The Work of Legitimacy in China: Promoting Labor Law as an Legitimate Order Among Businesses

• In Event: 3554 - States and Political Power

Abstract

How does the state make legal regulations legitimate? Who are the agents involved in the construction of legitimacy? How does the state shape the agents enforcing this legitimacy? What are the work of the agents in constructing this legitimacy? This article examines the legitimization process of labor law in China. By looking at one locality Riverside District in Pearl River Delta (PRD), this research examines how the local state’s efforts in creating a new profession of labor relations coordinators and training employers in labor law techniques has contributed to labor law compliance which in turn led to drop in labor conflict. Employing the theoretical insight of Bourdieu, Mann and Burawoy, I intend to combine the insight of state legitimacy as symbolic domination and how agents, by gaming the rules, consent to the symbolic categories of the state. This article intends to contribute a new approach to examining legitimacy of state orders: the agents that uphold legitimacy and the work of upholding legitimacy.

Author

• Zheng Fu, Columbia University