Social factory as prosaic state space: Redefining labour in China’s mass innovation/mass entrepreneurship campaign

Abstract

This study examines China’s mass innovation/mass entrepreneurship campaign, with particular attention to the community of maker-entrepreneurs in the new techno-political ordering of society and their social territories. This raises the question of the subject-making of maker-entrepreneurs on a massive scale through what we call the new education–incubatory assemblage. How does the new education–incubatory machine assemble a new participatory community, form a production–communications–consumption circuit to imagine the new economy and re-territorialise the techno-political ordering of society? Our study stresses two differences in the social factory. First, by forging a fragmented pattern of production and an individualised society, mass entrepreneurship emphasises social networking. The exploitation of social relations in production has been brought to the foreground. Second, a participatory mass is not only shaped by the new mentality, but also constitutive of the very formation of the new mentality. Such a mass is a collection of actors, from the government, cooperatives, start-ups and individuals. In addition, their agencies vary, from those with a more reified form of power, such as policy, to the mundane, unrehearsed actions of individuals. This process entails the reconfiguration of political apparatus and bio-political power.