Class or Citizenship? Debating Workplace Conflict in Chinaстатья из журнала
Аннотация: Abstract While a new working class is in the process of remaking itself in China, the latest trend in labour studies has rejected the Marxist tradition which sees the social relations of production as the point of departure for analysing workplace conflict. According to the new current, influenced by post-structuralism, class is only one of the identities articulated by workers, and it can be understood only with reference to their discourses. By critically evaluating an important book by Ching Kwan Lee (Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt), this article suggests that her approach generalising workers' protests with the notion of citizenship cannot satisfactorily explain the changing pattern of labour protests in China since 2004. By using fieldwork data and connecting the analysis of the social relations of production with the changing patterns of workers' struggle, this paper argues that migrant workers protests are a significant part of the emerging class conflict in China. Key Words: Labourmigrant workersclassproteststrikeChina Notes Lee's concept of “insurgent identity” was borrowed from Gould (Citation1995) who rejected the notion that the Paris Commune of 1871 was a continuation of the class struggles of the 1848 revolution. Focusing on the collective identities framing during these two revolutions, Gould argued that while class played a pivotal role in the 1848 revolution, it was the community solidarity that functioned as a decisive force in 1871. The difference was due to the urban renovation project between 1852 and 1868 that removed workers from central to suburban Paris. It had caused the role of occupation-based social relations to be replaced by residential relations. At the same time, she also pointed out that “the ‘new working class’ … is often deformed, or even killed, at the moment of its birth” by state mechanisms (Pun, Citation2005: 20). What is certain is that, as Pun (Citation2005) and Lee (Citation2007) both implied, the formation of a new working class in China is not yet complete. The author is indebted to anonymous worker informants who showed me this pamphlet and other documents during the strike. The emphasis was added by the author. This information was confirmed by the president of the Dalian Economic Development Zone Trade Union Federation who spoke in a conference in Renmin University in Beijing, September 2010. The local media reported this case well, for example, see Guangzhou Ribao (8 April 2008). Insider interviews were also conducted under an ESRC-funded Non-governmental Public Action Programme research project (“Post-Socialist Trade Unions, Low Pay and Decent Work: Russia, China and Vietnam”) at the University of Warwick. The strike cases, including those that took place in the German factories, as outlined below, have been analysed previously by the author (e.g. Chan, Citation2009; Chan, Citation2010a; Chan, Citation2010b; Chan and Pun, Citation2009; Chan et al., Citation2010). The author carried out field research in the industrial zones of Foshan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing and Qingdao from May to December 2010. Apart from the PRD, as elaborated above, Chen (Citation2010) also studied the role of trade unions in a wave of strikes that took place in the city of Dalian in 18 Japanese and Korean electronic factories.
Год издания: 2012
Авторы: Chris King‐Chi Chan
Издательство: Routledge
Источник: Journal of Contemporary Asia
Ключевые слова: China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance, Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy, Labor Movements and Unions
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 42
Выпуск: 2
Страницы: 308–327