Abstract Drawing on third place and mediatization theories, this study examines how cultural practices are reorganized under infrastructural withdrawal in post-industrial China. Through ethnographic fieldwork with a Qinqiang opera troupe in a former danwei mining settlement, it analyzes how the erosion of physical venues and institutional support transforms collective participation. Findings show that cultural practices are reorganized through fragmented digital arrangements—WeChat coordination, platform visibility, livestream interaction, and temporary hybrid spaces. Rather than voluntary adoption, this constitutes involuntary mediatization, where mediation becomes structurally necessary when offline alternatives vanish. The study conceptualizes this as the involuntarily mediatized third place, extending third place theory by showing how sociability reconstitutes through distributed socio-technical infrastructures under withdrawal. It argues that cultural continuity persists not through institutional reproduction, but through fragile, intergenerationally distributed mediation shaped by platform logics and infrastructural dependency.
Abstract This article reflects on Jonathan Sterne’s influence and legacy in media history, focusing particularly on his understanding of history as a mode of theorizing. Drawing on my encounters with Jonathan’s teaching and scholarship during my PhD at McGill, I consider how his historical craft challenged conventional ways of studying media and technology: by reconstructing the objects of historical inquiry, allowing theory to emerge through historical investigation rather than precede it, and attending to the longer historical “currents” through which media forms take shape. Through his work on infrastructures, sound reproduction, formats, and listening, Jonathan showed how historical inquiry could unsettle what appears natural, universal, or inevitable in the present. I argue that this speculative understanding of history as theory remains one of his most important and inspiring legacies for media history.
Abstract The following reflection piece discusses the work and legacy of Jonathan Sterne from the point of view of one his advisees. While it dutifully focuses on Jonathan’s contributions to the field of Sound Studies and on his methods of media history, it also tries, perhaps in vain, to capture a few of the many qualities that made Jonathan such a special, caring and generous mentor, friend and colleague. To distill the abstract even further: We miss you Jonathan.
Abstract This article reflects on Jonathan Sterne’s scholarship and the continuities and detours in his last published book, Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment. It also considers some of his longstanding social justice commitments, particularly to labor organizing, and amplifies his call for disability justice in both scholarly and activist work.
