Contesting Inequalities
Mediated Labor Activism and Rural Migrant Workers in China
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
After four decades of market reform, China has developed a fast-growing, prosperous economy—the second largest in the world. Despite this prosperity, social inequality has persisted and expanded, particularly among rural migrant workers, and oppressive labor conditions have given rise to an increase in worker protests. In China's authoritarian political context, worker strikes often face suppression and receive little attention in mainstream media, which has led burgeoning forms of alternative mediated practices to become key, if complicated, components of worker resistance. In Contesting Inequalities, Siyuan Yin traces the historical and structural forces surrounding the plight of migrant workers, especially women workers, and examines the relationship between media and different forms of collective action in China. Moving beyond considerations of short-term strikes, she analyzes how mediated practices have been incorporated as both means and ends in labor activism.
Based on long-term, multi-sited, and digital ethnography, and drawing on feminist methodologies, Yin examines different forms of mediated labor activism—including theater performance, advocacy music, and digital community media—to survey the politics and impact of worker mobilization and actions. By explicating how mediated labor activism has enabled new subjectivities, counter-discourses, and informal networks, Yin demonstrates that the surge in Chinese working-class resistance highlights the interconnectedness of class struggles and feminist activism.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Forming Counterhegemonic Forces: Resistance Movements and the Possibility of Change
- 1. Encountering Unequal China: Rural Migrant Workers and the Global Working Class
- 2. Transforming Subjectivities: Female Migrant Domestic Workers and Advocacy Through Theater Performance
- 3. Challenging Capitalism and Neoliberalism: New Workers and Working-Class Cultural Production
- 4. Articulating Feminism: Feminist Labor Activism and Intersectional Interventions
- 5. Building Alliances: Pluralistic Counterpublics and Networks of Labor Activism
- Conclusion: Another World Is Indeed Possible
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Discography
- Index