数字技术的快速发展，社会老龄化的加速和新冠疫情的爆发，使得中国老年群体面临的数字不平等问题日益凸显。本文把老年人视作结构中具有主观能动性的行动者，跟随他们学习和使用智能手机的过程，试图回答以下问题。第一，对于老年人来说，线下的不平等如何影响了数字不平等？智能手机是否有助于消弭线下不平等？第二，老年人在使用智能手机时表现出怎样的认识和策略？产生的原因是什么？如何影响了手机的使用和学习？如何进一步导致了数字不平等？第三，社会为老年人的数字技术学习提供了怎样的场景？是否有助于实现平等？作者在中国东部的T市L区开展民族志研究，以该区老年大学作为重点分析对象，综合使用观察法、深度访谈法、文本分析法和介入式工作坊的研究方法，借鉴并发展了布迪厄的资本、惯习和场域理论，得到了以下研究发现。第一，数字资本是衡量数字不平等的工具。数字资本和身体、个人、经济、文化、社会资本的双向转化展现了老年人数字不平等形成的过程。老年人在五种资本上的匮乏导致了其相对年轻人的数字弱势，不同老年人在五种资本上占有的多少，形成了老年人内部的数字分层。数字资本向五种资本转化的过程说明了数字技术促进老年人平等的潜力有限，除了文化资本和社会资本的部分内容，更多的转化停留在了象征层面，或者复制了线下的不平等。第二，数字惯习是解释数字实践差异的工具。老年人对于智能手机学习和使用的过程，是与自己旧有惯习以及其他个体的惯习互动的过程。家庭环境中，数字反哺带来的亲子互动的差异和夫妻数字分工的差异塑造了老年人不同的数字惯习，使得他们对智能手机的使用中，从认识、动机和实践方式层面产生了分化。第三，提供新的场域，可以作为缩小老年人外部和内部社会不平等的尝试。对于智能手机等技术的学习，老年大学在组织形式层面、话语沟通层面具有优势，并且以正式支持的方式提供了同辈互助等非正式支持。教育的特性使得老年大学，在有所发展的情况下，能够更广泛地助力缩小老年人的智能手机学习在城乡、贫富、受教育程度等维度之间的差异。最后，本研究认为智能手机作为一种数字炼金术，复制和重置了老年群体的社会不平等，影响了老年的定义。同时，本文建立起利用数字资本、数字惯习和场域对于双重数字不平等综合分析的模型，可以推广到对于更多群体的分析当中。
The rapid development of digital technology, the acceleration of social aging and the outbreak of the COVID-19 have brought to the fore the digital inequalities faced by the elderly population in China. This paper views older adults as subjective actors in the structure and follows the process of their learning and using smartphones in an attempt to answer the following questions. First, how do offline inequalities affect digital inequalities for older adults? Do smartphones help dissolve offline inequalities? Second, what perceptions and strategies do older adults exhibit when using smartphones? What are the reasons that arise? How has it influenced cell phone use and learning? How does it further lead to digital inequality? Third, what scenarios does society provide for older adults' digital technology learning? Does it help to achieve equality?The authors conducted an ethnographic study in District L of City T in eastern China, using the district's elderly university as the focus of analysis, and using a combination of observational, in-depth interview, textual analysis, and interventional workshop research methods, drawing on and developing Bourdieu's theory of capital, habitus, and field, to obtain the following research findings.First, digital capital is a tool for measuring digital inequality. The two-way transformation of digital capital and physical, personal, economic, cultural, and social capital demonstrates the process of digital inequality formation among older adults. Older adults' deprivation in the five capitals leads to their digital disadvantage relative to younger adults, and the amount of possession of the five capitals by different older adults forms the digital stratification within older adults. The process of transformation of digital capital into the five capitals illustrates the limited potential of digital technology to promote equality among older adults, with more transformation remaining at the symbolic level or replicating offline inequality, except for parts of cultural and social capital.Second, digital inertia is a tool to explain differences in digital practices. The process of older adults' learning and use of smartphones is a process of interaction with their own old habitus and the habitus of other individuals. The differences in parent-child interactions and the differences in digital division of labor between husband and wife in the family environment brought about by digital feedbacks shape the different digital inertia of older adults, making them diverge in their use of smartphones at the level of awareness, motivation and practice.Third, providing new arenas can serve as an attempt to reduce the external and internal social inequalities of older adults. For learning technologies such as smartphones, senior universities have advantages at the level of organizational forms, at the level of discursive communication, and provide informal support such as peer support in the form of formal support. The nature of education allows senior universities, with some development, to contribute more broadly to narrowing the differences between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, and educational attainment dimensions of smartphone learning for older adults.Finally, this study argues that smartphones act as a form of digital alchemy that replicates and resets social inequalities among older adults and influences the definition of old age. At the same time, this paper establishes a model that uses digital capital, digital habitus, and field for a comprehensive analysis of dual digital inequalities, which can be extended to the analysis of more groups.
