The theory of the modern world system introduced by E. Wallerstein is a theory that demonstrates a social system that classifies the globe’s nations under the categories of core nations, periphery nations and semi-periphery nations. This theory helps to explain a global economy that is made up of smaller components. China falls under semi-periphery, which is a nation that is a combination of the core and periphery categories. Semi-peripheral nations tend to be industrialized and because of this most of these countries are capitalists. Semi-peripheral nations also serve to negotiate interactions between the core and periphery nations. In Factory Girls, Leslie Chang, a Chinese American journalist, writes about her experience following the lives of Chunming and Min, two migrant factory workers working in Dongguan a well known industrial city in Southern China. To express China’s economic growth, Chang utilizes her conversations with Chunming and Min about their history and future. Living in the city starts off as a culture shock for the girls, but it eventually wares off as they get assimilated to city life and working. Even though these people are leaving, they send money to help …show more content…
Many workers do not complain about the poor working conditions and one of the main reasons factory owners are able to get away with this is because the typical factory worker is naïve and uneducated. They believe that if they say something, then they will lose the wages they receive. Most factory workers have family counting on them to send money and working in the factory pays better than having a rural job. “Across the Chinese countryside, those plowing and harvesting the fields are elderly men and women, charged with running the farm and caring for the younger children who are still in school. Money sent home by the migrants is already the biggest source of wealth accumulation in rural China” (Chang, 2008, p.
Growing up in the People’s Republic is a detailed account of two individual women’s generational struggle during the controversial periods of The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Cultural Fever of the 1980’s. Their case study tries to define their individual identity growing up in a Communist China. Ma Xiadong and Ye Weili’s life allow the reader to understand the struggle that ensued for the individual at a time of change that was the Cultural Revolution.
Leslie Chang, the author of “Factory Girls” write about young women who work in the factories. The author wanted to look at the china point of view. She tell stories about their working conditions, lives, their hopes, their dreams and their whole emotional world (Chang, 2008). What is it like for these young girls who work for these factories? They are not thinking eight-hour shift or how much they make like people in the United States would think of when having a job.
In a village left behind as the rest of the China is progressing, the fate of women remains in the hands of men. Old customs and traditions reign supreme, not because it is believed such ways of life are best, but rather because they have worked for many years despite harsh conditions. In response to Brother Gu’s suggestion of joining communist South China’s progress, Cuiqiao’s widower father put it best: “Farmer’s have their own rules.”
Everyone in the family worked in a clothing factory in New York's Chinatown. Kwok worked there every day after school between the ages of five and 11. "It was a huge, cavernous place, filled with dust. I was not the only child there by any means. Every able-bodied person in a family needed to work. It was essential to our survival. The sweatshop is my second home” she told .She said they were paid by the piece, not by the hour, which is illegal. "The pacing there is incredible. Nobody dares stop for a moment. If you do, you get fired." Kwok said some people worked in such sweatshops their entire lives, until they died. "My main goal in life was to escape from the factory." The working conditions were barbaric and in violation of health codes, Kwok said. "Those factories were a source of livelihood for whole families. If you eliminated them, what would they do?" She said most of those New York City sweatshops have closed since she was a girl. She said their operators moved back to China, where labor is cheaper. She said one goal of Girl in Translation was to explain that children really do live and work as she did in her first years in this country. She said many people cover up such pasts out of shame "when I was a kid, I didn't confide in anyone” but many have told her their own lives were like the one she portrays in the book. After Girl in Translation received critical
The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.
Young girls were not allowed to open the windows and had to breathe in the dust, deal with the nerve-racking noises of the machines all day, and were expected to continue work even if they 're suffering from a violent headache or toothache (Doc 2). The author of this report is in favor of employing young women since he claimed they seemed happy and they loved their machines so they polished them and tied ribbons on them, but he didn 't consider that they were implemented to make their awful situations more bearable. A woman who worked in both factory and field also stated she preferred working in the field rather than the factory because it was hard work but it never hurt her health (Doc 1), showing how dangerous it was to work in a factory with poor living conditions. Poor living conditions were common for nearly all workers, and similar to what the journalist saw, may have been overlooked due to everyone seeming
In analyzing these two stories, it is first notable to mention how differing their experiences truly are. Sammy is a late adolescent store clerk who, in his first job, is discontent with the normal workings of society and the bureaucratic nature of the store at which he works. He feels oppressed by the very fabric and nature of aging, out-of date rules, and, at the end of this story, climaxes with exposing his true feelings and quits his jobs in a display of nonconformity and rebellion. Jing-Mei, on the other hand, is a younger Asian American whose life and every waking moment is guided by the pressures of her mother, whose idealistic word-view aids in trying to mold her into something decent by both the double standards Asian society and their newly acquired American culture. In contrasting these two perspectives, we see that while ...
Firstly, the relationship expectations in Chinese customs and traditions were strongly held onto. The daughters of the Chinese family were considered as a shame for the family. The sons of the family were given more honour than the daughters. In addition, some daughters were even discriminated. “If you want a place in this world ... do not be born as a girl child” (Choy 27). The girls from the Chinese family were considered useless. They were always looked down upon in a family; they felt as if the girls cannot provide a family with wealth. Chinese society is throwing away its little girls at an astounding rate. For every 100 girls registered at birth, there are 118 little boys in other words, nearly one seventh of Chinese girl babies are going missing (Baldwin 40). The parents from Chinese family had a preference for boys as they thought; boys could work and provide the family income. Due to Chinese culture preference to having boys, girls often did not have the right to live. In the Chinese ethnicity, the family always obeyed the elder’s decision. When the family was trying to adapt to the new country and they were tryin...
Zhong, Xueping, Zheng Wang, and Bai Di. Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing up in the Mao Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
...t states, “Nearly all the workers were teenaged girls who did not speak English, working 12 hours a day, every day” (“The Triangle factory”). They dedicated plenty of time to work in a dirty unsafe factory just to help their parents bring in money.
This story is an allegory of life for many Chinese Americans. Many came to America for the opportunity to lead a better life. Entrepreneurship is a big part of that American dream. The Changs’ owning a pancake house represents so many of the Chinese people that own their own restaurants upon coming to America. Mr. Chang’s hesitance to Americanize and his idea that “to embrace what he embraced was love” also represents the views of many Chinese immigrants. Jen’s own parents maintained some of their own ideas of how she should live her life. They didn’t believe that writing was an honorable thing for a woman to do and didn’t support her in her decision until her picture and story was run on the front page of a Chinese newspaper and “their people” accepted it.
“Factory Girls” by Leslie T. Chang provides an inside look on migration in the inner cities of China. The book follows the lives of women who have left their home villages to work in factories. Primarily, Chang focuses on the lives of two women, Min and Chunming. Min left her village at the age of sixteen with her older sister to chuqu, or to go out, and see the world. She often changed jobs while in Dongguan because she is never satisfied with her position. Chang met Chunming at a dating agency where men and women could mingle with one another. Chunming began her career at a toy factory. In her diary, she often wrote out the goals she wanted to accomplish and how to accomplish them. She was very determined to become successful. Her persistence
Globalization refers to the extraordinary compression of time and space reproduced in the tremendous increase of social, political and cultural interconnections and interdependencies on a international scale (Eitzen&Maxine 2009). Following the Second World War, the imperialist returned political independence to their third world colonies (Eitzen&Maxine 2009). Globalization however, has maintained economic dependency on Western Europe and The United States (Eitzen&Maxine 2009). The assumptions that the spread of democracy and capitalism through globalization benefits most countries are inherently misguided. Rather, the nature and performance of globalization are contradictory. For a state to be truly democratic it needs to maintain its sovereignty. However, globalization fuelled by neo liberalism has diminished the sovereignty of the nation state (Eitzen&Maxine 2009). Although, proponents of globalization posit that it benefits all states, it simultaneously leads to the creation of the “failed states”. The modernization theory, suggesting that globalization and the acceptance of modern progressive concepts of democracy and capitalism are precursors to development (Allahar 1994). Nonetheless, proponents of this ignore the fact that capitalism is based on the unequal distribution of labor and wealth, which is subsequently contradictory to freedom and equality. The unequal distribution of capital throughout history thus renders one nation dominant over others leaving subordinate nations in a state of perpetual poverty. Thus, the modernization theory ignores the role the west plays in causing the continuous state of poverty and unrest and how this helps maintain power and control over the third world. By focusing on the issues of pirac...
Currently, on European Geostrategy’s (Rogers & Simón, 2011) list of the 15 most powerful countries in the world, the United States of America are the world’s lone Superpower while China is the only other country that is a potential Superpower. It is no coincidence that these two states are seen to be the primary economic sites in the world. Of course, these counties have not just become economic leaders by chance. The rise of globalisation has seen countries such as China become prominent, as global trade, solid policy making and controlled growth rates have allowed them to quickly rise through the ranks and now have a seat in the UNSC permanent-5, a signpost of how economically powerful they have become.