Atomized Incorporation

The book questions why the Chinese regime selectively tolerates workers' collective action and what this means for the country's long-term political resilience. It examines collective action dynamics on the ground from workers' perspectives and shows that the lack of political activism is not a product of workers' political satisfaction.

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Atomized Incorporation examines why the Chinese regime selectively tolerates workers' collective action within single factories and what this means for the country's long-term political resilience. It investigates the implications of state-labor relations in contemporary China and suggests that it has evolved away from overt coercion to limited incorporation. Based on two years of in-depth fieldwork, Rho uncovers how ordinary workers think, believe, and behave in this changing socio-political environment. She demonstrates that labor grievances have become more politicized and finds that the current approach to economic grievance resolutions demobilizes the emergence of labor movements by rewarding those with collective action resources within individual workplaces. Rho argues that though this limited state of incorporation allows workers to express discontent at wages and working conditions, it also denies them the opportunity to make claims about structural problems and does not effectively enhance political loyalty in the long run.