The Transformation And Reconstruction Of The Former State-owned Enterprise Worker's Identity: View The Changes Of From A Workers' Cultural Life Perspective

Since reform and opening policy was implemented and especially since the late 80s in 20th Century, in the course of economic system transition and social structure change in China, the living condition identity, and status of the working-class or the workers have greatly changed. In the past, the working-class dominated in the nation's politics, economy, and society; they had strong consciousness of master and sense of identity. While after the reform and opening-up policy, undergone the recombination of the market and capital, as well as state-owned enterprise restructuring, the working-class faced with a stratum differentiation in the interior of its own. The workers degraded in the social status, meanwhile, in terms of economic status, they became a low-income social group. In addition, the cultural activity space in the work-unit system has gradually decreased or even vanished, and the contents of worker's cultural life have greatly changed, which undoubtedly reflect the changes of the working-class's political, economic, and social status. The existing studies about Chinese traditional industrial workers mainly refer to the following aspects:social stratification, politics of workers, worker's movement, labor union and organization, as well as the transition of state-owned enterprise, laid-off workers and their struggles, but rarely concerned with workers' cultural life and their everyday life. My innovation is to look into the workers'everyday life and cultural life in the former state-owned factory as a perspective to study the worker's identification, and to discuss the issue of worker's identity change and adaptation in the context of profound social change in China. I'm especially interested in discovering these changes and the factors that influence these changes. This dissertation tries to answer the following questions: does Chinese working-class or worker's identity change? How do the workers themselves regard their identity change? After losing their "honorable" identity as the former state-owned factory workers, how do they reconstruct their life order? Based on the fieldwork, I find that the workers do experience an identity change process, which embodies in two aspects:on one hand, they categorize themselves as members of vulnerable group; on the other hand, they still have nostalgia for their identity as the workers in the past work-unit system and they want to regain this identity, which embodies on that they always distinguish themselves from other social members, especially from the farmers. In addition, through investigation and interview, I have found that most of them are willing to reconstruct their cultural life in order to reconstruct their identity, and they have initiated a voluntary group and organize many cultural activities to realize this.