No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

David Bray has produced an insightful study of the Chinese danwei (work unit) system. His study spans the Yan'an period (1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945) to the decline of the urban danwei in the reform era. Within urban China, he believes "the workplace was seen as the ultimate organ of urban governance" (p. 101), and he understands the danwei as the defining force in urban people's collective and individual lives.Bray's study is based on an enthusiastic use of Michel Foucault's theories, a careful reading of Chinese sources, and his own experience in urban China. The use of Foucault's theories adds a complicating dimension because not everyone will be ready to follow Bray's application of Foucault's concepts of "genealogy," "governmentality" and "pastoral" leadership, and "biopower." Still, Foucault's fascination with the relative nature of truth, the penetration of social control into even the most secret corners of modern life fit remarkably well with the Maoist era. Foucault's ideas clearly shaped Bray's thinking, yet even for the uninitiated or unappreciative, Bray's account is clear enough, even when presented in Foucauldian foliage.Unlike some others who have found the danwei's origins in non-communist industrial practices or the Chinese Nationalists' wartime factories, Bray traces its origins to Yan'an. He emphasizes how during the Yan'an era, the communist central authorities out of necessity granted considerable independence to individual danwei. Further, he argues that the logic of the danwei system meant that the organization and its leadership, even while following central direction after 1949, sustained itself by protecting its own production and consumption. Such interests had to be met in order to retain the support of each danwei's members. These qualities, Bray believes, created a milieuwhat Foucault might call an episteme-in which the danwei became both an organ of control and means of resisting control.