Canteens and the Politics of Working-class Diets in Industrial China, 1920-37
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3625974 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Seung-Joon Lee, Seung‐joon Lee (0000-0003-4597-0281, National University of Singapore, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-29 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x1700097x |
| OpenAlex | W2953968636 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 29 |
This article explores how workers' diets and meal services at factory canteens became the nucleus of labour politics in Republican Shanghai, China's industrial heartland. At the heart of Chinese labour politics was a demand for the improvement of workers' diets, particularly for adequate meal service, which was to be provided by management at a reasonable price-if not for free-at the workplace. The purpose of this article is not only to draw attention to a lacuna in Chinese labour history, but also to shed new light on the agency of workers in their labour disputes from the perspective of food history. No other issue provided a better opportunity to unite workers, labour activists, and so-called scabs than the issue of food. In the wake of labour disputes, industrialists changed their perception of the relation between industrial health and work efficiency. With the promotion of factory canteens, the Guomidang Nationalists also began to exert unsparing efforts to garner the growing political potential of the labour force. Therefore, factory canteens evolved into a contested space in which workers, management, and the state offered different visions of workers' diets and industrial productivity
Agency (philosophy · China · Economics · Economy · Factory (object-oriented programming · Political science · Politics · Promotion (chess · Service (business · Social science · Sociology · Vision · Work (physics · Chinese history and philosophy · Engineering · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Rioters and Citizens
Engineering China
A Road Is Made
Becoming ChinesePassages to Modernity and Beyond
Shanghai SplendorEconomic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949
Industrial Reformers in Republican China
Sisters and Strangers
Shanghai
Shanghai Splendor
The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919-1927
Fighting Famine in North China
Strangers on the Western Front
A Road Is Made
Scientising Relief
The Embodied Imagination in Recent Writings on Food History
Rioters and Citizens
Beyond the Neon Lights
Big Business in China
Nutritional Governmentality
The Politicization of Women Workers at War
The Patriot's Scientific Diet
The British Empire and the Southeast Asian Rice Crisis of 1919-1921
The Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949
Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2021 (2) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |