Moralizing Disruption: China’s Ride-Hailing Revolution

Abstract

This dissertation offers an ethnographic exploration of China’s ride-hailing revolution, and a narrative of the emergence, contestation, and moralization of ride-hailing in five different local communities. Through the stories of corporate managers, on-demand laborers, taxi drivers, and speculative middlemen, Moralizing Disruption reveals the visible and invisible host of actors that have shaped the particular evolution of ride-hailing technologies as well as the more general processes of disruption in China’s transportation industry. It shows how these actors, in the context of their respective local communities, form shared moral values towards disruptive technologies and how, against the backdrop of a rapidly changing society, they make sense of and negotiate their changing worlds.