Sunny explains, can now share her digital photos to her mom.  Susan can choose to communicate to avoid face-to-face interaction.  Intergenerational community is important, too: Susan’s mother can form her own virtual community that can translate to an offline, physical community.

In closing, Sunny reminds us that new ICTs are important for translocal China.  Sunny very much cautions, however, that new ICTS cannot replace face-to-face communication.  But family socialization it can lead to societal sustainable development in collaboration with other solidarities.  He also mentions other social problems and inequalities related to new ICTS: rising costs of education, digital and rural-urban divide, and the collapsing social pension system.

Sunny exhorts us to discern the future via social changes.  He thinks we need to explore the trend from a micro level, and bring in more empirical researches to examine the relationship between modernization and social problems.