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The following is part of
Cornell Contemporary China Initiative

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Lecture Series under the Cornell
East Asia Program- The arguments and

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viewpoints of this talk belong solely
to the speaker- We hope you enjoy.

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I'm here to produce introduce
my book manuscripts and

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it's tentatively titled "Scaling
the Global Supply Chains for

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Fast Fashion: Transnational Migrant
Entrepreneurship in Guanzhou, China".

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And this manuscript explores migrants'
experiences of global fast fashion

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through their engagements with what I
call craft-like practices of garment mass

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manufacture in Guanzhou A lot of their
activities take place in very small scale

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sort of informal makeshift workshops
that serve the global supply chains for

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fast fashion And
fast fashion as I define it is the speedy,

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just-in-time delivery of
designer-inspired garments and

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accessories and as an industry
it relies on the outsourcing

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of manufacturing in laboring capabilities
of places across the Global South.

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It emphasizes the cyclical and rapid
delivery of trendy low priced clothing and

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in my project I'll show how various
forms of mass production and

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social organizations are linked
across a diversity of temporal,

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spatial and subjective scales and

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these connections which, I'll argue
from a larger perspective, are forged

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through cross cultural encounters which
I'll elaborate in this presentation today.

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So when I first began my
dissertation research back in

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2010 I was really motivated with the
question of why the Made in China label

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is often associated with low quality
low price and even counterfeit goods.

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And these questions took
me to this area of Guandong

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in southern China particularly
in the Pearl River Delta region.

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And in Guangzhou, formerly known as
Canton- the trading port of Canton-

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which is about an hour a half two
hours drive north of Hong Kong.

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And this region was one of
the first special economic zones

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which was designated and established
as part of Deng XiaoPing's introduction

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of market reforms in the late 1970s and
early 1980s.

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And this was the site for

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the experimentation of foreign direct
investment and export led industry.

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In places like Shenzhen for example prior
to market reforms there was nothing but

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a farming form of fishing village
agricultural flat lands that were largely

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uninhabited or sparsely inhabited
by local lineage members and

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once market reforms were instituted
migrants from all across all different

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parts of China had migrated here and had
built this city literally from the ground

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in order to serve as one of
the experimental sites of market economy.

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In part of the long history
of industrialization and

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market reforms took me to this
southeastern corner of Guanzhou and

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today this still stands as an urban
village which is locally called a chéng

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zhōng cūn (城中村) which literally
translates to a village within a city and

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as you can see here this is a very
modest type of working class enclave

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which is surrounded by more modern sort of

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testament to urbanization So

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literally it's sort of surrounded
by pressures of urbanisation.

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And it's still held as
an administrative site

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that is not fully rural as you can see but
it's not fully urban either

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what's happening is that lineage
members still hold the user

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rights to this land and what happened
before Maoist collectivization

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was that this land was controlled
largely through lineages.

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And lineages are sort of oftentimes
organized through belief in a common

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ancestor or common surname and land was
largely passed down through fathers and

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sons Now after collectivization with
the introduction of market reforms

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this land was de-collectivize
it got redistributed back to

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lineage members and they were
redistributed in individual plots based on

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household based on the number of
members within the household and

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now with pressures to urbanize
many of these urban right or

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user rights to the land now have to be
individually negotiated with the municipal

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government in order for these user rights
to be transferred back to the municipal

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government of Guanzhou and
be considered properly urban So

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this is sort of this moment of
suspension that I see it and

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right now it serves as a working
class migrant enclave which

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offers affordable housing large
scale factory community and

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a gateway for newly arrived
migrants in the city of Guanzhou.

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As former agricultural villages they
stand in the shadow of the city and

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there are the results of unbridled
urbanization over the past decades and

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you can see that they're physically
enclosed by pressures of urbanisation

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into the concrete jungle so
they differ from city neighborhoods which

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are considered directly state owned
land whereas in urban villages

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lineage members still retain
the user rights to this land.

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So neighborhood communities
still sort of manage and

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regulate what's happening in
these urban villages Oftentimes

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there are migrant schools that open up
They run clinics- medical clinics- for

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migrant communities and they're often
also policed by sort of semi private

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officers that sort of
manage the sanitation,

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the fire safety and even traffic of what
goes on within these urban villages.

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So within this particular
garment district in Guangzhou

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a number of large scale factory fabric
markets and factories have sort of

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mushroomed in this moment of suspension
while these negotiations are taking place

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a lot of the former lineage members
now have become rentier class

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they rent a lot of their apartment houses
they've erected to newly arrived migrants

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who come here to experiment in
different forms of entrepreneurship and

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to take part in this
garment clothing industry.

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In this place here is the fabric market-
a very sort of modern looking very large

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scale fabric market that was once
initially invested by collective members.

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And over about a decade or
so they transferred

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the land and the property of this market
back to the municipal government.

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So right now it's directly owned and
controlled by the municipal government but

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as you can see, as you can imagine,
there's been a windfall of profits

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that's been sort of fell into
the pockets of lineage members.

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But in terms of everyday life and
everyday activities they're driven by

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newly arrived migrants from
other places of China.

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And we could see if you take a walk
through these urban villages you could

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see residues of everyday life here.

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There are still ancestral temples
that are still standing and

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here you get sort of visual remnants
of mothers taking care of their

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children hanging out in these ancestral
temples a lot of them are migrants

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from outside of this urban village
if you come here sometimes you

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would see maybe a leader of a lineage or
a leader of a surname

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within the lineage who had just
come to take care of this temple or

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tell stories or
to invite people tourists or other and

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visitors here and tell stories
about the history of this place but

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they're largely sort of visited and
inhabited by migrant, rural migrants from

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other parts of Guandong in China.

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If you also walk around if you sort
of explore more into the interior of

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the urban village you'll see
sort of these avenues or

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these alleyways where a lot of these
individual store fronts have popped up to

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serve the commodity
chains of fast fashion.

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You could see here samples
of fabrics being sold,

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various forms of accessories,
the hustle and

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bustle of traffic coming in and
out according to the cycles of fashion.

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And if you walked in closer
behind the fabric markets

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this is a also a very
industrialized space.

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And here this is where
the manufacturing- the informal,

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sort of craft-like manufacturing- takes
place within these small scale workshops.

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And this is these sort of workshops
are often cool called jiā gōng chǎng

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(加工厂) which literally means
the site of added labor for

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members of this industry it's usually
referred to as a cut-and-sew assembly

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factory where clients would,
from the outside,

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come into the urban villages and they
are responsible of coordinating different

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types of materials They bring in samples
They bring in fabric specifications,

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the actual fabrics the accessories that
are necessary to create a garment.

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And the owners of this and then
the employees that the owners hire would

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be responsible only for the finishing
of these garments they would assemble

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these garments small volumes of about
a few hundred to a thousand per piece.

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And then they would package it and
then the clients would come in,

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pick them up and
then take them to wholesale markets or

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other sort of retail
outlets around the world.

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So many of these jiā gōng chǎng (加工厂) or

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assembly factories are owned and operated
by one of the members of one of the first

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generation of migrant workers who
had come to Shenzhen, Dongguan,

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Guanzhou around the 80s and
90s and over time

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they would sort of work their way
up along the management hierarchy

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to become managers of an assembly line for
example They accumulate skills

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in garment mass manufacture They
accumulate some modest form of capital and

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then they would follow maybe a family
member or a village a local villager or

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to these urban villages And they would
rent these small compact spaces so

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that they could call themselves boss or
lǎo bǎn (老板).

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And this is what's very interesting
to me because oftentimes

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you often think of these sort of small
workshops as very insignificant.

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They're very small
They're almost invisible.

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And so what came out from these so

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my encounters here were the following
questions: How do these small scale

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informal workshops operated by migrants
from Chinese countryside become global,

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like, how do these seemingly
out-of-the-way and insignificant sites

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anchor their relatively low tech
capabilities upon the high tech

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consumer driven transnational
supply chains of fast fashion?

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How do migrant laborers and

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other market participants know
the conditions of their displacement?

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And what do these otherwise invisible
spaces tell us about transnational

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connections in general?

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So there's three groups of market
participants that I'm studying-

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one are migrant entrepreneurs who own and
operate these small scale

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informal workshops,
two- the temporary migrant workers

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based on piece work piece-rate
work of which they are hired and

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oftentimes this group are not the dǎ
gōng mèi (打工妹) that labor scholars often

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referred to These are usually either
very young maybe in the early

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teens before they're they're married and
they follow their parents here or

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they're very old,
more the elderly in their forty's

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in the fifty's that are sort of
their bodies have sort of been bent

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sort of exhausted from the work
that takes place in the larger,

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more centralized Fordist factories and
finally I'm also studying for

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the purpose of my presentation
today the Chinese agents and

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wholesalers who broker
the market exchanges between

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the migrants entrepreneurs and
migrant workers in this urban village and

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the transnational clients
which they serve.

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Part of my argument is to
lay out that the migrant

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workers labor in scaling
the global supply chains entails

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working out of several contradictions and
they work within the worlds of craft and

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industry, the rural and
the urban, formal- informal,

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wage work-entrepreneurship and
fashion and counterfeit and

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I lay out the contradictions in two
ethnographic stories that I present here.

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And as in this labor of meeting
different types of the time spaces

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of craft-industry, rural-urban and
fashion-counterfeit that

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present competing desires and
aspirations for the good life and

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this in turn subjects them to various
types of displacement and precariousness.

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And some of those contradictions include
freedom from wage work on the one hand,

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entrepreneurial autonomy
on the one hand and

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then emplacement and
feeling stuck in the factory or

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the workshop on the other They
also include aspirations for

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global travel, engagement with
transnational clients on the one hand and

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then exposure to exploitation
on the other and

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then finally they also
aspire to the fast money and

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participate in that on the one hand and
then participation in this hyper

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competitive market for
fast fashion on the other and so

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in their everyday life migrants have to
work out these cultural contradictions and

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dynamics in order to link and
scale up their entrepreneurial

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practices to the transnational
supply chains of fast fashion and

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these the working out of this become
discursive sites of misunderstanding,

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difference and
negotiation which really color migrants'

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encounters with their transnational
clients and so overall I hope that my

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book project will contribute to
literature on informal economies,

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infrastructure to show how
sort of anthropological

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concepts such as cross cultural
encounters, contact-zones,

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frictions can inform us about
what it takes to create or

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forge global connections across
different times and spaces so

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I'm going to get into the details of
craft-like modes of mass production.

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So as I've said- introduced- earlier
Guanzhou's garment district sort of

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sort of really mushroomed during
the 1990s when longtime members

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of the former agricultural collectives
sort of sold their user rights or

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began to think of their user rights as
commodities and sold them to the municipal

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government and then in turn renting
the sort of houses to migrant workers

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in order to become bosses.

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A lot of this commodity
chains operate according

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to craft like principles As you can see
they're very small scale- the machines

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are very modest -they're often secondhand
machines that are brought in from larger

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Fordist centralised factories
from outside of Guanzhou and

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they employ about eight to ten workers at
a time A lot of times workers are sort of

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temporarily called upon from a day
at a time from the nearby bridges or

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nearby avenues where they advertised
based on very small sort of chalk

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boards the detail the specifications
of the order, you know,

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how many orders are there, what specific
fabrics are necessary to create these

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garments and fabrics determine a lot
of the skills that are involved

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in the creation of this garment as
well as the time that it takes for

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a worker to finish their orders and
to earn their wages.

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This is the place where I had
conducted my research, here,

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and I this is owned by a migrant couple
coming out from Guanxi province and

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they began their lives here as
wage workers in Shenzhen and

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they had experimented in different types
of businesses- one is in wholesaling,

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00:18:42,920 --> 00:18:48,250
selling sort of small novelties and then
gradually sort of coming back into garment

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00:18:48,250 --> 00:18:50,829
industry by following
a family member here.

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00:18:53,140 --> 00:18:58,126
In another site you can see then different

224
00:18:58,126 --> 00:19:03,620
sort of parts of the supply
chains being sort of broken up

225
00:19:03,620 --> 00:19:09,439
into these individual sites here there
are workers that are just responsible for

226
00:19:09,439 --> 00:19:13,960
snipping loose threads
of jeans in packaging.

227
00:19:15,229 --> 00:19:20,460
Here we have a different
site where migrants then

228
00:19:20,460 --> 00:19:25,590
are sort of piecing together
these individual commodities and

229
00:19:25,590 --> 00:19:28,909
placing them onto belts
which are then later sold to

230
00:19:28,909 --> 00:19:33,192
global chains such as Forever 21 and H&M.

231
00:19:34,570 --> 00:19:39,630
And if you were to become
sort of a designer here

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00:19:39,630 --> 00:19:44,740
you could do that by coming here in and
buying supplies and

233
00:19:44,740 --> 00:19:49,385
samples, bringing them to a fabric
where they're sort of constructed,

234
00:19:49,385 --> 00:19:55,074
dyed, and threaded together You
could also buy supplies and

235
00:19:55,074 --> 00:19:59,908
accessories that are necessary
here Pick up a bulk of fabrics and

236
00:19:59,908 --> 00:20:05,440
then bring them through these petty
cabs to these assembly sites And

237
00:20:05,440 --> 00:20:08,530
so because that they're so small scale and

238
00:20:08,530 --> 00:20:13,740
rely on sort of these modest second hand
machines this sort of brings back to

239
00:20:13,740 --> 00:20:18,920
the return of craft- like mass manufacture
that some sociologists of Labor and

240
00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:25,119
Industrialization celebrate but
what I argue here the problem is that even

241
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:28,449
though the migrants can
call themselves bosses and

242
00:20:28,449 --> 00:20:33,480
enjoy some aspect of autonomy
the idea of labor is no

243
00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:39,160
longer politicized rather they describe
their labor in terms of entrepreneurship

244
00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:44,657
that they call themselves designers
now entrepreneurs and bosses and

245
00:20:44,657 --> 00:20:49,300
that they enjoy their freedom
by either denying clients

246
00:20:49,300 --> 00:20:54,160
by saying no to protect certain
orders that come in, or,

247
00:20:55,230 --> 00:21:00,850
and also sort of gain some
social capital here because this

248
00:21:00,850 --> 00:21:06,659
return to craft like principles, the idea
of reputation, this masculine form of

249
00:21:06,659 --> 00:21:12,850
a craftsman is now sort of being
embedded in these everyday practices but

250
00:21:12,850 --> 00:21:16,775
as you'll see this type
of accumulation is only,

251
00:21:16,775 --> 00:21:20,890
is very limited and so
in terms of financial or

252
00:21:20,890 --> 00:21:24,920
even social capital it feels
as if there is an autonomy but

253
00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:30,381
there's no meaningful form of
accumulation that migrants men can

254
00:21:30,381 --> 00:21:35,840
enjoy or can stake a claim to and

255
00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:40,770
so I'm going to read to some
what is some ethnographic

256
00:21:40,770 --> 00:21:45,909
vignettes that illustrate the everyday
life of this particular urban village.

257
00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:52,253
So when I came here in this
garment district in 2010

258
00:21:52,253 --> 00:21:55,875
ABC rely primarily on working
clients both domestic and

259
00:21:55,875 --> 00:21:59,579
transnational who sourced garments for
overseas exports.

260
00:21:59,579 --> 00:22:04,299
And these clients serve the commodity
chains of regions across China as

261
00:22:04,299 --> 00:22:09,160
well as across East Asia,
Southeast Asia, West Africa, Europe and

262
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:14,230
Latin America Oftentimes factory
owners like the Wangs who operate

263
00:22:14,230 --> 00:22:19,289
this jiā gōng chǎng relied on a portfolio
of clients coming from different

264
00:22:19,289 --> 00:22:23,800
areas of the world in order to minimize
their risks of financial losses and

265
00:22:23,800 --> 00:22:29,039
clients and unreasonable demands as
well as seasonal fluctuations or

266
00:22:29,039 --> 00:22:33,590
market slowdowns in any one region
of the world Over time they had

267
00:22:33,590 --> 00:22:37,520
learned that collaborating with
multiple transnational clients

268
00:22:37,520 --> 00:22:42,559
required the exhausting work of switching
between different production rhythms and

269
00:22:42,559 --> 00:22:47,329
here I underscore the role of
temporality as is linked to labor

270
00:22:47,329 --> 00:22:51,949
in migrant entrepreneurs' experiences and
their encounters with their transnational

271
00:22:51,949 --> 00:22:57,110
clients These paces often varied
according to fast and slow or

272
00:22:57,110 --> 00:23:01,890
between long exhausting hours and no
business at all for instance when domestic

273
00:23:01,890 --> 00:23:06,220
market decline during the summer months
workshops rely on production requests from

274
00:23:06,220 --> 00:23:10,080
Europe and North American clients
who prepare for the fall season.

275
00:23:11,490 --> 00:23:16,009
Periods of sustained activity are often
followed by long intervals of idleness or

276
00:23:16,009 --> 00:23:20,490
unemployment Unexpected periods of
idleness frequently became sources

277
00:23:20,490 --> 00:23:24,930
of financial concern for migrant
entrepreneurs Once during a week long idle

278
00:23:24,930 --> 00:23:30,079
phase between orders I suggested to
Mrs Wang that she took the time to catch

279
00:23:30,079 --> 00:23:34,509
up on sleep and rest She then immediately
responded: "You don't know what it's like

280
00:23:34,509 --> 00:23:38,150
to be in our line of work- We can't take
breaks because we don't know where our

281
00:23:38,150 --> 00:23:42,420
money will come from" Her statement thus
reveals the challenges that she and her

282
00:23:42,420 --> 00:23:46,979
workers must face in balancing demanding
work schedules during garment production

283
00:23:46,979 --> 00:23:52,420
hours which consume their everyday
working hour with their concerns of

284
00:23:52,420 --> 00:23:58,350
earning money to cover their living costs
and family expenses during idle periods.

285
00:23:58,350 --> 00:24:04,440
Now the work of switching between
multiple temporalities of manufacture

286
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:09,260
frequently complicated collaborations with
migrant entrepreneurs and their clients

287
00:24:09,260 --> 00:24:13,799
This was particularly true when machines
broke down, when the delivery of supplies

288
00:24:13,799 --> 00:24:18,980
were delayed or when itinerant
brokers simply refused to show up.

289
00:24:20,109 --> 00:24:25,619
So the other aspect of this craft-like
manufacture is that even though bosses

290
00:24:25,619 --> 00:24:30,780
can call themselves sort of,
can claim their own autonomy they

291
00:24:30,780 --> 00:24:35,559
have very little control over there the
workers that they employ A lot of times

292
00:24:35,559 --> 00:24:41,250
workers would talk back about if
there is any contestation about

293
00:24:41,250 --> 00:24:46,649
a particular detail or
sometimes workers just refuse to show up.

294
00:24:47,809 --> 00:24:50,300
Or they simply just walk
out in the middle of work.

295
00:24:50,300 --> 00:24:55,183
There was one time where there was
an elderly worker which we have

296
00:24:55,183 --> 00:25:00,428
often called as Zhu shīfu and
who came from the province of Sichuan and

297
00:25:00,428 --> 00:25:05,403
he had gained a reputation for
this sort of classic idea of work and

298
00:25:05,403 --> 00:25:09,924
labor and everybody paid him
respect within the factory and

299
00:25:09,924 --> 00:25:15,802
one day he had left- - he and his wife
both worked in one of these workshops and

300
00:25:15,802 --> 00:25:20,504
during lunch he and his wife had
stepped out to get some food and

301
00:25:20,504 --> 00:25:24,936
when they returned they found
a young worker sitting in his

302
00:25:24,936 --> 00:25:29,860
coveted seat in his coveted
position within the small factory.

303
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:36,630
And this for him was a sign of
disrespect that a young worker

304
00:25:36,630 --> 00:25:40,409
had taken his place within the factory and

305
00:25:40,409 --> 00:25:46,360
he felt disrespected and was angry and had
simply taken his wife and walked out and

306
00:25:46,360 --> 00:25:51,799
the migrant workers the owners the factory
couple who I became very close

307
00:25:51,799 --> 00:25:57,439
friends with were disappointed that he
had walked out because they relied on him

308
00:25:57,439 --> 00:26:02,770
to help with their order but, again,
they have very little control

309
00:26:02,770 --> 00:26:07,600
over the employees that they employ and
so over time

310
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:11,250
they had not they realize that they had
little control of their employees as well

311
00:26:11,250 --> 00:26:15,230
as little control over the temporality of
manufacture that they were engaged in.

312
00:26:17,020 --> 00:26:20,289
Subcontracted agents would often come and

313
00:26:20,289 --> 00:26:25,570
they would and the factory migrant
owners would often have to create

314
00:26:25,570 --> 00:26:30,660
co-operate with multiple contractors and
they would have to coordinate

315
00:26:30,660 --> 00:26:35,076
time wise the multiple
processes over mass production.

316
00:26:35,076 --> 00:26:41,848
Disputes over quality often erupted among
the workers as well as with their clients.

317
00:26:41,848 --> 00:26:47,100
And the Wangs would often
encounter clients from France or

318
00:26:47,100 --> 00:26:51,129
U.S. or South Korea that made
unreasonable demands and

319
00:26:51,129 --> 00:26:54,469
they would,
after having prepared their production,

320
00:26:54,469 --> 00:26:59,559
the clients was simply just
refuse to pay the Wangs.

321
00:26:59,559 --> 00:27:04,140
The clients would just disappear even
though the Wangs would prepare an order

322
00:27:04,140 --> 00:27:09,022
and so quality often became
a site of contestation

323
00:27:09,022 --> 00:27:14,090
along these sort of multiple
relationships across the supply chain.

324
00:27:14,090 --> 00:27:19,110
Sometimes even these conflicts
often become productive sites

325
00:27:19,110 --> 00:27:25,040
in order to see then where power is being
sort of located within a certain exchange.

326
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:32,272
Oftentimes because these supply chains
become invisible in the sort of upstream

327
00:27:32,272 --> 00:27:38,423
or downstream of these supply chains
Oftentimes all you see when you're working

328
00:27:38,423 --> 00:27:44,122
within these workshops are suggestions
of other bosses along the chain and

329
00:27:44,122 --> 00:27:49,278
it is along when these sort of
disputes over equality erupt where you

330
00:27:49,278 --> 00:27:54,796
realize that your boss is accountable
to another boss along the chain and

331
00:27:54,796 --> 00:27:59,953
so these sort of moments of these
disputes and contestations become

332
00:27:59,953 --> 00:28:04,658
very productive of understanding
how these dynamics work but

333
00:28:04,658 --> 00:28:09,181
they, at the same time,
they present a lot of struggles for

334
00:28:09,181 --> 00:28:13,300
these migrants in order to
sustain their workshops.

335
00:28:13,300 --> 00:28:18,253
So here are some other sort of
scenes that one would find here

336
00:28:18,253 --> 00:28:22,714
in this urban village This
particular workshop takes

337
00:28:22,714 --> 00:28:27,274
place within an abandoned temple and
when my friend and

338
00:28:27,274 --> 00:28:33,318
I came to visit it was sort of casually
rented out by a South Korean boss and

339
00:28:33,318 --> 00:28:39,365
had invited or hired a group of young
Sichuanese migrant workers here and

340
00:28:39,365 --> 00:28:44,120
you could see the sort of informal
sort of set up that these

341
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:48,975
workshops take place- Migrants
live here in the very same

342
00:28:48,975 --> 00:28:54,180
sites of which they work and
they also eat and socialize here.

343
00:28:57,830 --> 00:29:01,420
So cooking activities so
this is both a factory and

344
00:29:01,420 --> 00:29:05,330
a home life A lot of their
socialization takes place.

345
00:29:06,649 --> 00:29:12,289
As you can see here the proximity
of which they work is so close and

346
00:29:12,289 --> 00:29:17,759
long hours sort of facilitate close ties,

347
00:29:17,759 --> 00:29:23,180
sort of intimate relationships, that
kind of form a bond even dating romantic

348
00:29:23,180 --> 00:29:27,899
connections are made here but
at the same time it's also very fluid and

349
00:29:27,899 --> 00:29:30,859
very precarious Workers
kind of come in and

350
00:29:30,859 --> 00:29:35,649
go based on the production orders
Some stay longer than others.

351
00:29:37,149 --> 00:29:40,289
But it is a very highly fluid and
dynamic space.

352
00:29:43,420 --> 00:29:48,420
So now I take you through the wholesale
market where the commodities

353
00:29:48,420 --> 00:29:52,520
that are produced in this urban
village are now taken here and

354
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:58,289
sold in garment wholesale markets in
different places across Guanzhou.

355
00:29:58,289 --> 00:30:04,359
This particular wholesale market is called
shísānháng or thirteen factories and

356
00:30:04,359 --> 00:30:11,859
this is the site where the sort of the
British colonists would in the decades,

357
00:30:11,859 --> 00:30:17,559
the years leading to the Opium War,
had traded with Guanzhou merchants.

358
00:30:18,900 --> 00:30:21,589
Even here you could see sort of an emblem

359
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:28,122
to those old colonial trade that taken
place in the Guanzhou tree port.

360
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:33,990
And it's also a site of
transnational trade and fast money.

361
00:30:35,979 --> 00:30:41,419
Here you could see close
by in other wholesale

362
00:30:41,419 --> 00:30:46,225
markets the sort of the density of trade
and traffic that these spaces attract.

363
00:30:47,290 --> 00:30:50,353
And it's also a very
transnational space so

364
00:30:50,353 --> 00:30:56,000
each wholesale market sort of sells and
specializes in a particular commodity.

365
00:30:56,000 --> 00:31:00,504
There are shoes' wholesale markets,
wholesale markets for

366
00:31:00,504 --> 00:31:03,368
handbags, different types of shoes.

367
00:31:04,709 --> 00:31:10,219
They also serve different markets-
some are a Korean market,

368
00:31:10,219 --> 00:31:15,929
some being a more European or
North American market And

369
00:31:15,929 --> 00:31:20,799
so this sort of creates different
not only neighborhoods but

370
00:31:20,799 --> 00:31:25,549
also different communities of which
traders from different parts of China and

371
00:31:25,549 --> 00:31:30,499
different parts of the world kind of
settle and open up sort of small scale

372
00:31:30,499 --> 00:31:35,539
trading to take place or
to engage in the garment industry here.

373
00:31:37,319 --> 00:31:44,079
Some of them as you could see
are very transnational and

374
00:31:44,079 --> 00:31:47,879
they sell different types of clothing.

375
00:31:49,229 --> 00:31:54,008
Here is if you walk into one of the
wholesale markets you could see the sort

376
00:31:54,008 --> 00:31:59,458
of I'm sure many of you have walked
into sort of markets like this

377
00:31:59,458 --> 00:32:06,408
where the density of not only commodities
but people is sort of overwhelming.

378
00:32:07,838 --> 00:32:13,268
In this particular market for as you can
see here the spatial organization of this

379
00:32:13,268 --> 00:32:19,039
market is key to how migrant entrepreneurs
experience the contradictions-

380
00:32:19,039 --> 00:32:24,139
here the contradiction is between
fashion originality and design copying.

381
00:32:26,349 --> 00:32:31,959
A lot of this you could see here are,
you've got a spectrum of different

382
00:32:31,959 --> 00:32:37,099
trends and different designs and some
look like as if they have been copied or

383
00:32:37,099 --> 00:32:40,838
they're referred to as shān zhài
(山寨)- sort of the gray market,

384
00:32:40,838 --> 00:32:45,889
the in-between space between original and
copy but what's really interesting

385
00:32:45,889 --> 00:32:51,158
here is that each of these stalls
are nearly individually owned and

386
00:32:51,158 --> 00:32:54,978
operated by migrant entrepreneurs.

387
00:32:54,978 --> 00:32:57,768
The rents here are incredibly high.

388
00:32:57,768 --> 00:33:06,229
It would be over about ten thousand RMB
each month to rent which is maybe four or

389
00:33:06,229 --> 00:33:12,259
six times the average monthly salary of
a particular, of a Guanzhou resident.

390
00:33:12,259 --> 00:33:17,966
And the trends of which
here cycle fairly quickly.

391
00:33:19,519 --> 00:33:24,748
And because of the density of which these
stalls are constructed a lot of times

392
00:33:24,748 --> 00:33:30,219
competing minor entrepreneurs
would say- would

393
00:33:30,219 --> 00:33:34,598
claim- that their competitors
are copying his or her design.

394
00:33:35,719 --> 00:33:40,559
And so there's a fervent competition and

395
00:33:40,559 --> 00:33:44,659
the sort of urgency for fast money
that sort of characterize the space.

396
00:33:47,069 --> 00:33:51,188
You could see here the different
types of clothing that are sold and

397
00:33:51,188 --> 00:33:55,399
a lot of them are young women
often in their late teens

398
00:33:55,399 --> 00:34:00,069
early twenty's who are coming from
different parts of Guangdong or

399
00:34:00,069 --> 00:34:03,739
different parts of China
to sort of take up this

400
00:34:03,739 --> 00:34:08,499
sort of entrepreneurial activity in
order to be purveyors of fashion to be

401
00:34:08,499 --> 00:34:13,079
part of this fashion world and
to call themselves entrepreneurs.

402
00:34:14,419 --> 00:34:19,679
A lot of them would
have to coordinate with

403
00:34:22,179 --> 00:34:25,489
different materials they would
sort of scour through magazines or

404
00:34:25,489 --> 00:34:31,499
internet sites and then go to the urban
villages of which I introduce to you and

405
00:34:31,499 --> 00:34:36,789
coordinate the materials, coordinate this
mass manufacture in order to deliver these

406
00:34:36,789 --> 00:34:42,309
designs here Now you could
see these illustrations

407
00:34:42,309 --> 00:34:46,539
that the spatial organization of these
floors which is sort of the lower

408
00:34:46,539 --> 00:34:50,559
part of the floors look very different
from the upper parts of these floors.

409
00:34:51,728 --> 00:34:57,049
This looks a lot more formalized and
it looks,

410
00:34:57,049 --> 00:35:03,049
and a lot of these packages have higher
volumes, even the type of clothing

411
00:35:03,049 --> 00:35:07,699
looks very different from
the clothing that's sold down here

412
00:35:07,699 --> 00:35:12,639
A lot of the stalls here serve
the markets in Southeast Asia or

413
00:35:12,639 --> 00:35:17,179
in the Middle East or
different parts of China and

414
00:35:17,179 --> 00:35:21,899
these are the competition or
the cycle of competition and

415
00:35:21,899 --> 00:35:27,359
the cycle of new trends in fashion
operate a lot more quickly than the ones

416
00:35:27,359 --> 00:35:32,419
that operate here A lot of times because
the volumes are bigger they're sold to

417
00:35:32,419 --> 00:35:37,867
outlets such as Japan South Korea
North America Europe Africa

418
00:35:37,867 --> 00:35:43,298
North America Northern Europe
that the markets

419
00:35:43,298 --> 00:35:48,489
along the sort of higher, higher
upper hierarchies of the value chain

420
00:35:49,848 --> 00:35:53,359
sort of are reflected within the spatial
organizations of this market.

421
00:35:55,368 --> 00:36:02,363
There's also, so this is the way
I've sort of the scaling and

422
00:36:02,363 --> 00:36:07,259
the cycling of this fashion is
a form of which the scaling of

423
00:36:07,259 --> 00:36:12,139
these clothing get sort of linked up to
the transnational chains Another aspect

424
00:36:12,139 --> 00:36:16,829
of this market that is very
interesting here is that even

425
00:36:16,829 --> 00:36:22,609
the spaces are turned over according
to the cycles of fashion so

426
00:36:22,609 --> 00:36:27,399
a lot of the the fashion season important
fashion seasons happen in the fall and so

427
00:36:27,399 --> 00:36:30,559
in the summer months this
market completely closes and

428
00:36:30,559 --> 00:36:36,709
the building management come
here to renew leases for

429
00:36:36,709 --> 00:36:41,579
those who lease these individual stalls
A lot of times depending on how their

430
00:36:41,579 --> 00:36:46,809
business goes a lot of the leases
would not renew their contracts or

431
00:36:46,809 --> 00:36:51,588
they're forced to remodel and
a lot of this remodelling offers

432
00:36:51,588 --> 00:36:56,517
a type of sort of collusive exchanges
with the building managers.

433
00:36:56,517 --> 00:37:01,228
A lot of times building managers would
kind of walk through these aisles and see

434
00:37:02,629 --> 00:37:08,129
if there's a business that's particularly,
sort of,

435
00:37:08,129 --> 00:37:13,719
particularly doing well then they
would sort of extract fees based on

436
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:19,609
electrical wires or they would have to ask
them to remodel a particular space and

437
00:37:19,609 --> 00:37:24,889
charge them with even
nailing a nail onto the wall.

438
00:37:25,899 --> 00:37:30,999
And within this building there's even
a construction company that serves

439
00:37:30,999 --> 00:37:35,679
the sort of remodelling aspect of
this economy within this building and

440
00:37:35,679 --> 00:37:40,649
so the fact that there's a construction
company within the building sort of shows

441
00:37:40,649 --> 00:37:46,129
that and the type of regulation that takes
place among building managers here and

442
00:37:48,458 --> 00:37:51,438
my work shows that how
the cycles of fashion

443
00:37:51,438 --> 00:37:55,729
sort of coordinate with these collusive
relationships that happen here and

444
00:37:55,729 --> 00:38:01,708
a lot of it are sort of articulated in
fashion languages and fashion cycles.

445
00:38:04,359 --> 00:38:09,319
And so the key aspect of a lot of these
extractive, extractive activities

446
00:38:09,319 --> 00:38:15,259
competition has to do with
charges of design copying for

447
00:38:15,259 --> 00:38:20,509
those that work in these lower levels,
when they talk about their labor or

448
00:38:20,509 --> 00:38:24,026
their entrepreneur activities they
are much more sort of direct or

449
00:38:24,026 --> 00:38:29,539
honest that they use design copying
in order to create their products.

450
00:38:30,939 --> 00:38:34,149
They don't have a lot of
edge there not because

451
00:38:34,149 --> 00:38:36,329
they're not educated in design background.

452
00:38:37,469 --> 00:38:42,419
They articulate sort of their
activities by showing the processes of

453
00:38:42,419 --> 00:38:47,454
garment design and their worry is to
sort of basically market survival

454
00:38:47,454 --> 00:38:52,487
keeping pace with the fast cycles of
fashion If you talk to bosses along

455
00:38:52,487 --> 00:38:57,182
these higher floors where there
are more formalized boutiques,

456
00:38:57,182 --> 00:39:02,132
a lot of these entrepreneurs have
some sort of education backgrounds

457
00:39:02,132 --> 00:39:06,997
they may even hire designers in
order to operate these boutiques and

458
00:39:06,997 --> 00:39:11,604
they describe their work in terms
of creative labor as designs,

459
00:39:11,604 --> 00:39:17,063
as legitimate designs that are based on
sort of having a feel for the market or

460
00:39:17,063 --> 00:39:21,927
knowing or having access to predicting
future fashion trends And so

461
00:39:21,927 --> 00:39:27,303
what happens here when we think about
like copying fashion is that there's

462
00:39:27,303 --> 00:39:32,762
a real class-based organization that
is that is sort of marked by the spaces

463
00:39:32,762 --> 00:39:37,538
of which this market is organized
as well as to the temporalities of

464
00:39:37,538 --> 00:39:42,500
which the fashion commodities come in and
out of this market space.

465
00:39:42,500 --> 00:39:47,145
So one female buyer who sort of frequented
who frequented this market often

466
00:39:47,145 --> 00:39:51,717
described confrontations that erupt
when a wholesaler was fined by one of

467
00:39:51,717 --> 00:39:56,804
the building managers here for selling
a counterfeit garment Apparently a design

468
00:39:56,804 --> 00:40:01,447
pattern used by one of her garments
closely resembled a design trademark by

469
00:40:01,447 --> 00:40:06,905
an internationally recognized luxury brand
The wholesaler discredited- disputed-

470
00:40:06,905 --> 00:40:11,917
this charge, claiming that her garment
was an original design The observer sort

471
00:40:11,917 --> 00:40:17,148
of remarked to me: "Of course the dispute
had to do with money, kickbacks really,

472
00:40:17,148 --> 00:40:21,718
we as outsiders, we don't know the types
of collusive relationships and

473
00:40:21,718 --> 00:40:26,953
business interests that are tied to the
monthly collections of rent" Her reference

474
00:40:26,953 --> 00:40:31,818
to kickbacks implied a web of social
relations that structured the way in which

475
00:40:31,818 --> 00:40:37,000
stalls and commercial spaces within
the building were allocated and subleased.

476
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:42,039
For those who regularly visited
the market, disputes such as

477
00:40:42,039 --> 00:40:46,969
this over copy design and counterfeiting
often flared up on a regular basis and

478
00:40:46,969 --> 00:40:50,789
this particular altercation amassed
the deepening divisions in wealth and

479
00:40:50,789 --> 00:40:54,239
access to real estates that
characterized this commercial space.

480
00:40:57,449 --> 00:41:02,779
So in order to keep up with the sort of
incessant movements of goods coming in and

481
00:41:02,779 --> 00:41:10,059
out, oftentimes the migrant
entrepreneurs really have to keep up

482
00:41:10,059 --> 00:41:15,859
in terms of finding the hottest or
predicting the hottest trends and

483
00:41:15,859 --> 00:41:20,849
so a lot of this because of
business risks they copy or

484
00:41:20,849 --> 00:41:27,809
they take more direct designs from
those that are proven to be successful

485
00:41:27,809 --> 00:41:32,819
commodities that are sold on the market If
you have a sort of particular design that

486
00:41:32,819 --> 00:41:38,289
is a bit too different or
too creative it would be too risky for

487
00:41:38,289 --> 00:41:44,008
a migrant entrepreneur who's studying or
who's struggling in this market and so

488
00:41:44,008 --> 00:41:48,969
this type of the dynamics of this
become very contradictory and

489
00:41:48,969 --> 00:41:55,399
there are different types of
cycles that are very class-based

490
00:41:55,399 --> 00:42:00,269
within this market often exacerbated
by the way this building is managed.

491
00:42:03,429 --> 00:42:11,239
So, for those migrant entrepreneurs
that operate in these lower floors,

492
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:15,128
the enormous risk entailed
in running a stall poses

493
00:42:16,268 --> 00:42:20,939
often relies on the pulling of family
resources in hopes of striking it rich

494
00:42:20,939 --> 00:42:25,169
while enjoying the independence
of becoming their own boss.

495
00:42:25,169 --> 00:42:29,349
I've interviewed a young migrant
entrepreneur by the name of Ling

496
00:42:29,349 --> 00:42:33,389
who recently closed down her
five to seven foot stall

497
00:42:34,499 --> 00:42:37,239
after running a business for
only about two and a half years

498
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:41,679
based on savings that she had pulled
in from her family in nearby Fushan.

499
00:42:41,679 --> 00:42:47,079
When her wholesale business for women's
beach dresses failed she decided to take

500
00:42:47,079 --> 00:42:51,908
a step back from the pressures of running
a stall there so she could brainstorm new

501
00:42:51,908 --> 00:42:56,749
business endeavors she ultimately dreamed
of resuming her business in the market

502
00:42:56,749 --> 00:43:01,768
to try her luck again And oftentimes
even though the sort of life the shelf

503
00:43:01,768 --> 00:43:06,028
life of a business in the lower floors
are often about two to three years and

504
00:43:06,028 --> 00:43:10,648
so this kind of is a testament to
the quick turnover of the leasees

505
00:43:10,648 --> 00:43:16,279
that come here and
the hyper competitiveness of this market.

506
00:43:16,279 --> 00:43:21,449
With her eyes beaming she
exclaimed that in this market just

507
00:43:21,449 --> 00:43:28,008
before the 2008 market crash some bosses
were making up to ten thousand RMB a day.

508
00:43:28,008 --> 00:43:31,009
She said that if you can make it
here you can make volumes of money-

509
00:43:31,009 --> 00:43:32,548
the returns are huge.

510
00:43:33,769 --> 00:43:38,509
The rise of rent coupled with
the widespread prevalence of copying here

511
00:43:38,509 --> 00:43:44,139
ultimately undercuts the vibrancy
of the market as a whole she

512
00:43:44,139 --> 00:43:48,208
explained that the cost of renting stalls
nearly doubled over the past three years,

513
00:43:48,208 --> 00:43:53,399
making her former business almost
impossible to sustain Since the global

514
00:43:53,399 --> 00:43:58,749
economic downturn in 2008 fewer former
clients pass through these hallways and

515
00:43:58,749 --> 00:44:01,838
the rising costs of cotton- another

516
00:44:01,838 --> 00:44:05,809
raw material- exacerbates the struggles
of maintaining a stall here.

517
00:44:07,518 --> 00:44:12,439
As a way of evading these market risk
then a lot of these sort of small scale

518
00:44:12,439 --> 00:44:17,189
market entrepreneurs rely on copying and

519
00:44:17,189 --> 00:44:19,948
ultimately there are fewer
styles to choose from so

520
00:44:19,948 --> 00:44:25,489
it undercuts the sort of vibrancy
of this market as a whole So

521
00:44:25,489 --> 00:44:31,779
even though then copying is
often celebrated as a way to

522
00:44:31,779 --> 00:44:36,489
sort of fuel the competition
that drives a market

523
00:44:36,489 --> 00:44:41,448
here there's a balance between copying and
too much copying which undercuts the sort

524
00:44:41,448 --> 00:44:46,529
of the trends in the styles that
this market is able to offer.

525
00:44:47,569 --> 00:44:51,999
When I asked her personally,
whether someone had experienced

526
00:44:51,999 --> 00:44:57,009
copying from her she recounted a time when
a friend of hers, a wealthy local boss,

527
00:44:57,009 --> 00:45:01,650
operated a boutique in one of
the upper floors of the market.

528
00:45:01,650 --> 00:45:06,398
The boss asked Ling to show
this younger relative the ropes

529
00:45:06,398 --> 00:45:12,108
of running a fashion trade and
when Ling agreed and added that

530
00:45:12,108 --> 00:45:18,019
her friend's cousin added her as
Ling's employee Over the course

531
00:45:18,019 --> 00:45:23,559
of six months the young woman learned
most of Ling's business secrets and

532
00:45:23,559 --> 00:45:29,248
then ultimately opened up a stall
right next to hers mirroring most of

533
00:45:29,248 --> 00:45:33,969
government styles and fashion aesthetics
and then when Ling confronted this woman

534
00:45:33,969 --> 00:45:38,868
she claimed that her look was
purely of course original and

535
00:45:38,868 --> 00:45:43,269
since this young woman had claimed that
she has studied fashion design before her

536
00:45:43,269 --> 00:45:48,548
assertion of originality and
creativity tends to sort of hold

537
00:45:48,548 --> 00:45:54,309
more legitimacy Ultimately Ling concluded:
"What can you do- business is business and

538
00:45:54,309 --> 00:45:57,598
by the time someone copies you
the styles would have changed anyway".

539
00:45:58,848 --> 00:46:03,237
And finally another migrant entrepreneur
in these lower floors admitted to

540
00:46:03,237 --> 00:46:08,268
having or described his work as relying on
copying design in order to jump start his

541
00:46:08,268 --> 00:46:13,459
business Since copying- design
copying- was so pervasive here he said

542
00:46:13,459 --> 00:46:18,499
that once a business owner become
privy to a certain design or are style

543
00:46:18,499 --> 00:46:22,908
that sold well competitors would quickly
then copy that design within two or

544
00:46:22,908 --> 00:46:28,698
three days they would either take
an entire look and mirror or

545
00:46:28,698 --> 00:46:34,228
modify very minor,
make very minor modifications and

546
00:46:34,228 --> 00:46:39,128
simply sell it as their own By
then one could see that and

547
00:46:39,128 --> 00:46:42,878
that several stall owners would
sell almost the same design.

548
00:46:44,959 --> 00:46:49,588
But he said according to his point of view
that having somebody copy your design was

549
00:46:49,588 --> 00:46:54,658
a testament to business success
that copying was advantageous

550
00:46:54,658 --> 00:46:59,579
to wholesalers because the practice of
design copying signals some form of public

551
00:46:59,579 --> 00:47:05,049
recognition So in his view,
success of a wholesaler secures financial

552
00:47:05,049 --> 00:47:10,199
freedom while soliciting acceptance and
admiration from others.

553
00:47:12,579 --> 00:47:16,779
He then further reasoned that the
preponderance of copying in this market

554
00:47:16,779 --> 00:47:21,668
bore witness to the fact that whole
selling within a market such as

555
00:47:21,668 --> 00:47:26,959
this should have a slow reflective
response to the market The volumes of

556
00:47:26,959 --> 00:47:31,868
fashions rotated in and
out move too quickly to nurture and

557
00:47:31,868 --> 00:47:35,098
facilitate the necessarily
timing creative space for

558
00:47:35,098 --> 00:47:39,917
struggling entrepreneurs
in my migrant workers.

559
00:47:41,479 --> 00:47:45,539
And even retailers often complain
that neighboring competitors would

560
00:47:45,539 --> 00:47:48,864
often try to attempt to copy
their designs as theirs.

561
00:47:50,118 --> 00:47:55,009
Oftentimes I would even overhear
a young seller comparing

562
00:47:55,009 --> 00:47:59,609
her clothing style with a competitor and
at one point.

563
00:48:00,651 --> 00:48:05,459
One wholesaler would sort of
complain to a friend by saying

564
00:48:05,459 --> 00:48:08,739
you know how competitive
this market is and

565
00:48:08,739 --> 00:48:12,679
that how difficult it is to have
a competitor take your design as theirs.

566
00:48:14,709 --> 00:48:18,408
In one conversation I've
heard friends sort of cool,

567
00:48:19,579 --> 00:48:23,239
sort of relieving the stresses
of her friend by saying yes

568
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:26,728
the clothes you picked up
depending on discerning eyes and

569
00:48:26,728 --> 00:48:31,649
having a feel of fashion Don't worry
about it You know you have a good eye for

570
00:48:31,649 --> 00:48:36,588
design as if creativity was in
doubt as a particular talent or

571
00:48:36,588 --> 00:48:41,618
a skill cultivated by years of
learning and experience And

572
00:48:41,618 --> 00:48:47,048
so in here in this particular
site what the contradictions that

573
00:48:48,268 --> 00:48:53,128
migrants would often face are the sort
of blurry lines between fashion and

574
00:48:53,128 --> 00:48:55,969
counterfeit that I lay out here.

575
00:48:58,219 --> 00:49:03,859
So, overall by way of summary,

576
00:49:04,879 --> 00:49:09,188
as you could see here in sort of these
sort of contradictions between craft

577
00:49:09,188 --> 00:49:15,019
industry fashion and counterfeit we see
these commodity chains as value chains

578
00:49:15,019 --> 00:49:20,119
that are anchored in different
time spaces and they're often

579
00:49:20,119 --> 00:49:24,809
linked with sort of different pressures of
urbanization and development as a whole.

580
00:49:26,459 --> 00:49:30,999
And that these commodity
chains these often

581
00:49:30,999 --> 00:49:34,509
referred to as value chains are dynamic.

582
00:49:34,509 --> 00:49:39,479
They change frequently according to
the fluctuations of the market and

583
00:49:39,479 --> 00:49:44,629
they're subject to larger
spatial political transformation

584
00:49:44,629 --> 00:49:49,609
such as urbanization and
development here so

585
00:49:49,609 --> 00:49:54,379
what's key because of this
dynamicism is that it's very

586
00:49:54,379 --> 00:49:59,688
difficult to locate one particular
node of accumulation So

587
00:49:59,688 --> 00:50:04,349
as you can see in the urban
village that I present it's very,

588
00:50:04,349 --> 00:50:09,279
because of the lack of
control that migrant

589
00:50:09,279 --> 00:50:14,349
entrepreneurs can assert on the market
as well as upon their employees and

590
00:50:14,349 --> 00:50:19,219
the conditions of their labor,
financial accumulation or

591
00:50:19,219 --> 00:50:23,819
accumulation of social capital is
very difficult for them to pursue.

592
00:50:25,658 --> 00:50:30,029
Here in this market it becomes clear then
that the market entrepreneurs are going

593
00:50:30,029 --> 00:50:34,969
through some sort of what I call a
treadmill effect that these sort of cycles

594
00:50:34,969 --> 00:50:40,809
come in and out so quickly they encounter
building managers that extract different

595
00:50:40,809 --> 00:50:46,099
types of fees or rent seeking activities
so that these sort of these quick

596
00:50:46,099 --> 00:50:52,359
cycles that's characteristic of fast
fashion poses a sort of elusive to them.

597
00:50:53,469 --> 00:50:59,279
It's very difficult for them to
accumulate any form of, sort of capital,

598
00:50:59,279 --> 00:51:03,598
from which they can establish
themselves properly as entrepreneurship

599
00:51:03,598 --> 00:51:08,430
Ultimately this lies to the question
of what entrepreneurship in autonomy

600
00:51:08,430 --> 00:51:12,629
means when there is no meaningful
means of accumulation for them.

601
00:51:13,779 --> 00:51:18,769
And one sort of classic
example is that as we

602
00:51:18,769 --> 00:51:23,668
speak this urban village now of which I
introduced here in the beginning of my

603
00:51:23,668 --> 00:51:28,748
talk is now the target
of mass eviction and

604
00:51:28,748 --> 00:51:32,859
it's sort of this ripple effects

605
00:51:32,859 --> 00:51:37,079
from the mass evictions that we have
seen in Beijing back in November.

606
00:51:38,269 --> 00:51:42,967
And they're sort of right now in this
urban village at least fifty six

607
00:51:42,967 --> 00:51:47,098
small garment factories the jiā
gōng chǎng I introduced here

608
00:51:47,098 --> 00:51:51,399
have been ordered to shut down
based on fire safety and hazard.

609
00:51:52,749 --> 00:51:57,909
As of April 14th over the weekend

610
00:51:57,909 --> 00:52:03,239
there's been some unrest and
protest because of these evictions And

611
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:07,359
what's really interesting here is
that because lineage politics play

612
00:52:07,359 --> 00:52:14,018
a more important role in southern China
in places like Guanzhou than in Beijing

613
00:52:14,018 --> 00:52:18,649
it's interesting to see how
the politics of urbanization and

614
00:52:18,649 --> 00:52:22,799
land transfer rights will be played out,
considering that lineage collectives has

615
00:52:22,799 --> 00:52:28,649
such a powerful hold over
the administration of this land We don't

616
00:52:28,649 --> 00:52:33,939
you know we still don't know how this will
play out but in this moment at the one

617
00:52:33,939 --> 00:52:39,169
hand the sort of suspension of negotiation
has opened up this informal economy.

618
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:45,448
And in this wholesale market it becomes
clear where rent seeking activities and

619
00:52:45,448 --> 00:52:47,018
extraction takes place.

620
00:52:49,029 --> 00:52:54,069
And here I sort of underline
the importance of studying

621
00:52:54,069 --> 00:52:58,109
fashion in terms of the cyclical
type of coming in and out,

622
00:52:58,109 --> 00:53:03,259
where the timing of the market becomes
sort of the timing of governance and

623
00:53:03,259 --> 00:53:06,778
rent extraction that
migrants often encounter.

624
00:53:07,949 --> 00:53:11,759
So with that I guess I'll
close my presentation and

625
00:53:11,759 --> 00:53:16,614
open it up for questions.