From IT factory to electronic markets : speculations on circuits, regions, labour

Published in: Transit Labour: Circuits, Regions, Borders, Issue 1 (Jul. 2010). In programming field trip visits to two seemingly incongruous settings - an IT facility on the outskirts of Shanghai and Baoshan market for electronic waste, second hand products and fake gadgets - we see how both regions and social mobilization are configured as singularities within a larger constellation of relations. Following earlier waves of manufacturing across East Asia where ‘Made in Japan’ and, later, ‘Made in Taiwan’ became synonymous with a range of electronic commodities and attendant mythologies of techno-cultural dystopias, over the last two decades China has become renowned as the planet’s epicentre for electronic manufacturing. When purchased, one of the primary attractions of an electronic commodity is how clean it seems. The lovely smooth surfaces coated in buffed plastics or complex metal composites provide a suitable black box of mystery for their interior circuits and generation of values that betray the toxic conditions of production and their effects on worker’s health and the environment. Such is the fantastic power of the commodity-form to abstract itself from the experience of labour and life.