Title:
Assistant Professor

Qualifications:
PhD (London)
MA (London)
BA (Dublin)

Email:
alex.cockain@polyu.edu.hk

Phone:
3400 3672

Office:
GH344

Teaching:
Research Methodology 1: Qualitative Methods
Introduction to Sociology
Social Structure & Social Theory
Anthropology and Language
Introduction to Anthropology
Media and Everyday Life
Assessing Globalization and Social Development
Social Development in China

My URLs:
ORCID
GOOGLE SCHOLAR 

Selected Publications:
Books:

• 2012. Young Chinese in Urban China. London and New York: Routledge [2015, reprinted as paperback]

Peer-Reviewed Journal articles/ publications:

• 2020. Reading (Readings of) UK Channel 4’s 2012 and 2016 Paralympic Advertisements: On the Undecidability of Texts and Dis/ability itself. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies Volume 14 (issue & page # to be confirmed).
• 2020. In the Haze: On Narrativization and Air Pollution in Shanghai. Positions: Asia Critique 28 (2):447-479. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-8112503
• 2018. Shallow Inclusion (or Integration) and Deep Exclusion: En-Dis-Abling Identities through Government Webpages in Hong Kong. Social Inclusion 6 (2): 1-11. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/si.v6i2.1282.
• 2018. Walking small with ‘Paul’, a man with ‘severe learning difficulties’: On (not) passing in purportedly public places. Disability and Society 33 (5): 705-722. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2018.1455578.
• 2018. Ethnography as process and product: Residential neighborhoods and reflexivity in Shanghai. SAGE Research Methods Cases. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526440464.
• 2017. Riding and Reading the Shanghai Metro: Signs, Subjectivities and Subversions on and around Line # 8. Social Semiotics 28 (4): 533-554. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2017.1366392.
• 2016. Identity Work at a Normal University in Shanghai. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 47 (3):314-328.
• 2016. Making Autism through Ocean Heaven (Haiyang Tiantang, 海洋天堂) and the Possibilities of Realizing Disability Differently. Disability and Society 31 (4): 535-552.
• 2015. Regarding Mr. Wu, a Dragon and Conversations in Traffic: Social Acceleration, Deceleration and Re-acceleration in Shanghai. Time & Society 27 (3): 363-383.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X15611394
• 2014. Becoming Quixotic? A discussion on the discursive construction of disability and how this is maintained through social relations. Disability and Society 29 (9): 1473-1485.
• 2012. Ontological Security and Residential Experiences in China: The ‘Old’ and the ‘New’ in Shanghai’s Luwan District. China Information 26 (3): 331-358.
• 2011. Students’ Ambivalence toward Their Experiences in Secondary Education: Views from a Group of Young Chinese Studying on an International Foundation Program in Beijing. The China Journal 65: 101-118.

Chapters in edited volumes:

• 2020. Youth, Exams and the Pressure to Conform, in K. Latham (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 69-81.
• 2016. Urban Chinese Youth, in A. Furlong (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Youth and Young Adulthood. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 172-181.
• 2014. Regarding Subjectivities and Social Life on the Screen: The Ambivalences of Spectatorship in the People’s Republic of China, in D.K. Herold and P. Marolt (eds.) Online China: Locating Society in Online Spaces, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 49-66.