Selling Moments in the Fields: Re-thinking Work in CSCW Through The Lens of Lifestyle Entrepreneurship in China

The loss of meaning in life has become a prominent theme among many urban dwellers and white-collar workers. Recently, Lifestyle Entrepreneurship (LE) has emerged as a morally-coded alternative to work by prioritizing meaningful living, self-expression, and sustainability over economic gain. While entrepreneurship has been a focus in CSCW scholarship, little attention has been paid to the affective aspect of entrepreneurial labor. This paper investigates the culture and politics of LE through long-term ethnographic research in China. Our findings offer insights into the reasons why an increasing number of Chinese professionals turn to morally-coded entrepreneurial practices and the challenges they encountered. We examine how they actively reconfigure work by deviating from productivity and efficiency toward values such as self-expression and meaningful living. Cultures of LE provides a critical site for rethinking what counts as labor in digitally mediated societies. They challenge presumptions and goals of work by foregrounding an alternative mode of collaborative work that is value-oriented, deliberately small-scale, informal, and that blurs conventional boundaries between work, life, and politics.