Working in China : ethnographies of labor and workplace transformation / / edited by Ching Kwan Lee.

• Superior document: Asia's transformations
• TeilnehmendeR: Lee, Ching Kwan.
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Language: English
• Series: Asia's transformations.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (260 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

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

Table of Contents

Front Cover; Working in China; Copyright Page; Contents; List of contributors; Acknowledgments; 1. Mapping the terrain of Chinese labor ethnography: Ching Kwan Lee; Part I: Remaking class and community; 2. The unmaking of the Chinese working class in the northeastern rustbelt: Ching Kwan Lee; 3. "Social positions": neighborhood transitions after danwei: Siân Victoria Liu; 4. Rural "guerrilla" workers and home renovation in urban China: Lei Guang; 5. A tale of two sales floors: changing service-work regimes in China: Amy Hanser; Part II: Gendering service work

6. Virtual personalism in Beijing: learning deference and femininity at a global luxury hotel: Eileen M. Otis7. From peasant women to bar hostesses: An ethnography of China's karaoke sex industry: Tiantian Zheng; 8. Rurality and labor process autonomy: the waged labor of domestic service: Yan Hairong; Part III: New professions and knowledge workers; 9. The practice of law as an obstacle to justice: Chinese lawyers at work: Ethan Michelson; 10. Outsourcing as a way of life?: Knowledge transfer in the Yangtze Delta: Andrew Ross

11. Nationalism, theft, and management strategies in the information industry of mainland China: Dimitri Kessler12. Honing the desired attitude: Ideological work on insurance sales agents: Cheris Shun-Ching Chan; Index