Dying for an iPhone - Outstanding Academic Titles 2022: China

Outstanding Academic Titles 2022: China

Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn and the Lives of China's Workers (Jenny CHAN, Mark SELDEN, PUN Ngai)

January 25, 2023

Outstanding Academic Titles

This insiders’ story about industrial protest within the international tech sector makes for an insightful volume. Authors Chan (Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ.), Selden (Cornell Univ.), and Pun (Univ. of Hong Kong) seek to assess the extent to which the Chinese state and global tech corporations have fulfilled their responsibilities to protect workers in the context of transnational production. The book comprises 12 chapters. Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, is the focus of chapters 1–4. The coverage of chapters 5–8 ranges over student interns, human costs of technology empire-building, unsettled lives, love, and desire for consumption. The current environmental crisis, work-related injuries, industrial protests, and labor rights are treated in chapters 9–12. The authors believe that “when workers, with support at home and abroad, unite to reclaim their dignity and right to fair labor,” there is a chance of improvement. The case of Foxconn, including both its present international profile (plants in 29 countries and territories) and its proposed extensions into the US, Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world, “could inspire a new round of global labor struggles.”

CHOICE’s 2022 Outstanding Academic Title: China

Jenny CHAN, Mark SELDEN, PUN Ngai

Chicago: Haymarket Books & London: Pluto Press (2020); Seoul: Narumbooks (translated into Korean in 2021)

CHOICE editors consider several factors in their decisions, including:

-Overall excellence in presentation and scholarship

-Importance relative to other literature in the field

-Distinction as a first treatment of a given subject in book or electronic form

-Originality or uniqueness of treatment of their subject

-Significance in building undergraduate collections

Prof Kim Scipes is presented the 2023 Outstanding Faculty Engagement Award

Prof Kim Scipes, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana (NWI), won the 2023 Outstanding Faculty Engagement Award (based on Prof Scipes’ years of engagement with local communities, both on campus and off).

Kim Scipes (2022) The Union Makes Us Strong (Z Net)

Scipes, Kim. 2022. “The Union Makes Us Strong: Understanding Trade Unionism in a Global Context.” Z Net, December 1. 

Jörg Nowak (2022) "After Lula's Narrow Victory"

Nowak, Jörg. 2022. “After Lula’s Narrow Victory: Return to Democratic Capitalism or an Ongoing Rightwing Insurgency?” Socialist Project: The Bullet, 10 Nov.

Dr. Kim Scipes (2022) interviewed by Kayla Vasilko

“Dr. Kim Scipes: Building a Network of Compassion in a World Waiting to be United,” Interviewed by Kayla Vasilko. Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement, 2022, 9(1): 39-46.

Kim Scipes interview (The Beacher Oct 2022)

Interview with Professor Kim Scipes

The Beacher Weekly Newspaper, 20 October 2022, Vol. 38, No. 41

The U.S. Marine Corps might seem like a strange place for a young enlistee, raised in a conservative military family, to experience a life-changing moment of interracial enlightenment. 

But for Steven “Kim” Scipes, a Purdue University Northwest professor emeritus and global labor scholar, a surprising assignment as a USMC corporal in 1971 to study how to better understand and engage Black Marines set him on a journey he could not have possibly imagined.

...

Kim Scipes (2022) CovertAction Magazine

Scipes, Kim. 2022. “As workers win victories in Mexico, it’s important to remember past machinations against them.” CovertAction Magazine. 28 February. https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/02/28/as-workers-win-victories-in-mexico-its-important-to-remember-past-machinations-against-them/  

Mexico’s reenergized labor movement should be leery of AFL-CIO cooptation and CIA infiltration following long historical pattern

In early February, workers at a General Motors plant in Silao, a town in central Mexico, won an important victory by establishing an independent union. Rob McKenzie’s (assisted by Patrick Dunne) new book, El Golpe: U.S. Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico, reminds us of the great historical barriers that workers have faced in forming independent unions in Mexico.