eprintid: 10093114
rev_number: 26
eprint_status: archive
userid: 608
dir: disk0/10/09/31/14
datestamp: 2020-03-12 14:38:43
lastmod: 2021-10-14 22:48:43
status_changed: 2021-01-21 12:08:08
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Chong, K
title: Cosmopolitanism and the Global Economy: Notes from China's Knowledge Factories
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B03
divisions: C03
divisions: F22
note: This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
abstract: In Dalian Software Park, China's centre for IT‐enabled outsourcing and offshore services, knowledge workers find themselves on the ‘assembly line’ of information processing, carrying out highly routinized, de‐skilled, and poorly paid work for which they are vastly overqualified. Following the recent attention to culture and personhood in studies of global capitalism, I argue that these knowledge workers are motivated by two forms of cosmopolitanism: corporate cosmopolitanism, the capacity to reconcile the supra‐territorial values of ‘global’ corporate culture with local values; and nationalist cosmopolitanism, whereby individual workers see the performance of cultural openness as a way of contributing to China's national project of modernization. As well as providing a rare account of cosmopolitanism in the workplace, this article demonstrates the significance of cosmopolitanism for the global economy. The pursuit of cosmopolitanism creates a productive friction between individual projects of self‐making, corporate projects of disciplining labour, as well as national projects of pursuing modernity and development.
date: 2020-12
date_type: published
publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
official_url: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13417 Findit@UCL
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 1771652
doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.13417 Findit@UCL
lyricists_name: Chong, Kimberly
lyricists_id: KCHON52
actors_name: Chong, Kimberly
actors_id: KCHON52
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: public
publication: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
volume: 26
number: 4
pagerange: 805-823
citation:        Chong, K;      (2020)    Cosmopolitanism and the Global Economy: Notes from China's Knowledge Factories.                   Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , 26  (4)   pp. 805-823.    10.1111/1467-9655.13417 <https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13417>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10093114/1/Chong_1467-9655.13417.pdf