Everyday Modernity in China: From Danwei to the “World Factory”

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.