Based on the speaker’s book-in-progress, this lecture examines how the way of doing care—performing paid and unpaid reproductive labor that maintains our daily life and attends to people who are in need—has changed among Chinese workers during the rise and fall of industrial socialism.

Drawing on archival data, oral histories, and participatory observation in a textile mill town in central China, this research compares three generations of manufacturing workers’ experience of doing care, with a focus on the realm of childcare and domestic labor, and explains why care work had changed from unpaid “women’s work” in the household to a core constituent of labor welfare during socialist industrialization, and then has been removed from welfare provisions in recent decades. Shifting the analytical focus from the sphere of production to that of social reproduction, this study offers a reinterpretation of Chinese socialism and highlights the indispensable role of gender in understanding political economy.

Prof. Dong’s primary research interest lies at the intersection of political economy, social inequality, and social change. Currently, she is working on a book project, The Fabric of Care: Women’s Work and the Politics of Livelihood in Industrial China, which examines the changing politics of care in China’s industrial sector in the past century. Prof. Dong has been awarded the Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowship in China Studies (2021-2022).