Producing new farmers in Chinese rural live E-commerce: platformization, labor, and live E-commerce sellers in Huaiyang

Abstract

This research examines the complex labor practices of live e-commerce sellers in rural China. Migrant workers are being drawn back to their rural homes by the techno-entrepreneurial prospects of live e-commerce being used as part of the “new farmers” branding. We examine how livestreaming platforms transform the labor process of rural produce sellers, zooming in on the physical work and transactional labor involved in the process of platformization. Analysis of the “new farmer” online workflow reveals not only insights into the economic logics of platformized labor but also shows important continuities in terms of sustained economic inequality and the perpetuation of the urban–rural divide. Such analysis prompts questions regarding what political and economic interests scaffold the “new farmer” narrative in contemporary China. How does platform capitalism reinvent itself in rural China, more specifically, through the agentic practices of Chinese rural live e-commerce practitioners? We conclude that platformization reproduces, rather than subverts, the subjectivities of e-commerce sellers and the power structures in which they are cemented.