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ID:
124640
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Publication |
2013.
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Summary/Abstract |
Comparing ethnographic and interview data in three contrasting production arrangements in a labour-intensive factory in South China, this article argues that while the mobile phone constitutes a new contested terrain on the shop floor and facilitates control and resistance between capital and labour simultaneously, the dynamics of control and resistance is contingent upon the exact arrangements of production. While the management strictly prohibit line operators in the assembly line department from using their mobile phones, they turn a blind eye towards mobile phone use among workers in the hardware department, and mandate mobile workers who are not fixed at work stations in both departments to use mobile phones. Diverse managerial control tactics have generated different patterns of worker resistance. Workers in the assembly line department employ strategies to evade managerial surveillance and continue to use mobile phones at work covertly. They also contest the double standards of mobile phone use displayed by the management. Workers in the hardware department challenge the boundaries of legitimate mobile phone use, and mobile workers use tactics to escape being tracked down by the management via their mobile phones. Mobile phones also facilitate the strategy of resistance through exit among all workers.
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2 |
ID:
103986
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Publication |
2011.
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Summary/Abstract |
By combining analysis of archival documents and data from 245 sex workers interviewed in south-west China between 2003 and 2007, this article argues that the AIDS crisis has prompted a shift in state discourse about prostitution in China from a victim to a victimizer perspective. Concomitant with this discursive shift is the gradual intensification of control over prostitution. Our data show that the victim perspective overlooks the fact that sex workers are agents who actively negotiate their work and lives amid limited options in post-socialist China. The victimizer perspective, on the other hand, misplaces the blame of unsafe sex practices on sex workers, while in reality it is their clients who refuse to use condoms. The data further suggest that repressive measures against prostitution premised on this victim-victimizer dichotomy inhibit the ability of sex workers to negotiate safe sex practices and aggravate their exposure to HIV risk. The repressive measures undermine the supportive professional networks of sex workers, increase economic pressure on the workers and increase their exposure to client-perpetrated violence.
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