Since the start of China's urbanization and industrialization process in mid-1980s,the rural to urban migration has broken the comparatively homogeneous and stable social and cultural structure that supported by thousands of years of traditional rural civilization and contemporary rural-urban dual hukou system of household registration established in 1958.New cultural communities of new urban migrants have arisen in urban China society.The Pearl River Delta became one of the earliest regions in China to implement urbanization that attracted workers from all over China,and also the severest region where cultural conflict and transformation took place.Thus the region is also the place where Dagong Literature,or Labour Literature,was born.The urban migrant writers who are called Dagong writers,bring new urban migrant culture into cities of this region.The rise of urban migrant writers and their cultural identitity construction process through cultural conflicts and new urban experience has changed the cultural sphere and urban aesthetic cultural ecology.However,the fact has been overlooked for two decades in Chinese urban cultural studies.Researchers in contemporary Chinese literature are more concerned with the spirits of literary texts,while pay less attention to the relation between writers' cultural identies and literary creating,and the unique urban cultural ecology behind the texts,because the traditional text analysis and the theory deduction method cannot interpret the entirely new cultural and aethestic activites in contempopary urban culture.

This book examines the urban cultural locale and urban cultural ecology of contemporary literature in the Pearl River Delta from a fresh angle,that of cultural identities of urban migrant writers.My destination is to explore these questions:how urban migrat writers escape from nongmingong identity,and construct their new cultural identies among severe conflicts and dialogue,through literarty writing and imagination,by using urban public cultural sphere and cultural production system?What's the role of urban migrant writers in producing subcultural identical space of urban new migrants?How a variety of factors and cultural powers influence their urban survivals and cultural creation,and what's more,influence their cultural identity construction?By answering those questions we will find the cultural process shrouded by mass media and mainstream imagination,understand deeply the diversity and heterogeneity of contemporary urban culture,and widen the view of urban cultural studies and literary studies;while reveal the subject transition of urban new migrants which present in microcosmic aesthetic area in sharp rural and urban social changes in China,and explore the uniqueness and indigenous experience of urban cultural production.

This research belongs to contemporary urban cultural studies and it is an interdisciplinary creative study based on the development of aesthetics of literature and arts in recent years.Expert for resources of traditional aesthetic theory and contemporary literary studies,this thesis also uses theories and methods from areas of cultural studies communication,sociology,and anthropology.My data is derived from in-depth interviews with nearly twenty urban migrant writers and analysis of the literary texts written by these writers.

My argument is that:the cultural identy of urban migrant writers is a tool for them to fuse into cities and get the urban resources.However,the construction of this identity is through all kinds of these factors:the main imagination of mass media,urban cultural sphere,and aesthetic power,and the process of construction the urban migrant writers themselves by literary production and literary imagination.It is a resistance to cultural identity of nongmingong constructed by mainstream ideology and mass media.

Except for introduction and conclusion,the whole thesis consists of three parts,seven chapters.

Part I Origin

This part consists of Chapter one and Chapter two.Chapter one first examines cultural environment and the orginal identities of urban migrant writers,that is,the imagination of nongmingong community and identities constructed by mainstream ideology through image production of mass media.Urban elites and indigenous people see urban migrants from the images created by mass media and shape their others' identities towards urban migrants,which influence how the urban new migrants look at themselves and shape their cultural identities.Chapter two then analyses the cultural identity crisis which urban new migrants face,and portrays the urban migrant writers cultural community which is born in identity resistance and and breakout.

Part II Becoming

This part consists of Chapter three,Chapter four and Chapter five,and discuss the process of how the urban migrant writers creat new identities by using the public cultural spaces and literature production.Chapter three first outlines the urban migrant writers' life and experiences in the urban villages and describes how urban villages have become urban migrant spaces.Chapter four then discusses how urban migrant writers reconstruct their own cultural identities through writing and creating literary images.Chapter five analyzes the unique literary product system of Dagong Magzines,which creat urban writers from urban workers.At the same time,the mainstream literary community plays an import role in constructing urban migrant writers' cultural identities by naming“Dagong Literature”and“Dagong Writers”.

Part III Disintegration

The part consists of Chapter six and Chapter seven.Chapter six analyzes the disintegration and“death”of the Dagong Magzines,which means,the cultural spaces of identy transformation for urban migrant writers have deceased.Chapter seven discusses the current that the aesthetic power of government accepts urban migrant writers.In order to make a living and gain the resoures of cities,parts of urban migrant writers become part of the mainstream writers.However,the identity of“Dagong”tag makes them different and be discrimi nated by other mainstream writers.Those who refuse to belong to main stream literature group,and the new generation of urban migrant writers,step into a new literary market.

Key words: urban migrant writer;urban new migrant;cultural sphere；cultural identity;aesthetic power;Pearl River Delta