Methods of ethnography applying to studies of Chinese workers
The Chinese translation of Learning to Labour
On March 15th, the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University and Yilin Press jointly hosted a book launch event and subsequent seminar for the publication of the Chinese translation of Learning to Labour (1979) in Beijing. The author of Learning to Labour, Paul Willis, famously applied methods of ethnography to understand the subculture of working-class adolescents in England. Guo Yuhua, a professor in the department of sociology at Tsinghua University asserted that the main body of Chinese industrial workers is constituted by rural migrants, differing from the classical theories of Marxism and studies of the Western working class. Chinese scholars need to further explore and promote ethnography as a means to understand and explain China’s ongoing social transformation and emerging social realities.
The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 428, Mar. 18, 2013
Translated by Zhang Mengying