Social factory as prosaic state space: Redefining labour in China’s mass innovation/mass entrepreneurship campaign

June Wang and Yujing Tan
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June Wang: City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Yujing Tan: Universiteit Leiden Leiden Institute for Area Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands

Environment and Planning A, 2020, vol. 52, issue 3, 510-531

Abstract: This study examines China’s mass innovation/mass entrepreneurship campaign, with particular attention to the community of maker-entrepreneurs in the new techno-political ordering of society and their social territories. This raises the question of the subject-making of maker-entrepreneurs on a massive scale through what we call the new education–incubatory assemblage. How does the new education–incubatory machine assemble a new participatory community, form a production–communications–consumption circuit to imagine the new economy and re-territorialise the techno-political ordering of society? Our study stresses two differences in the social factory. First, by forging a fragmented pattern of production and an individualised society, mass entrepreneurship emphasises social networking. The exploitation of social relations in production has been brought to the foreground. Second, a participatory mass is not only shaped by the new mentality, but also constitutive of the very formation of the new mentality. Such a mass is a collection of actors, from the government, cooperatives, start-ups and individuals. In addition, their agencies vary, from those with a more reified form of power, such as policy, to the mundane, unrehearsed actions of individuals. This process entails the reconfiguration of political apparatus and bio-political power.

Keywords: Mass entrepreneurship; social factory; prosaic geography; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:52:y:2020:i:3:p:510-531

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X19889633

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