Neo-socialist governmentality: managing freedom in the People’s Republic of China

Palmer, David A.; Winiger, Fabian

doi:10.1080/03085147.2019.1672424

Cited by 44 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…The re-commodification process in both countries as such, however, does not sit easily within the much-critiqued neoliberal restructuring of global production that the Decent Work Agenda (ILO, 1999 ) seeks to counteract, nor does it alongside the “workfare” based labour re-commodification in the West (Levitas, 2005 ; Peck, 2002 ; Peck & Theodore, 2011 ). Even as both countries are firmly on the course towards greater marketization, 7 the authoritarian state’s “socialist” visions and practices continue to shape the course of governance in ways that some authors term “neo-socialist” (Palmer & Winiger, 2019 ). The cycle of commodification reveals the tendency of welfare reforms to engage more market actors in the realisation of the state goals that remain socialist in official ideology.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cycle of commodification: migrant labour, welfare, and the market in global China and Vietnam

Lin

Nguyen

2021

GPPG

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China and Vietnam have experienced waves of labour and welfare reform since both countries shifted to market socialism, pursuing a development model that depends on the labour of millions of rural–urban migrants in global factories. Their similar development trajectories are productive for theorizing the relationship between labour and welfare. This article conceptualises the two countries’ distinctive regime of migrant labour welfare as integral to a cycle of commodification that encompasses the overlapping processes of commodification, de-commodification and re-commodification of labour. After decades of collectivized labour under state socialism, the cycle begins with the commodification of labour through market reforms that led to mass rural–urban migration and the rise of the global factory alongside the dismantling of the former socialist welfare system. It was then followed by de-commodification attempts aimed at providing forms of social protection that offset the labour precarity caused by decades of labour market liberalisation. Despite the emergence of new universal welfare programs, the market has increasingly intruded into social protection, especially through financialized products targeted at the labouring masses who must compensate for the failings of public welfare programs. As such, these welfare regimes are undergoing a process of re-commodification in which the protection of labour is re-embedded into the market as a commodity to be consumed by the migrant workers with their meagre wages. The “cycle of commodification” offers an analytical framework to understand welfare regimes as a social and political field that keeps evolving in response to the changing global valuation of labour.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cycle of commodification: migrant labour, welfare, and the market in global China and Vietnam

Lin

Nguyen

2021

GPPG

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“…A modern state under total, direct control can hardly be categorized as neo-liberal, as it has nothing to do with being liberal in the first place. A liberal or neo-liberal state, regardless of one's supportive or critical stance toward it and regardless of the illusory nature of freedom and autonomy in liberal societies, is founded on the distinction between the public and the private and between the state and the individuals (Habermas, 1989;Palmer and Winiger, 2019). In China, on the contrary, the boundary is blurred, the foundation non-existent.…”

Section: Conceptualizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars who argue that socialism is still a salient aspect of the Chinese bureaucracy tend to emphasize its Sovietness (i.e. nomeklatura) more than its Chineseness (Palmer and Winiger, 2019).…”

Section: Conceptualizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualizing China’s spatial lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic: a neo-liberal society or a pre-liberal one?

2021

STICS

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Purpose The draconian measures to lock down communities and cities in China during the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented in human history. First the mega-city of Wuhan, then the province of Hubei, and eventually the whole nation of China, were shut down, surveilled and governed in a way that was identical to the 17th century plague-stricken European town re-portrayed and analyzed by Foucault. Instead of categorizing China’s COVID-19-triggered spatial and social governance as an ad hoc and hence abnormal disciplinary mechanism, this essay argues that the spatial lockdown and social control in China during the COVID-19 pandemic express the long existing and well-established governance model of China: that of a pre-liberal disciplinary society. Design/methodology/approach A disciplinary society using “the meticulous exercise of the right of the sword” with neither liberal values nor liberal practices, China’s swift re-configuration into a pre-liberal disciplined society during the COVID-19 pandemic invalidates a neo-liberal reading of the Chinese governance. Furthermore, the radical spatial and social control measures not only expose the fundamentally illiberal nature of the Chinese governance but also suggest its institutional dependence on its Leninist nomenklatura system. Findings With this institutional dependence, draconian spatial and social control measures are likely to be continuously carried on in China after the COVID-19 crisis, albeit in a less brutal manner. Originality/value It offers a conceptual and theoretical framework to understand China's socio-spatial governance.

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“…1.1.David Palmer and Fabian Winiger (2019) define a salient “neo‐socialist governmentality” in China, where, moreover, political goals are made apparent through state propaganda rather than disguised behind economic ideologies, while at the same time, unlike in the Mao era, there is a normalized chasm between propaganda and reality. From the perspective of individuals’ striving for self‐realization, Mette Hansen (2015) identifies “authoritarian individualism” in China, according to which citizens (particularly youth and young adults) can pursue individualization in some spheres yet restrain themselves in the political arena.…”

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confidence: 99%

Against Three “Cultural” Characters Speaks Self‐Improvement: Social Critique and Desires for “Modernity” in Pedagogies of Soft Skills in Contemporary China

Hizi

2021

Anthropology & Edu Quarterly

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Despite recent socioeconomic transformations, young adults in China construe local social norms as inhibiting their individualized selfhood. Based on a study of pedagogies of interpersonal "soft" skills, this article describes an apparatus of self-improvement where self-and social critique play a pivotal role. Through comparison with Foucault's "technologies of the self," I illustrate that selfimprovement in China is largely oriented toward performative expressions that counteract the "local" rather than the habituation of virtues or skills. [Chinese education, self-improvement, soft skills, urban China, technologies of the self]

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Neo-socialist governmentality: managing freedom in the People’s Republic of China

Cited by 44 publications

References 59 publications

The cycle of commodification: migrant labour, welfare, and the market in global China and Vietnam

The cycle of commodification: migrant labour, welfare, and the market in global China and Vietnam

Conceptualizing China’s spatial lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic: a neo-liberal society or a pre-liberal one?

Against Three “Cultural” Characters Speaks Self‐Improvement: Social Critique and Desires for “Modernity” in Pedagogies of Soft Skills in Contemporary China

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