Precarity,Cognitive (Non-)Resistance and the Conservative Working Class in China

ABSTRACT

Workers’ resistance is crucial to understanding how the working class respond to the growing labour precarity in post-socialist China. The labour studies literature posits that inequality and volatile capital movements increase workers’ precarity and lead to stronger labour resistance, such as strikes. However, workers’ cognition as an integral part of resistance has been rarely studied. This article examines cognitive resistance by Chinese workers from different tier cities by looking at their social trust, class identity, understanding of policies and class solidarity. Despite capital movements and precarity causing more labour unrest, it does not necessarily lead to a stronger cognitive resistance. While inequality and precarity are greater in the more developed megacities with a shifting capital favourability, workers in megacities display a more conservative cognitive resistance than those from the lower-tier cities. This study of workers’ cognitive resistance provides insight into the future of the Chinese labour movement. It argues that the working class’s current cognitive non-resistance suggests that even if a window of opportunity were to appear in the wall of state oppression, workers are not cognitively prepared to coalesce into a coherent social movement that would bring about transformative changes.     

Transborder data flow issues and technology transfer

Transborder data flow and technology transfer issues have a substantial overlap. Transborder data flows represent flows of information with economic and/or cultural value. Electronic access to “know-how”, information, data, etc. is becoming more and more important to technology transfer and sharing. National transborder data flow policies either affect or can themselves be technology transfer policies.     

EDA for HLM: Visualization when Probabilistic Inference Fails

e-mail: jwbowers{at}umich.edu (corresponding author) e-mail: kwdrake{at}umich.edu Nearly all hierarchical linear models presented to politicalscience audiences are estimated using maximum likelihood undera repeated sampling interpretation of the results of hypothesistests. Maximum likelihood estimators have excellent asymptoticproperties but less than ideal small sample properties. Multilevelmodels common in political science have relatively large samplesof units like individuals nested within relatively small samplesof units like countries. Often these level-2 samples will beso small as to make inference about level-2 effects uninterpretablein the likelihood framework from which they were estimated.When analysts do not have enough data to make a compelling argumentfor repeated sampling based probabilistic inference, we showhow visualization can be a useful way of allowing scientificprogress to continue despite lack of fit between research designand asymptotic properties of maximum likelihood estimators.     

Participatory numbers for integrating knowledge and actions in development

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers for integrating locals’ and outsiders’ knowledge, as well as actions from the bottom-up and top-down, in development. It places emphasis on the contribution of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers to foster dialogue between a wide range of stakeholders, for example, local people, NGOs, government agencies and scientists, who usually seldom directly engage with each other. The article draws on case studies that discuss remittances and disasters in Samoa, and disaster risk reduction in the Philippines.     

A Greener Future

In the past year, extreme weather events have erupted across the globe, and 2010 looks to be one of the hottest years in recorded history. That has placed an onus on the Cancun conference to prompt     

Doctrine and Decision: Navigating Labour's New Constitutional Position in the Lords

The 2015–17 Parliament was the first time in history that the Conservatives were in government with no easily assembled majority in the House of Lords. This has fundamentally altered the role that Labour is able to play in the Lords and, conversely, that peers are able to play in the Labour party. Yet the political significance of this situation has not yet been fully appreciated by a party which remains culturally antagonistic and constitutionally wary of the Lords. In this paper, we draw on interviews with Labour peers, particularly the late Baroness Hollis of Heigham, who have been able to use the essentially conservative powers of the Lords for social democratic ends. We suggest that the Labour party needs to incorporate the second chamber into both its practical and symbolic politics, and to find ways to use this new source of constitutional power without accommodating to it.