Time: Monday May 13, 10:30-11:30 AM BJT

Location: AB 3107

Guest Speaker: Svetlana Kharchenkova, Assistant Professor in Sociology of China, Leiden University

Abstract

When cultural products travel across borders, they can be localized to better respond to the expectations, needs, and tastes of local consumers, often through creating “hybrid” cultural products. This talk discusses localization through the case of “reading guides” (导读), which are added to foreign children’s picture books in the Chinese market. Relying on in-depth interviews with book editors and literary agents and extensive fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai in 2023-2024, the paper investigates why they accompany books in China despite being absent in the original versions. I will show that in this case localization involves educating parents how to use and understand the books as they are, rather than adjusting their content. While this suggests homogenization, the reading guides also imply heterogenization, as they respond to perceived needs of local consumers. This paper contributes to sociological research of cultural globalization as it complicates the homogenization/heterogenization dichotomy.

Bio

Svetlana Kharchenkova is Assistant Professor in sociology of China at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her research interests are at the intersection of cultural sociology, economic sociology and contemporary China. She has investigated mechanisms of market emergence, valuation, and globalization of cultural products and institutions. Empirically, her research has focused on contemporary art and book publishing markets in contemporary China. Her work has been published in Socio-Economic Review, Poetics, European Journal of Cultural Studies and China Quarterly, among other outlets.