Ching Kwan Lee
Professor
work, globalization, political sociology, development of the global south, comparative ethnography, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Africa.
I have published three multiple award-winning monographs on China, forming a trilogy of Chinese capitalism through the lens of labor and working class experiences. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (1998) documents the organization of gender and work in factory regimes in Hong Kong and Shenzhen when South China first emerged as the workshop of the world. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (2007) chronicles the unmaking and making of the Chinese working class in two regional economies experiencing the death of socialism and the rise of capitalism respectively in one country. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (2017) follows the footsteps of Chinese state investors to Zambia and compares its relation with African state and labor to other global private investors.
My most recent co-edited volumes are: Take Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (Cornell University Press, 2019) and The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View (University of California Press, 2019). My forthcoming book is: Hong Kong: Global China's Restive Frontier (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Degrees
PhD, University of California at Berkeley
Awards
Alice Amsden Book Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (for The Specter of Global China)
2019 Joseph Levenson Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Asia and Transnational Book Award, Asia and Asian American Section, American Sociological Association (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Best Book Award, Labor and Labor Movement Section, American Sociological Association (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Best Book Award, Sociology of Development Section American Sociological Association (co-winner, for The Specter of Global China)
2019 Outstanding Scholarly Book, Global Division, Society for the Study of Social Problems, for The Specter of Global China
2018 Africa-Asia Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Distinguished Book Award, Political Economy and World System Section, American Sociological Association, Honorable Mention (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Distinguished Book Award, Global and Transnational Sociology Section, American Sociological Association, Honorable Mention (for The Specter of Global China)
National Science Foundation Grant 2018-2021 (Work Under Platform Capitalism)
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 2013-14
National Science Foundation Grant, 2010-2013
2008 Sociology of Labor Book Award, American Sociological Association, Labor and Labor Movement Section (for Against the Law)
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Member, 2006-7
Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Fellow 2003-4
Best Book Award, American Sociological Association, Asia and Asian American Section, 1999 (for Gender and the South China Miracle)
Selected Publications
Books
2. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt (UC Press, 2007) (Sociology of Labor Book Award 2008, American Sociological Association; finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award, SSSP)
3. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (UC Press 1998) : (American Sociological Association, Asia and Asian American Section Best Book Award 2000; Best Book Award, Labor Section of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1999)
4. Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: Politics and Poetics of Collective Memory in Reform China (Stanford U Press, 2007, edited with Guobin Yang):
5. Working in China: Ethnographies of Labor and Workplace Transformation (Routledge 2007, edited)
6. Reclaiming Chinese Society: the New Social Activism. London: Routledge (Co-edited with You-tien Hsing, 2009)
7. From Iron Rice Bowls to Informalization: Markets, State and Workers in a Changing China. Cornell University Press (Co-edited with Sarosh Kuruvilla and Mary Gallagher, 2011)
Articles
"The Specter of Global China" New Left Review no. 89, Sept-Oct 2014, pp.29-65.
"State and Social Protest in China" Daedalus 143(2), Spring 2014, pp. 124-134.
"Engendering the Worlds of Labor: Women Workers, Labor Markets and Production Politics in the South China Economic Miracle," American Sociological Review vol. 60(3): 378-397, 1995
Current Courses by Term
Sociology of Global China
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Working Group in Sociology
Teaching Apprentice Practicum
Working Group in Sociology
Previous Courses by Term
Variable Topics Research Seminars: Sociology
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Sociology of Contemporary China
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Working Group in Sociology
Analyzing Ethnographies
Special Topics in Sociology
Working Group in Sociology
Sociology of Contemporary China
Variable Topics Research Seminars: Sociology
Working Group in Sociology
Working Group in Sociology
Working Group in Sociology
Sociology of Contemporary China
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Working Group in Sociology
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Sociology of Contemporary China
Undergraduate Seminar: Sociology of Globalization
Special Topics in Sociology
Working Group in Sociology
Undergraduate Seminar: Sociology of Globalization
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Sociology of Contemporary China
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Variable Topics Research Seminars: Sociology
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Sociology of Contemporary China
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Variable Topics Research Seminars: Sociology
Analyzing Ethnographies
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Sociology of Contemporary China
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Special Topics in Sociology
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Special Topics in Sociology
China's Rise: Critical Issues and Global Implications
State and Society in China
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
State and Society in China
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Working Group in Sociology
Ethnographic Fieldwork
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
Working Group in Sociology
State and Society in China
Special Topics in Sociology
Previous Courses by Course
Variable Topics Research Seminars: Sociology
2019 Spring Quarter
2018 Winter Quarter
2013 Spring Quarter
2012 Spring Quarter
Ethnographic Fieldwork
2019 Spring Quarter
2017 Winter Quarter
2015 Spring Quarter
2013 Spring Quarter
2010 Spring Quarter
Ethnographic Fieldwork
2019 Winter Quarter
2016 Fall Quarter
2015 Winter Quarter
2013 Winter Quarter
2010 Winter Quarter
Sociology of Contemporary China
2019 Winter Quarter
2018 Winter Quarter
2017 Winter Quarter
2016 Spring Quarter
2015 Winter Quarter
2013 Winter Quarter
2012 Winter Quarter
Working Group in Sociology
2018 Fall Quarter
2018 Spring Quarter
2018 Winter Quarter
2017 Fall Quarter
2017 Spring Quarter
2017 Winter Quarter
2016 Winter Quarter
2010 Spring Quarter
2009 Fall Quarter
Special Topics in Sociology
2018 Spring Quarter
2012 Winter Quarter
Analyzing Ethnographies
2018 Spring Quarter
2012 Spring Quarter
Special Topics in Sociology
2016 Spring Quarter
2011 Spring Quarter
2009 Spring Quarter
Undergraduate Seminar: Sociology of Globalization
2016 Spring Quarter
2015 Spring Quarter
Seminar: Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
2013 Spring Quarter
2013 Winter Quarter
2012 Spring Quarter
2012 Winter Quarter
2011 Fall Quarter
2011 Spring Quarter
2011 Winter Quarter
2010 Fall Quarter
2010 Winter Quarter
China's Rise: Critical Issues and Global Implications
2011 Winter Quarter
State and Society in China