A reconsideration of the meaning of “digital” in light of China's distinct technological trajectory. 

Understanding China through Digital Anthropology questions our understanding of digital technologies by demonstrating fundamental differences in the meaning of both technology and the digital between China and the West. This follows from a longstanding historical divergence in the meaning of and attitude towards the relationship between technology and humanity. The book includes coverage of a considerable body of scholarship on digital anthropology previously only published in Chinese. 

Daniel Miller is professor of anthropology at University College London (UCL). He previously led the “Why We Post” project on the use and consequences of social media and the Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing project on smartphone use amongst older people. Xinyuan Wang is a research fellow at the Centre for Digital Anthropology at UCL. She is the author of Social Media in Industrial China and Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China.

List of figures
List of contributors
Editorial note

Introduction
Daniel Miller and Xinyuan Wang

1 Normativity in/with period-tracking apps: the normal body and sexual morality
Xiaolin Li

2 Normativity through social media: an exploration of Enshiness in posts
Kunyu Xiang

3 Networks that transform structure: the impact of digital technologies on the matsutake trade of the Shangri-La region of southwest China
Chun Liu

4 Doing social e-commerce: Chinese grass-roots women and their search for a better life
Haichao Wang

5 Rethinking data in healthcare: data work in an elderly care institute in Shanghai
Xinyuan Wang and Yuling Sun

6 From Hunan TV to Mango Supermedia: building futures and pasts
Xinru Li

7 The ghosts inside the algorithmic recommendation system
Ken Zheng

8 Digital anthropology studies in China: a literature review
Chuyao Lai, Guangxu Ji, Linliang Qian, Lingyu Zhou, Shiyu Lu, Xinru Sun, Xinyuan Wang, Yong Hu and Zeqi Qiu

Conclusion
Daniel Miller and Xinyuan Wang

Index