Merit as Boundary-Making Regime: Cultural Constructions of Technological Excellence and Work Devotion in China’s High-Tech Industry

• In Event: Labor and Labor Movements Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 4: Devotion, Discipline, and Inequality in Contemporary Labor Regimes

Abstract

Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with employees (11 managerial tech leaders and 25 non-managerial programmers) at a high-tech company located in Shenzhen, China, this study examines how gender and age boundaries are constructed under the organizational discourse of meritocracy, and how such workplace cultures centered on talent and devotion reproduce inequalities among high-tech workers. This study identifies three mechanisms underlying meritocratic discourses that help to maintain and legitimize gender and age boundaries in China’s high-tech industry. The three mechanisms are (1) gendered talent determinism characterized by the geek culture, (2) uncertainties maintained by the bottom-out system, and (3) overwork norm normalized by the “coding peasant” ideology. These mechanisms serve the labor control at the management level, and they are often internalized and reproduced by individual workers in the labor processes. In a boundary-making labor regime, the cultural constructions of technological excellence and work devotion reinforce gender segregations and age hierarchies within the occupation on the one hand and conceal these inequalities within the organization by defending the legitimacy of fierce competition on the other. The analysis challenges the traditional technical vs. social dichotomy in studying IT workers and highlights the gender and age dimensions within the seemingly “flat” tech teams. The findings speak to the rapidly evolving AI and Internet economies by illustrating how technological development may replicate and reinforce workplace exploitation even for youthful and skilled laborers, as suggested by mechanisms that convert the focus on talent and devotion to gender and age discrimination.

Author

• Lingyan TU, The Chinese University of Hong Kong