ENGENDERING THE WORLDS OF LABOR - WOMEN WORKERS, LABOR-MARKETS, AND PRODUCTION POLITICS IN THE SOUTH CHINA ECONOMIC MIRACLE

I conducted a comparative ethnographic study of two gendered regimes o f production in two factories in the south China manufacturing region. Owned by the same enterprise, managed by the same team of managers, p roducing the same products, and using the same technical labor process es, the two factories developed distinctive patterns of shop-floor pol itics, termed ''localistic despotism'' and ''familial hegemony.'' To e xplain these patterns, I argue that the social organization of local l abor markers produces diverse conditions of workers' dependence. The d ifferent dependencies determine management's strategies of control, wo rkers' collective practices, and their mutual constructions of workers ' gender. This case study lends to critiques and reconstruction of the theory of production politics and the feminist literature on women wo rkers in global factories.