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Labor and Precariousness in C hina's Porcelain Capital
Author(s) -
Gillette Maris Boyd
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
anthropology of work review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.151
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1548-1417
pISSN - 0883-024X
DOI - 10.1111/awr.12028
Subject(s) - marketization , alienation , capitalism , labor history , capital (architecture) , state (computer science) , government (linguistics) , china , politics , sociology , political economy , political science , labor relations , law , geography , philosophy , computer science , linguistics , archaeology , algorithm
In recent years, scholars have turned to B ourdieu's model of precariousness to understand workers' experiences under neoliberal capitalism. Here I look at B ourdieu's ideas in relation to C hina's most famous porcelain production site: the city of J ingdezhen. B ourdieu directs us toward the shared structural features of job insecurity, emphasizing the political consequences of workers' alienation. Yet his universalist model cannot adequately explain how or why workers respond to precarious labor regimes as they do. In J ingdezhen, porcelain workers lost their state and collective sector jobs when the government mandated privatization and marketization. How they understood and responded to this experience was shaped by J ingdezhen's particular history, including the ways that decades of government policies had promoted reliance on personal networks, had made labor activism the exclusive purview of the state, and had given many C hinese a negative view of mass mobilization.