Workers' Democracy in China's Transition from State Socialism (East Asia: History, Politics, Sociology and Culture) - Softcover

Philion, Stephen E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041554257X ISBN 13: 9780415542579

Publisher: Routledge, 2012

Synopsis

This fascinating book is among the first to examine state workers’ protests against privatization in China. Philion discusses how Chinese state enterprise workers have engaged a discourse of ‘workers democracy’ in the process of struggle with the new social relations of work that are engendered by privatization oriented policies in China today. By the 1990s, this discourse was being deployed by the state in an effort to minimize the social obligations of the Party and enterprise to state workers and to win the latter over to faith in markets. Philion reveals that Chinese workers have recently engaged this discourse in order to do something they never envisioned having to do: fight for what Chinese state socialism had always promised them as the ‘masters of the factory’, namely the right to a job and basic social security.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen E. Philion is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. Cloud State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 041554257X
• ISBN 13: 9780415542579
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 178