Engendering the Worlds of Labor: Women Workers, Labor Markets, and Production Politics in the South China Economic Miracle
Author(s)
Lee, Ching Kwan
Abstract
This article analyzes two factories in the south China manufacturing region in order to conduct a comparative ethnographic study of two gendered regimes. The two factories chosen are essentially equal in that they are owned by the same enterprise, managed by the same team of managers, produce the same products, and use the same technical labor processes. However, the two factories develop two different patterns of shop-floor politics, a phenomenon which the author attributes to diverse conditions of worker’s dependence due to the social organization of local labor markets. These different dependencies determine management’s strategy of control, worker’s collective practices, and their mutual constructions of worker’s gender. Some of the main topics discussed include gender and production politics, the south China regional economy and the two worlds of labor, localistic despotism, familial hegemony, the state and managerial economy, and labor markets and workers conditions of independence.
