Cosmopolitanism and the global economy: notes from China's knowledge factories

Abstract

In Dalian Software Park, China's centre for IT-enabled outsourcing and offshore services, knowledge workers find themselves on the 'assembly line' of information processing, carrying out highly routinized, de-skilled, and poorly paid work for which they are vastly overqualified. Following the recent attention to culture and personhood in studies of global capitalism, I argue that these knowledge workers are motivated by two forms of cosmopolitanism: corporate cosmopolitanism, the capacity to reconcile the supra-territorial values of 'global' corporate culture with local values; and nationalist cosmopolitanism, whereby individual workers see the performance of cultural openness as a way of contributing to China's national project of modernization. As well as providing a rare account of cosmopolitanism in the workplace, this article demonstrates the significance of cosmopolitanism for the global economy. The pursuit of cosmopolitanism creates a productive friction between individual projects of self-making, corporate projects of disciplining labour, as well as national projects of pursuing modernity and development. Dalian Software Park (DLSP) is one of the many information technology (IT) hubs that have been set up in China in the last twenty years as part of a concerted effort to shift China's economy 'up the value chain' , away from a reliance on manufacturing, towards industries driven by science and innovation. An abundance of IT graduates and a raft of economic incentives have seen DLSP attract well-known technology companies such as IBM, Oracle, Cisco, and SAP. Yet, not all the activities in the software park could be classed as 'high-tech' or 'high-value'. As well as coding and software programming, there are service centres dedicated to back-office work. In pursuit of cost savings, multinational companies have looked to offshore business processes, especially those of support functions, thereby creating new spaces of the global economy. Inside low-rise buildings of glass and steel, Chinese knowledge workers find themselves labouring on the 'assembly line' of information processing. Highly specialized and repetitive, their daily work may involve uploading timesheets, scanning résumés, or calculating insurance contributions. Flows of capital, information, and labour converge, demonstrating the power of information and communication technologies.

The Reconstruction of the Cosmopolitan Imaginary: Chinese International Students during the COVID‐19 Pandemic1

“…Depending on events around the world, transborder migrants may encounter various structural disruptions that not only hamper their physical mobility but also throw them into a state of national limbo in terms of their access to various rights and privileges. Prior to COVID‐19, the Chinese state promoted cosmopolitanism as one of the national projects of post‐Mao modernization in order to enhance their global competitiveness (Chong 2020). Especially under Xi Jinping's leadership, sending Chinese nationals abroad for overseas studies and building international institutions back home were both viewed as a way for China to exert its soft power by spreading Chinese culture and building the global brain power and capital needed to promote nation‐state projects back home (Chung, Bloemraad, and Tejada‐Pena 2013; Liu 2022).…”

Introduction: What Competition Does

“…This work has largely been inspired by Foucault (1982Foucault ( , 1991 and his attention to the relationship between subjectivity and structure, rather than Bateson. In everything from state-sponsored and corporate sporting events (Besnier et al 2018;Walker 2013) to labor regimes (Gershon 2011;Okura Gagné 2020;Urciuoli 2008) and knowledge economies (Chong 2020), competition is increasingly identifi ed as the subjectifying force that shapes collectives of atomized, self-centered individuals.…”

“…The anthropologies of work and neoliberalism critique neoliberal visions of competition as a universalizing mechanism that encourages subjects to imagine themselves as a "bundle of skills" (Urciuoli 2008: 215) that must be constantly and refl exively improved, and to act rationally in a shared yet agonistic pursuit of maximal fi nancial profi t (Gershon 2011;Mirowski 2013;Rose 1996). Recent ethnography has emphasized the damaging effects of competition as a technique of neoliberal governance and subjectivation (Chong 2020;Li 2007;Okura Gagné 2020;Tooley 2017), one that atomizes subjects, corrodes solidarity, and reproduces established hierarchies of wealth and power. The prevalence of this critique has, however, sidelined attention to competition in its own right as an object of ethnographic comparison.…”

El caso de una agenda de investigación sobre liderazgo ecléctica y flexible: Cómo abordar la justicia social y la diversidad en el lugar de trabajo del siglo XXI

“…The previously mentioned increase in diversity coincides with a increased awareness of issues of Social Justice (Kibbey, 2002). Police reform in the United States, wealth inequality in the United Kingdom, and religious discrimination in France, inter alia, are some of the contemporary dialogues dealing with social justice (Chong, 2020). There is little agreement over the long term effects of the current dialogue of issues of social justice in the United States and Europe however there is consensus in terms of the fact that it is changing the reality of the workplace (Constantino & Merchant, 1996;Ertel, 1991).…”