About the Research

My PhD dissertation examines the relation between the ideas of ‘underground’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ in Shanghai’s cultural worlds of clubbing, drag, and indie. These spaces of production and consumption of global cultural styles are exclusive to a select group of affluent, educated, and well-travelled local Chinese and (mostly Euro-American) international participants, who construe their cultural practices as ‘underground’. It attempts to answer the question, “How do participants in Shanghai’s clubbing, drag and indie cultures relate to Shanghai and the world through their understandings and constructions of ‘underground’?”