University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Sociotechnical matching: Furniture manufacturers at the peripheries of Chinese economic reform

Liu, Chang

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117651

Description

Title
Sociotechnical matching: Furniture manufacturers at the peripheries of Chinese economic reform
Author(s)
Liu, Chang
Issue Date
2022-11-21
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Sanfilippo, Madelyn R
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Sanfilippo, Madelyn R
Committee Member(s)
  • Chan, Anita S
  • Twidale, Michael
  • Hong, Yu
Department of Study
Illinois Informatics Institute
Discipline
Informatics
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • informatization
  • matching
  • sociotechnical
  • ethnography
  • China
  • supply chains
  • manufacturing
Abstract
Informatization is often said to transform economies and industries, but what does the claimed transformation really look like? What is the character of experience? What works and what fails? Who benefits and who bears costs? This dissertation explores these questions based on a year-long ethnography of furniture manufacturers in a Chinese peri-urban town under the current information and communication technology (ICT)-driven economic reform. My analysis highlights how the technological imagination’s ignorance of social and material complexities is often intensifying, rather than mitigating, the challenges facing the local economy, businesses, and workers. I discuss 1) how e-commerce platforms’ scale-oriented technocratic approach to matchmaking transfers the risks and burdens of rapid expansion to participating manufacturers, 2) how the economic reform introduces rules - with decoupling and exception in practice- to allow leading companies to exploit on-demand labor of smaller manufacturers and externalize less profitable work, and 3) how the accounts of ICT-enabled management make assumptions about manufacturing work and workers to which the reality of smaller manufacturers is little similar, obscuring the roles smaller manufacturers play in enabling the local industry. Based on this research, I also develop the concept of “matching” as a useful lens to examine the gaps between frictionless technological imaginations and the messy reality and better understand the externalities and social consequences of technological systems in various forms. With this dissertation, I aim to present a reconstructed account of the technology-driven economic development with a focus on marginalized experiences and overlooked processes and contribute to the broader debates about the social implications of informatization and the interaction between ICTs and different communities.
Graduation Semester
2022-12
Type of Resource
Thesis
Copyright and License Information
© 2022 Chang Liu

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