Yuanxie Shi

My dissertation examines rural women's huge unseen contributions to industrialization and the politics of knowledge in the socialist China. With nationwide lacemaking production as the background, the research focuses on a specific case study in Shantou and Chaozhou area, which enjoyed a good reputation in the US market. Unlike Swiss lacemaking industry, Chaoshan export production never fully supplanted hands with machines and relied heavily on interlaced putting-out networks under different political regimes. The identification of various taxonomies of knowledge, including embodied technical knowledge, design knowledge, social and managerial knowledge, knowledge of the market, uncovers the hierarchies of knowledge which undermine the women's skills and their contribution to economy.