The Weight of Utopia: Navigating Digital Lifestyles and Local Livelihoods among Minority Youth in Dali, China
(2026) MKVM13 20261Media and Communication Studies
Department of Communication and Media
- Abstract
- In recent years, the Chinese city of Dali has been intensely romanticised on digital platforms such as Rednote (Xiaohongshu) as a flawless sanctuary of slow living. This digital utopification emerges as a collective response to systemic urban hypercompetition and burnout. Rather than verifying the empirical truth of this destination image, this thesis investigates what utopification actively achieves as a social practice and how it is negotiated by those living within the utopified space. Utilising Ruth Levitas’s framework of utopia as method across its archaeological, ontological, and architectural modes, the research adopts an entangled ethnographic design. It places a curated corpus of platform threads into direct dialogue with offline... (More)
- In recent years, the Chinese city of Dali has been intensely romanticised on digital platforms such as Rednote (Xiaohongshu) as a flawless sanctuary of slow living. This digital utopification emerges as a collective response to systemic urban hypercompetition and burnout. Rather than verifying the empirical truth of this destination image, this thesis investigates what utopification actively achieves as a social practice and how it is negotiated by those living within the utopified space. Utilising Ruth Levitas’s framework of utopia as method across its archaeological, ontological, and architectural modes, the research adopts an entangled ethnographic design. It places a curated corpus of platform threads into direct dialogue with offline fieldwork centering on local ethnic minority Generation Z youth in Dali.
The interwoven analysis reveals a profound contradiction between a frictionless digital script and a friction-laden material reality. Archaeologically, the Dali imaginary powerfully diagnoses contemporary urban deficits, yet geographical relocation fails to dissolve internalised anxieties. Ontologically and architecturally, the platformed liberation of the urban sojourner is structurally underwritten by prior capital accumulation, strict aesthetic discipline, and the invisible maintenance labour of local residents. Furthermore, while the digital narrative instrumentalises local Bai youth as static ethnic backdrops, these individuals actively negotiate and hybridise these imposed identities in their everyday pursuit of economic survival. Ultimately, the thesis argues that the platformed utopia is a highly stratified social achievement. It offers privatised therapeutic relief for mobile urbanites while displacing the burdens of cultural performance and material maintenance onto local communities, thereby leaving the fundamental structural inequalities of the urban present undisturbed. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9229434
- author
- Ran, Jing LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- utopification, platform imaginaries, digital ethnography, lifestyle migration, Chinese youth, contemporary China
- language
- English
- id
- 9229434
- date added to LUP
- 2026-06-17 14:31:35
- date last changed
- 2026-06-17 14:31:35
@misc{9229434,
abstract = {{In recent years, the Chinese city of Dali has been intensely romanticised on digital platforms such as Rednote (Xiaohongshu) as a flawless sanctuary of slow living. This digital utopification emerges as a collective response to systemic urban hypercompetition and burnout. Rather than verifying the empirical truth of this destination image, this thesis investigates what utopification actively achieves as a social practice and how it is negotiated by those living within the utopified space. Utilising Ruth Levitas’s framework of utopia as method across its archaeological, ontological, and architectural modes, the research adopts an entangled ethnographic design. It places a curated corpus of platform threads into direct dialogue with offline fieldwork centering on local ethnic minority Generation Z youth in Dali.
The interwoven analysis reveals a profound contradiction between a frictionless digital script and a friction-laden material reality. Archaeologically, the Dali imaginary powerfully diagnoses contemporary urban deficits, yet geographical relocation fails to dissolve internalised anxieties. Ontologically and architecturally, the platformed liberation of the urban sojourner is structurally underwritten by prior capital accumulation, strict aesthetic discipline, and the invisible maintenance labour of local residents. Furthermore, while the digital narrative instrumentalises local Bai youth as static ethnic backdrops, these individuals actively negotiate and hybridise these imposed identities in their everyday pursuit of economic survival. Ultimately, the thesis argues that the platformed utopia is a highly stratified social achievement. It offers privatised therapeutic relief for mobile urbanites while displacing the burdens of cultural performance and material maintenance onto local communities, thereby leaving the fundamental structural inequalities of the urban present undisturbed.}},
author = {{Ran, Jing}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Weight of Utopia: Navigating Digital Lifestyles and Local Livelihoods among Minority Youth in Dali, China}},
year = {{2026}},
}