The Habitus and "Logic of Practice" of China`s Trade Unionists

Abstract

Accelerated state-induced market-oriented reforms in China threaten to catalyze labor explosion. How would the official trade union act in this situation? Focusing on a previously unexplored issue of the question - namely, that of China`s unionists as social agents, this paper analyzes the ”logic of practice” of China`s unionists by means of Pierre Bourdieu`s social agency concept of habitus. This paper finds that the unionists` habitus generates practices that reproduce their spontaneous and unforced subordination - as part and parcel of the state – to the Party in managing labor on behalf of the state so as to facilitate the implementation of market-oriented reforms. The implications of the analysis for the paradigmatic ”dualist” and its derivative ”corporatist” models of China`s union are drawn out.