Making a grassroots knowledge economy: Cultural economies and communities of practice in the shanzhai electronics industry

Abstract

This article provides a case study of the shanzhai electronics industry in Shenzhen, China, which specialises in the production of low-cost electronic devices for low-income consumers. Questioning the tendency in geographies of innovation towards conceptualising innovation and creativity as outcomes negotiated exclusively at the production side, this study is interested in how cultural circuits of everyday techno-cultures and the material circuits of production implicate each other. To pursue this theoretical objective, this article employs a cultural economy approach to investigate the everyday material cultures of technology, and the concept of communities of practice to understand shanzhai as a practice-based and goal-oriented process of learning, sustained by a synergy of dispersed material resources and expertises in grassroots production networks. In doing so, the study highlights a culture of innovation focusing on the recombination of existing technologies and expertises, rather than radical breakthrough or original invention. In sum, this study broadens the horizon for a theoretical agenda that investigates the ways in which vernacular cultural knowledge of consumers is translated to knowledge usable and deployable in product development and innovation. It contributes to the geographical literatures on innovation, knowledge and learning in two ways: (1) enriching prevalent research paradigms by bringing production and consumption into a unified analytical framework; and (2) pointing to the necessity of investigating informal and grassroots knowledge economies, while simultaneously disrupting the taken-for-granted association between creativity and a highly talented and educated creative class in urban and regional economies.