Abstract
While modernity is often treated as an abstract and overwhelming phenomenon, growing attention has been paid to the everyday as an approach to the modern in recent years. This article examines everyday modernity in contemporary China through a comparative analysis of space and everyday life in the work unit (danwei), a primary urban form during the socialist period, and the Foxconn factory, a representative example of China’s “world factory” in the reform era. It shows change and continuity in everyday modernity at Chinese workplace in the context of the nation’s economy shifting from one based on centrally planned heavy industry, with permanent employment and comprehensive social welfare for urban workers, to one that relies on export-oriented industries with the massive use of rural migrant workers. The study shows that both the work unit and the Foxconn factory complex feature the integral organization of workplace and crucial living facilities, but the driving forces behind this spatial arrangement and workers’ everyday experience with the two types of workplace are quite different.
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(photograph taken by the author in 2015; copyright of the author)
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Notes
Certainly, not all private factories provide dormitories for their workers. When dormitories are not provided, workers may live in off-site rental flats or urban villages (Al 2012).
Interview with workers at Foxconn Kunshan Zizhulu by author, March 7, 2015.
Interview with workers at Foxconn Chengdu Bi County by author, September 20, 2015.
Interview with workers at Foxconn Kunshan Zizhulu by author, March 7, 2015.
The basic monthly wage for assembly-line workers of most Foxconn factories fell in the range between 950 RMB yuan (or US$147) and 1200 RMB yuan (or US$186) in Foxconn Kushan in 2010. This had increased to 1800 RMB yuan (or US$279) in 2015. Interview with workers at Foxconn Kunshan Wusongjiang by author, March 8, 2015.
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Lu, D. Everyday Modernity in China: From Danwei to the “World Factory”. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 12, 79–91 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-018-0237-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-018-0237-8