Knowledge Workers in Contemporary China: Reform and Resistance in the Publishing Industry [Hardcover]

Knowledge Workers in Contemporary China: Reform, and Resistance in the Publishing Industry concentrates on the trajectories of the labor process transformation of knowledge workers, mainly editors, in the Chinese publishing industry. The book focuses on their changing social, economic, and political roles; their dilemmas, challenges, and opportunities associated with current social reform; and Chinas integration into the global political economy.

At its core, the book addresses three different yet interrelated processes of the political economy of communication: commodification, structuration, and spatialization in the Chinese publishing industry. It examines whether worker organizations and trade unions are effective in presenting editors legitimate rights and interests in current publishing reform.

Through the political economic analysis of knowledge workers in Chinas publishing industry, Jianhua Yao helps readers better understand the broader social and economic transformations, specifically the network of power relations and institutional contexts in which Chinese editors are situated, that have been taking place in China since the late 1970s.

Despite the growing volume of western commentary on the turn to the market in Chinas media industries we still know surprisingly little about the impact of change on media work. Jianhua Yaos detailed study of the publishing industry in Shanghai, one of the pivotal nodes in Chinas knowledge economy, is a notable and welcome exception. Combining available data with questionnaire surveys and personal interviews, he unpicks the consequences of commercialization and globalization for the organization of work places, careers, and everyday lives, and explores the ways workers are responding and resisting. His analysis oflӝ