Interviewer: The Virginia House of Delegates 25th District’s seat now has two candidates. The seat is held by a Republican, Steve Landes, who is not seeking a re-election, but instead is running for Augusta County Court Clerk. Republicans recently chose Chris Runion as their nominee. He will face Democrat, Jennifer Kitchen, in the November election. The 25th House District includes parts of Albemarle, Augusta, and Rockingham Counties. And joining us is Democrat, Jennifer Kitchen. She is an Augusta County resident, and native, and a community organizer. Thanks for being with us.

Jennifer Kitchen: Absolutely, thank you for having me.

Interviewer: So, why are you running for the Virginia House of Delegates?

Jennifer Kitchen: So, there are a lot of reasons why I chose to run, most of which is that I am a mother of two. I am, of course, a rural Virginia native, and I’ve chosen to raise my family here in rural Virginia, and I am tired and I am frustrated that rural Virginians’ priorities aren’t being heard and represented in Richmond.

Interviewer: Okay. 

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Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that there never was a public sphere in Chinese life, ever, prior to the advent of the internet.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. So the internet is where one is a citizen, essentially, which is probably why netizen was so resonant at the time.

00:15
Speaker 1: Totally. I mean, I think they did feel a sense of belonging to a new polity, right? That it was something that had just simply never existed before. I think it actually goes back. I mean, Weibo launched after, you know, the Urumqi riots and whatnot in 2009, after the death of some of its competitors, it sort of came along. But even well before that, a full decade before the late '90s and early 2000s, I think this word was being used. It was a word that sort of meant participation itself was something meaningful.

00:51
When you were reconstructing that whole era, did it feel like that to you? Did you sense that talking to the characters, who we'll momentarily introduce here, that they felt like there was something sort of new and bright and beautiful that was born with the advent of the internet in, really effectively, the early 2000s?

01:13
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Like, everyone I talked to during this period kind of felt this sense of exhilaration and this opening. And they were able to kind of connect with people, consume information, access goods and consume things in ways that they had never before.

01:32
And I can go into how that experience played out for each of the characters. But just to give one example, Kafe.Hu, who is one of the subjects that I follow, and he was a kind of aspiring-

01:43
Speaker 1: A rapper, yeah.

01:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a rapper. He was kind of, and this is an area that you know well, just absorbing the full buffet of contemporary music, essentially, within the span of a few years, which is like just getting fire hosed down...

01:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

02:00
Speaker 2: With everything that you've ever listened to from like, a Western listener would listen to from like ages, I don't know, eight to 40. And that's just an overload of information, that that can be an extremely kind of eye-opening and exhilarating experience.

Speaker 1: We always need to adapt to the changing priorities of the business, and that's just necessary. And that's, you know, part of being nimble. Um, there are other organizations that are much more procedural where, you know, you're hired to be a specialist at one thing and, and you're on this proverbial assembly line where, you know, everyone's a, a, a specialist in something.

And those organizations can be much more efficient. You know, th- there are efficiencies that can be gained from, from specialization, for sure, but they are less adaptable. So, you know, if, if someone is a specialist in one thing and that thing gets automated, they're done, you know, th- tha- that's, that's it for them. Th- they're not... They can't adapt as, as, uh, as responsively as, as a smaller, more, more adaptive organization.

So, I think that there are too many organizations that are procedural and bureaucratic and large. And, and I, and I think that, you know, th- there's, there's more... you know, as, as the labor market continues to, you know, become more and more dynamic, I think that will benefit the, the responsive, adaptive organizations more. So, I would, I would encourage organizations to think more about job reconfiguration. And really, I would go so far as to say that management, in its essence, is really about job reconfiguration.