Product Description: Popular memories of the revolutionary past have become a political and cultural force in China. Traumatic memory and active criticism make up part of this wave, but so does nostalgia for collective responsibility and for feelings of freedom and progress...read more

Product Description: Popular memories of the revolutionary past have become a political and cultural force in China. Traumatic memory and active criticism make up part of this wave, but so does nostalgia for collective responsibility and for feelings of freedom and progress...read more

This study opens a critical perspective on the slow death of socialism and the rebirth of capitalism in the world's most dynamic and populous country. Based on remarkable fieldwork and extensive interviews in Chinese textile, apparel, machinery, and household appliance factories, Against the Law finds a rising tide of labor unrest mostly hidden from the world's attention. Providing a broad political and economic analysis of this labor struggle together with fine-grained ethnographic detail, the book portrays the Chinese working class as workers' stories unfold in bankrupt state factories and global sweatshops, in crowded dormitories and remote villages, at street protests as well as in quiet disenchantment with the corrupt officialdom and the fledgling legal system.

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.

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