Dependency, Resistance, and Defeat: Labor Resistance History of One Generation of State Workers in China

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Getting Involved, Staying Involved

Abstract

This study traces the changing mode and efficiency of labor resistance movements as adopted by a particular generation of state-owned-enterprise workers in China from the 1960s to the present. It aims to depict a labor resistance history that has been shaped by the changing forms of dependence between workers and the state during the “real-existent” socialist and post-socialist eras, and how the final breaking of such dependence defeated workers at a time when other more “liberal” and “rational” weapons, such as law, were either against them or confounded them. I conduct both archival and oral history research in this study.

Author

• Ju Li, Central European University