Fabricating Transnational Capitalism in the Era of the Rise of China

Lisa Rofel, University of California, Santa Cruz

In Fabricating Transnational Capitalism, just published, Sylvia Yanagisako and I provide a collaborative ethnography of Chinese-Italian collaborations in the “Italian” fashion industry, to argue that we need a new, more dynamic approach to transnational capitalism.  We provide this more dynamic approach through our detailed ethnography of the transnational relations of production and distribution forged by people with different historical legacies of capital, labor, nation, state, and kinship. We examine the negotiations, tensions, and engagement among Chinese managers, entrepreneurs, officials, factory workers and retail clerks and Italian firm owners and distribution managers. The rapid rise of China as a global economic force shaped the ongoing instabilities in these relationships.  Our approach argues that rather than begin with presumed core structural features of capitalism, we need to examine ethnographically the increasingly blurred process of “privatization,” the new forms of labor value, the rearrangement of accumulation, and the outsourcing of inequality.   This talk examines the Chinese-Italian relations and then extends these insights to China’s rising global presence, with an emphasis on Latin America. 

Professor Lisa Rofel is professor emeritus at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught Cultural Anthropology, with a focus on China and its transition from socialism to capitalism.  She has published numerous books and articles on China, including Other Modernities (University of California Press), Desiring China (Duke Press), and most recently, Fabricating Transnational Capitalism: A Collaborative Ethnography of Italian-Chinese Global Fashion, with Sylvia Yanagisako. She continues as co-director of the Center for Emerging Worlds and is on the editorial board of The China Quarterly.  

If you would like to attend the event, please RSVP by filling out this form by Monday, April 1st, at noon. The form is also available here. We appreciate your cooperation in helping us get an accurate headcount and dietary information for the talk.