Topic: "Cruel Activism: Labor, Affect, and Governance of Chinese Feminist and LGBT Rights NGO Activism" w/Yingyi Wang, UW Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (Virtual Seminar)

This workshare will take place on-line through Zoom. To register, please click here.

Abstract:  Once framed as being at the forefront of state- and corporate-sponsored campaigns targeting “violence against women” and human rights in the 1990s and 2000s, feminist and LGBT rights NGO workers are now regarded as a threat to national security due to their association with “foreign forces” under the Xi Jinping Administration. This contradiction reflects the entanglement of NGO activism, state regulation and the neoliberal Non-Profit Industrial Complex. In China, NGOs fill the void of social welfare services abandoned by the state. Barred from accessing domestic funding, rights-based NGOs are severely contained due to their political nature in recent years. These NGOs have to turn to foreign funders which perpetuates the hierarchies of the Global North and the Global South. Despite their precarious conditions of overwork, underpay and harassment by the state agents, the NGO workers continue to uphold hope and optimism. In my research, I ask: what does the gap between the unsustainable hope they hold and the cruel reality tell us about the relationship between state, affect, and labor under post-socialist neoliberalism? Using labor and affect as an analytic, my research shows the ways in which these feelings that fuel the activism can also serve to invisiblize and erase the workers’ affective labor, and legitimize power inequalities and disputes in activism. I argue that the contradictory affect of hope is precisely how these NGO workers are exploited. 

About: The Labor Studies Workshare features UW faculty and graduate students presenting works-in-progress on labor-related topics for feedback from an interdisciplinary audience of labor scholars from across campus.

Workshare Format: Workshare papers are circulated to registered attendees a week in advance of the workshare. Participants are expected to have read the paper before the meeting and be prepared for a discussion. Registration required.

To register: Visit https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYkd-GrqDwoG9WzaQP9KjhRunX_EcJKt7Kz

Questions? Email the Harry Bridges Center at hbcls@uw.edu