I just found out that I have received a Fulbright! 

My proposal, Chinese Migrants Families in the Information Age: Intensive Technology and Digital Urbanism. has been approved for funding by the Chinese and US government for research!

The Fulbright require that researchers remain in the host country for at least 10 months. So I’ll be moving to  Wuhan, China next March to conduct fieldwork for 1 year. These long-term research grants are truly the research ethnographer’s dream; it’s a luxury to do really in-depth fieldwork and to be funded to do it.  Surveys and brief visits can give you insight into daily life, but relying soley on those methods does not get at the depth of everyday life and the processes that people are dealing with. 

So I’ll be looking at the socio-digital space for new ICT users in Wuhan. I’ll be asking how migrant families are appropriating new ICTs and how their ICT practices reflects the ways in which they are settling in to the city and making sense of the socio-economic changes in their lives. While most research on migrants have focused mostly on single or coupled migrants who intended to eventually return to their village, I see  a new wave of human mobility within China that points to migrants who move to the city as a family and who intend to stay in the city as a family. This new wave of migration is taking place in 2nd and 3rd tier cities (like Wuhan) that aren’t just economically open to migrants, but also socially and politically. I believe these understudied 2nd and 3rd tier cities are important sites of observation because not only are these cities projected to contain 75% of the growth in wealthiest families, they are also going to be sites of social transformations in China. 

I’ll write another more about my research in another post. I have some stuff up online on the research section of my website, but I’ve already been reformulating my research questions as I’ve learned so much more about what kinds of research is more valuable to industries and those outside of academia after these few months of researching at Nokia. 

Are you going to be in China in 2011? If so, let’s hang out!  I’m leaving in March 2011 for Wuhan and I am hoping to go to CSCW2011 in Hangzhou, China which also takes place in March. 

THANK YOUS! I could not have gotten this grant without the support of my amazing dissertation committee (Jim Hollan, Richard Madsen, Barry Naughton, Christena Turner, April Linton, and Barry Brown). All my fieldwork experience and design technology workshop trials in Mexico with Barry Brown has prepared me to think about my work in China in a totally different light. Christena Turner worked with my grant and personal statement down to the last revisions, offering her brilliant insights and making sure that I included all the details about my own work that I had forgetten. Richard Madsen is the best dissertation chair any graduate student could have. Kenyatta Cheese provided so much help in making sure that I presented my work in non-academic terms. And Linda Vong, UCSD grant expert and Fulbright representative provided tons of insights into the selection process. Thanks Seiko for letting me read your Fulbright grant, and thanks to Melissa Rock and Marcella Szablewicz for giving me tips on the new abstract. Without Jinge as my research sidekick in China, I would’ve never ended up in Wuhan.  Thanks for the grant support from Nokia Research Center so that I can hire a research assistant and increase my scope of analysis!  Leah Muse-Orlinoff you rock for being a great friend and the best graduate school sidekick! And thanks to Manny de la Paz and the entire UCSD Sociology staff for their continued support! 

WAITING HELL: Oh and I must say that this was one of the most excruciating grant wait times I have ever had to suffer! Even though most of the Fulbright application process has been administered online, the notification letter was sent out via regular mail through the USPS. The letter was sent from the UN building in NY. But I had forwarded my mail from NYC to Palo Alto because I moved here to work at Nokia. While everyone else was getting their rejection or acceptance letters  I was trying not to obsess over the daily mail! I seriously was getting panic attacks as I was waiting everyday in limbo for what my next 2 years would look like while everyone else had already received their rejection or acceptance letters. I am so happy to not wake up with a 100 pound weight on my chest in the mornings.  If you are considering to apply for the Fulbright, I’m more than happy to share my experiences about the application process, especially for putting in a proposal about technology usage. I found it really difficult to access info online and to talk with people who had been through this process, and that shouldn’t be the case. Sharing is excellent. 

Bio-Sense has created a collar to respond to a universal alarm bark that dogs make when they are in a threatening situation. So the way it works is that when the dog makes an alarm bark the collar sends a SMS to the owner! Welcome to the world of doggy cellphones!

Ok this news may not seem relevant to Cultural Bytes but there are two very important reasons why I am writing this post:

REASON #1 - I want to conduct doggy human ethnography - please please will someone with a dog volunteer to pilot this technology! I want to know the doggy and the owner that tries this out - and then I would love to interview you - and then I would love to come and watch your doggy and you interact with the doggy collar! This is my dream ethnography project - watching technology interaction and emotional communication among doggies and humans! Bio-Sense if you read this - hire me as your US ethnographer - this is a dream job! I can help you better understand how doggies and humans use your technology to ensure a successful uptake of your product in the US market.

REASON #2 - Bio-Sense’s Electroic Doggy Collar Cellphone is the perfect example of a culturally relevent technology. Bio-sense receives the Cultural Bytes Relevant Technology Award! Eyal Zehavi, Founder and CEO of Bio-Sense Technology in TelAviv Israel spoke to NPR’s on their audio segment, From Genes To Growls, Decoding The Modern Dog. Eyal explained that the cellphone application and product, Tele-Dog, to NPR and he specifically said that this product is developed for the “US dog owner market.” This is cultural technology genius because Eyal’s product understands that in the US familial structure, dogs play an important social role - they are seen as an integral part of the family. The well-being of the dog is important to the well-being of the family.

This is great example of understanding the culture of a group/region and then developing relevant technology for this group. For example, Doggy Cellphone would not work well in regions that do not have a familial role for the dog. If you go to Mexico - doggies are everywhere - but they aren’t seen as part of the family. In China - dogs are a new social phenomenon - but I can tell you now that people don’t buy dogs in China to add to their family like in the US. Dog ownership in China iactually is a research topic that interests me and something that i have been watching for the last 5 years everytime i’m in China.

Dogs are the new trend in China. I believe this is because they are adopted as a result of the family vacuume created by the government enforced one-child policy for urban areas. When the only child a family grows up and leaves, all of suddent there is a vacuume of attention that wasn’t there before. Parents have no one to coddle!

I think that there are two different categories of doggy owners in the China. One group consists of parents who have realized that they are lonely because their one child has grown up and left home. The other group consists of parents who have realized that their only child IS lonely. The former group buys a dog to replace the void of their child who has left home. The latter group buys a dog to replace the role of a sibling were it not for the one-child policy. Both groups use the dog as a filler, not as a supplement.

Therefore the dog is bought as a replacement, not as an addition to the family. The group that buys dogs to replace the child who has left home tends to overly pamper the dog becaue they have the time to do this.The group that buys the dog to fill in the extra-sibling role tends to ignore the dog. In this group, parents buy the dog simply to make their one child happy and they tell the child that it is their responsibility. As a result, many of times, doggies are left along most of the time and are really lonely because both of the parents are still working and the child is in school 12 hours a day (Chinese school day is long and hard!).

Doggies fill a social void in China - the void of loneliness for parents when their one child has left home or for children who have no brothers and sisters. Therefore the Doggy Cellphone as it is being marketed right now as a security device and as a way to for families to feel secure about the well being of their dog would not work in China. The well-being of the dog is not associated with the well-being of the family.

ok Bio-Sense - congrats for entering the US Market - and thanks for giving me a reason to write about doggies!

(Thanks Tanya Menendez for this post!)