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Product details
- ISBN 9781836742951
- Weight: 200g
- Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 20 Oct 2026
- Publisher: Verso Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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China's hypercompetitive job market is stunting and distorting the lives of an entire generation. "Involution" is the term they have popularized for the ever-intensifying pressures of a job market where the rewards and conditions only worsen. Forced into a cutthroat doom loop, the people interviewed in Involution highlight how they are pitted against their colleagues, assigned pointless or impossible tasks, and warped by hostile environments. In response to an antisocial work culture, forms of passive resistance, such as "lying flat" and quiet quitting, have become endemic.
Through conversations with young workers from across China, the Gonglao Collective paints a haunting picture of involution's chokehold on young lives. As Eli Friedman highlights in his foreword, the experiences described will resonate with workers across the Western world. This is essential reading for anyone looking for a way out of fruitless competition and into solidarity.
Through conversations with young workers from across China, the Gonglao Collective paints a haunting picture of involution's chokehold on young lives. As Eli Friedman highlights in his foreword, the experiences described will resonate with workers across the Western world. This is essential reading for anyone looking for a way out of fruitless competition and into solidarity.
The Gonglao Collective is the single most important source of information and
analysis about workers and labor struggles in China.
Eli Friedman is a leading scholar of Chinese labor politics based at Cornell University. His previous books include The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City (Columbia 2022) and Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China (Cornell 2014).
analysis about workers and labor struggles in China.
Eli Friedman is a leading scholar of Chinese labor politics based at Cornell University. His previous books include The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City (Columbia 2022) and Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China (Cornell 2014).
