Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Ethnography
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Lee, C. K.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

The `Revenge of History'

Collective Memories and Labor Protests in North-Eastern China

Ching Kwan Lee

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, USA

In the Rustbelt of China, state workers have become restive as market reforms have undermined their entrenched way of life. By comparing cases of worker protest in an industrial city in northeastern China, once the cradle of its planned economy, this article analyses the configuration of conditions underlying these labor protests. I have found that collective memories of Maoist socialism, enterprise residential communities and enterprise property helped overcome the crippling effects of demoralization and atomization in the wake of massive unemployment. At the same time, new identities based on citizens' legal rights and political spaces in the realm of public policy and the law are also forged in the reform process, mediating workers' activism. Labor resistance in a period of system transition draws on resources and influences from both state and market socialisms.

Key Words: market reform • labor • socialist transition • working-class formation • collective mobilization • China

Ethnography, Vol. 1, No. 2, 217-237 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/14661380022230741
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 EthnographyHome page
A. Hanser
Sales floor trajectories: Distinction and service in postsocialist China
Ethnography, December 1, 2006; 7(4): 461 - 491.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 China InformationHome page
W. Hurst
The City as the Focus: The Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Urban Politics
China Information, November 1, 2006; 20(3): 457 - 479.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Media Culture SocietyHome page
H. de Burgh
Kings without Crowns? The Re-Emergence of Investigative Journalism in China
Media Culture Society, November 1, 2003; 25(6): 801 - 820.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Modern ChinaHome page
F. Chen
Industrial Restructuring and Workers' Resistance in China
Modern China, April 1, 2003; 29(2): 237 - 262.
[PDF]