Working in China: Ethnographies of Labor and Workplace Transformation

ISBN-13: 9780415769990 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 258 str.

Ching Kwan Lee

Opis

After a quarter of a century of market reform, China has become the workshop of the world and the leading growth engine of the global economy. Its immense labour force accounts for some twenty-nine per cent of the world's total labour pool but all too little is known about Chinese labour beyond the image of workers toiling under appalling sweatshop conditions for extremely low wages. Working in China introduces the lived experiences of labour in a wide range of occupations and work settings. The chapters of this book cover professional employees such as engineers and lawyers, service workers such as bar hostesses, domestic maids and hotel workers, and industrial workers in a variety of factories. The mosaic of human faces, organizational dynamics and workers' voices presented in the book reflect the complexity of changes and challenges taking place in the Chinese workplace today. Based on extraordinary and thorough field research, this book will have a wide readership at undergraduate level and beyond, appealing to students and scholars from a myriad of disciplines including Chinese studies, labour studies, sociology and political economy.

Spis treści

1. Mapping the Terrain of Labor Ethnography  Part 1: Remaking Class and Community  2. The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class in the Northeastern Rustbelt  3. "Social Positions": Neighbourhood Transition After the Danwei  4. Rural "Guerrilla Workfare" Workers and Home Renovation in Urban China  5. A Tale of Two Sales Floors: Changing Service Work Regimes in China  Part 2: Reworking Gender  6. Virtual Personalism in Beijing: Learning Deference and Femininity at a Global Luxury Hotel  7. From Peasant Women to Bar Hostesses: An Ethnography of China's Karaoke Sex Industry  8. Rurality and Labor Process Autonomy: The Waged Labor of Domestic Service  Part 3: New Professions and Knowledge Workers  9. The Practice of Law as an Obstacle to Justice: Chinese Lawyers at Work  10. Outsourcing as a Way of Life? Knowledge Transfer in the Yangtze Delta  11. Nationalism, Theft and Management Strategies in the Information Industry of Mainland China  12. Honing the Desired Attitudes: Ideological Work On Insurance Sales Agents

O autorze

Ching Kwan Lee is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, USA.