Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.640315>
·
DOI: <
10670/1.640315>
Abstract
The rise of e-commerce has had a significant impact in China on a wide range of business and professional areas; psychotherapy, a profession that emerged during the recent ‘boom of psychology’ (xinli re), is one of them. Based on materials collected from interviews and participating observations and reports from various media, this article describes the development of Jiandan xinli, a Beijing based online trading platform offering psychotherapy services. He also explained how and why this platform had been a major success. Taking the perspective of the anthropological study of infrastructure, he argues that the platform can be understood as an example of ‘infrastructural entrepreneurship’, a commercial practice whose main purpose is to ensure the construction of the infrastructure — in this case in the field of psychotherapy.