EVENTS

Abstract

This presentation emerges from the fieldwork conducted by the speaker in China in May-June 2019, as part of the China India Scholar Leaders Fellowship of the India China Institute, the New School for Social Research, New York, USA. Each recipient of the Fellowship – whose larger theme is Prosperity and Inequality in China and India – is required to undertake five weeks of fieldwork in either China or India, based on the project proposed by the Fellow. Working on the dynamics of state-labour interface in the consumer goods manufacturing sector, the speaker focuses leather goods manufacturing and chose two cities in China for his field research – Wenzhou in Zhejiang province and Guangzhou in Guangdong province.

The speaker will share his experiences during the course of five weeks of fieldwork, in the two cities, especially the visits to different manufacturing units and interactions in those spaces. Given that the project’s focus is in a comparative framework, the speaker will also reflect on his experiences in the field in Mumbai.

About the Speaker

P.K.Anand is a Research Associate at the Institute of Chinese Studies. He holds a PhD in Chinese Politics from the Centre for East Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Awarded in June 2017, his doctoral thesis is titled 'Market Dynamics and State Responses in China: Social Welfare and Industrial Workers, 1987-2008'. He also completed his M.Phil from the same centre in 2008. He completed his Master's in Politics (with specialization in International Relations) from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2006. 

He completed a two-year India-China comparative project on funded by ICSSR on Labour Relations and Welfare in Small and Medium Enterprises in Mumbai and Wenzhou. He also spent ten months as a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA from August 2016-May 2017. 

In addition to his Research Associate position, he is also the Programme Officer at the Institute. 

His areas of interests are China's Political Economy, Labour, Social Welfare and Social Policies, Economic Reforms, and Urbanization