Chapter 16: Unbundling Precarious Creativity in China – “Knowing-How” and “Knowing-To”
-
-
Last updated
-
-
Save as PDF
-
Job security is under unprecedented threat in many developed nations as a consequence of the mechanization of work.¹ In addition, rising production costs are seeing the relocation of production to low-cost locations. This is a well-known story. Emerging economies are achieving substantial growth by providing cheap labor and preferential investment policies. For China, already an economic powerhouse, a foreign country’s insecurity is a their security: the “made in China” phenomenon manifests in products that are designed elsewhere and fabricated in China. Much of this outsourced production involves components. Economists call this “tradein-tasks,” “unbundling,”² or OEM (original equipment manufacturing).
-
-
16.1: Introduction
-
Introduction to the goals of the chapter: unbundling the concept of creative precarity and analyzing the relationship between creativity and knowledge capital, focusing on China.
-
-
16.2: Contextualizing Precarious Creativity
-
Contextualizing creative precarity in China, with an introduction to the concepts of “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-to.”
-
-
16.3: A Chinese Political Economy Framework
-
Considering the social and political context of labor in China, and how this distinguishes the meaning of precarious creativity in China from that in other countries.
-
-
16.4: Knowledge Capital
-
Definition of knowledge capital, and how it relates to both knowing-that and knowing-how.
-
-
16.5: Media – The Game Changes
-
Recent changes in the Chinese media industry, including a rise in workers trained in multinational companies transferring their knowledge to Chinese companies, the commercialization of broadcasting industries, and the growth of private-owned production companies which are still subject to state censorship.
-
-
16.6: The Cultural Innovation Timeline Reconsidered
-
An argument for the concept of creative precarity in China being not simply a negative indicator, using the cultural innovation timeline (standardized production, imitation, collaboration, cultural trade, production/management consolidation, peer/creative communities).
-
-
16.7: Concluding Remarks – The (Precarious) Elephant in the Room
-
How creative precarity in China is distinguished from creative precarity in other developed nations, by censorship and the existence of an additional dimension of knowledge capital (“knowing-to”).
-
-
16.8: Notes
-