Made in China

Reviews / Votes

"Made in China is a passionate, engaged ethnography. Pun Ngai provides us with a searing critique of how global capital, with the collusion of the Chinese state, is turning China into the sweatshop of the world. Her ethnography is a moving and angry description of the lives of young migrant women, who are the guts of this process. Through Pun's ethnographic eye, these women come alive as active subjects who confront the pain and trauma of the social violence inflicted on them in a complex poetics of transgression."-Lisa Rofel, author of Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism "Right now, anything that happens in China's economy affects all of us. Pun Ngai's book should be required reading. It is jam-packed with richly drawn and provocative insights mined from her fieldwork as a 'factory girl' in the midst of South China's migrant workers."- Andrew Ross, author of Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor "Made in China is an important inter-disciplinary contribution to the body of literature on women workers. Development practitioners will find the rich empirical data, which corroborate some field reports, useful to shape policy. The book raises serious issues about the development path that China has embarked upon, and although Pun Ngai frequently emphasises geographic specificity, it will resonate with development studies scholars focusing on other regions of the world." - Anibel Ferus-Comelo (Gender and Development) "A much welcomed addition to the minor genre of studies on discipline, struggle and resistance, in that it returns agency to the worker by highlighting historical contingency, returning subject status to the post-Maoist Chinese female worker." - Vera Leigh Fennell (Pacific Affairs) "Anyone concerned with the contemporary world economy, not just those with a specific interest in China, should find this book of interest. . . . [T]he book is written in a compelling manner with evident sympathy for the workers, which should make it more approachable to students." - Alan Smart (American Ethnologist) "Pun is at her best when delving beyond the surface to recount working women's attempts to impose meaning on a depreciated existence. . . . Poignant and enlightening is the author's effort to understand how women contest the brutal impositions of paid labor." - Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (Signs) "A remarkable book. . . . A vivid and persuasive first-hand account of life in China's factories in the late 20th century. . . . Anyone who cares about East Asia today, and tomorrow, should read [this book]." - Bradley Winterton (Taipei Times) "Superb. . . . [Pun Ngai's] book exemplifies the strength, flexibility, and also limitations of neo-Marsixt sociology. - Robert Skidelsky (New York Review of Books)