Photographer captures bizarre, intimate scenes of Chinese factory life

Imagine, your favorite (expensive) gadget has a 50/50 chance of being made by some poor Chinese worker on his or her 15th hour of their shift....
 
One can wonder, what is a bigger waste: unexplored talents of a billion of Chinese, who mainly toil in factories in order to make our toys cheaper, or the fact that another two or three billion people on Earth don't even have the chance to get to their level?
 
This is the same process our society went through, in the early Industrial Age -- people left the farms and countryside for better opportunity in cities. A lot has been written about pollution in China's cities but let's remember it was the same situation in the West a few generations ago...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog

Better labour conditions need to be pressed for by the West, to save Chinese workers from explotation but the fact is factory jobs represent a step up for many Chinese citizens...it's more money than a rural farm and a chance at future advancement in the cities. These workers are not gullible or foolish.
 
Colin Corneau said:
This is the same process our society went through, in the early Industrial Age -- people left the farms and countryside for better opportunity in cities. A lot has been written about pollution in China's cities but let's remember it was the same situation in the West a few generations ago...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog

Better labour conditions need to be pressed for by the West, to save Chinese workers from explotation but the fact is factory jobs represent a step up for many Chinese citizens...it's more money than a rural farm and a chance at future advancement in the cities. These workers are not gullible or foolish.
Click to expand...

Very true Colin. And we have immigrants in our own countries who are working the same hours with the same hope.
 
Good point -- I never fail to be impressed by people who'll travel halfway across the planet to take a job, while people born here sit idle.
 
iamzip said:
Thought some here might find this interesting. The photographer used to work in the factories he is now documenting.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/23/asia/china-migrant-worker-photographer/index.html
Click to expand...

This story has been picked up across media, with no sensitivity to either the inherent irony, nor the subtleties of the situation.

The way it's reported, the photographer occupies a position analogous to the factory owner, who creates surplus value out of the labor of others. Like the capitalist, this photographer justifies his position by an appeal to identity.

The "angle" that the reports invariably take is that of a "bootstraps" narrative of a guy who saved himself from extremely harsh conditions by turning others into the object of gaze for those who remain at a safe distance.

How to document, or provide witness, in a way that doesn't use one's subjects as a means to advance one's personal brand is a question that is never discussed in these reports, presumably because the media themselves would be the first to have to change their practices in the face of such ethics.
 
The second link in my sig is the story of a girl..

"Managers would begin shifts by asking workers: “How are you?” Staff were forced to reply: “Good! Very good! Very, very good!” After that, silence was enforced."
 
Colin Corneau said:
This is the same process our society went through, in the early Industrial Age --
Click to expand...

Quaint, but not born out by the actuality of the garment industry, the agricultural industry, the transport industry, the service industry... or just about any other industry in which precarious, undocumented labor makes vital yet unrecognized and largely un- or undercompensated to the economy. Not to mention that it completely ignores the historical contribution that slavery made to wealth accumulation in the United States.

No, salaried labor with weekends off is not an evolutionary model. Exceptional forms of labor have played a crucial role in unequal development across populations, and continue to do so to this day.
 
And just because it happened before, that doesn't mean it's right. Or the best or the only way, or that it should happen again, forever.
 
Sparrow said:
republic? ... big globalised business has outgrown the nation state, no one gets to vote on this anymore
Click to expand...

" [...]

[T]he remaining provisions cover such immensely important measures as the creation of a kind of corporate supremacy over the democratically established regulations enacted by member nations. If an existing law threats to diminish profits, corporations in the TPP nations would be entitled to bring their complaint to an international dispute panel of anonymous corporate members, who could impose major financial penalties on the “offending” countries.

[...]"

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/tpp-another-upward-transfer-wealth.html
 
Ranchu said:
Clearly you've never been happy to have a cup of food rather than none.
Click to expand...

Clearly you make assumptions that make for nice sound bites. Exactly how do you know that I would never have been happy to receive a cup of food? I fear that people starve as easily in 1st world countries as in 3rd world ones.

I have absolutely no problem providing cups of food, but often my money and my time is better spent in service to those right here in my own community.
 
*Sign* This topic comes up again...

Let me just say this, as someone who grew up in China and spent most of childhood in a now-deserted village close to the Russian border, that most people here are riding pretty high horses.

How many of you have ever actually been hungry, as in wondering what day your next hot meal would be? Actually seen peasant life in one of less fortunate nations? These people - difficult though their life is - are infinitely luckier and better-off than those who stayed in the villages. And yet people complain about how "unfair" factory life is.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom