Programming Practices of Chinese Code Farmers: Articulations, Technology, and Alternatives

ABSTRACT: Built on the theoretical framework of articulation and assemblage, this article explores programming practices among grassroots programmers in contemporary China. Using data obtained from ethnographic fieldwork in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, it provides an account of the information technology practices in contemporary China at the nexus of the Beijing government, IT corporations, and individual programmers. Through examining how programming is articulated in both China’s advocacy for “a creative society” and grassroots programmers’ daily practices in the process of China’s informatization, this article has mapped myriad articulations such as engagement, communication, discourse, and practice that have made and unmade grassroots programmers’ programming assemblage. We argue that technology for Chinese programmers is a mixed blessing. As a means of survival, technology exacerbates the precariousness and marginalisation of grassroots programmers in China, while the capability of technology production also enables the remaking of subjectivity and social change. The findings of this study thus advocate a deeper and dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology, labour, and empowerment. KEYWORDS: Programmers, articulation and assemblage, technology, Maker Movement, China.

Platform Labour and Contingent Agency in China

ABSTRACT: The impact of digital platforms upon the employment structure and work conditions has attracted widespread scholarly attention. However, research on workers’ agency and subjectivity in the platform economy is relatively under-explored. Using food-delivery workers in China as a point of departure, this article provides an empirically grounded and theoretically informed account of delivery workers’ agentic performances. We utilise the notion of contingent agency to capture the expedient, ongoing, and variegated measures developed and manoeuvred by workers to exercise agency from their structurally vulnerable position in the labour process and employment relations. While agency in practice is always contingent and never static, we conceptualise the notion by unpacking the multiple factors that have shifted the ground for workers and hence contributed to the contingency, to shed light on the interplay between workers’ agency and the unstable and elusive character of platform capitalism. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of workers’ contingent agency for labour politics.

KEYWORDS: Platform labour, food-delivery platform, worker agency, China.