“All Migrant Workers on the Earth Are One Family”: An Ethnographic Study of Vernacular Rhetoric and Emerging Civil Sphere in a Transitional China by MINGJIE WANG B.A. Tsinghua University, 1997 M.A. Tsinghua University, 2000 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment Of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication 2012 a This thesis titled: “All Migrant Workers on the Earth Are One Family”: An Ethnographic Study of Vernacular Rhetoric and Emerging Civil Sphere in a Transitional China written by Mingjie Wang has been approved for the Department of Communication __________________________________ Gerard A. Hauser __________________________________ Andrew Calabrese __________________________________ Lisa Keränen __________________________________ Timothy R. Kuhn __________________________________ Bryan C. Taylor Date: ________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. IRB Protocol # 10-0189 B Wang, Mingjie (Ph.D., Communication) “All Migrant Workers on the Earth Are One Family”: An Ethnographic Study of Vernacular Rhetoric and Emerging Civil Sphere in a Transitional China Dissertation directed by Professor Gerard A. Hauser ABSTRACT For the past decade, China had remained one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but the human costs, economic inequality, social discrimination, and political marginalization imposed upon the hundreds of millions of migrant workers had become unprecedentedly grave. In the context of such social predicaments, Grassroots Home (GH) emerged as a self-regulated association of migrant workers, who aspired to make their collective voice heard and to imagine a better society. This research regards GH as a representative anecdote of China’s emerging civil sphere, defined as an ongoing social and rhetorical accomplishment of something approaching group solidarity and civil judgment about matters of mutual interest. Theoretically, this research emphasizes the role of vernacular rhetoric in the self-production of society in which social imaginaries and abstract principles of civil sphere take concrete forms in time and place. This research explores three fundamental questions regarding 1) GH’s formation as an ongoing rhetorical project, especially in terms of maintaining autonomy in relation to the party- state authorities; 2) GH’s creation of something approaching a distinctly workers’ culture through vernacular rhetoric; 3) GH’s visions of a better society by (re)appropriating and (re)inventing cultural resources in a way that their meanings became rhetorically salient and communally comprehensible. In order to explore these questions, this research blends rhetoric and ethnography by conducting sustained fieldwork at GH where the researcher observed and heard naturally iii occurring vernacular rhetoric among the workers and participated in their cultural activities and organizational duties. This work finds that the migrant workers had demonstrated sophisticated rhetorical competence. Their engagement in a vernacular realm helped to preserve their self-organization as a place in which to remain independent from and strategically cooperative with the party-state. They had been building an emerging culture of their unique worldview by reclaiming the productivity of labor. They envisioned a better society by (re)discovering and (re)inventing the cultural resources of the socialist legacy, traditional culture of love, and an agrarian dream. The findings from this research have theoretical and practical implications for better understanding and potentially engaging China’s emerging civil sphere. The empirical reflexive lessons learned from this research can help to further develop methods of rhetorical ethnography. iv DEDICATION To G.H. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to my advisor, Gerard Hauser, for his friendship, advice, and introduction to the charming field of vernacular rhetoric. This dissertation would not have been possible without his words of wisdom, great patience, and unwavering confidence in me. I am profoundly grateful to the rest of my committee – Andrew Calabrese, Lisa Keränen, Tim Kuhn, and Bryan Taylor – for their encouragement and help with my intellectual growth during my study in the University of Colorado Boulder. I feel truly fortunate and grateful for being a member of this warm intellectual home. I am also grateful for the intellectual and emotional sustenance from my friends, especially Sam McCormick, Aaron Dimock, and erin underwood. I am especially grateful to the members of Grassroots Home (Hangzhou, China) for accepting me as one of their family members when I was doing my ethnographic fieldwork there. They have my heartfelt respect due to their cheerful and voluntary contributions to a common home and a common dream. Certainly, all flaws in this work are mine. In writing this dissertation, I am very grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2011-2012), and to the University of Colorado Boulder Graduate School and Department of Communication for their additional financial support for AY 2011-2012. My ethnographic fieldwork was partially supported by a scholarship from the Department of Communication, to which I am also grateful. Finally, I wish to thank my parents for their unending patience and love. vi CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 Prologue ………………………………………………………………………………... 1 A Play in One Act …………………………………………………………………. 1 Workers’ Voices in a Noisy World ………………………………………………... 5 A View from the Balcony ………………………………………………………….. 10 2 Migrant Workers, Civil Sphere, and Vernacular Rhetoric: A Theoretical Orientation .. 20 Chinese Migrant Workers, NGOs, and Human Agency …………………………… 21 Civil Sphere and Vernacular Rhetoric: A Theoretical Orientation ……………….. 32 Three Key Research Questions ……………………………………………………. 51 3 Blending Rhetoric and Ethnography: Methodological Considerations ………………. 54 Rhetoric and Ethnography: At the Intersection …………………………………… 56 Research Design: A Personal Narrative …………………………………………… 61 4 Grassroots Home: From Virtual Space to a Real Place ……………………………….. 75 Out of the Garment Factory ……………………………………………………….. 75 A Plain Home, Online …………………………………………………………….. 80 A Utopia in Practice ………………………………………………………………. 84 A Home in the Real World ……………………………………………………….. 96 in medias res ………………………………………………………………………. 99 5 In Search of Civil Sphere: Grassroots Home as an Ongoing Rhetorical Project ……. 107 What’s in the Name? .............................................................................................. 108 “All Migrant Workers on the Earth Are One Family…” ………………………….. 113 Let the Workers Live with Happiness and Dignity ………………………………… 121 To Move or Not to Move? That Was the Question ………………………………… 130 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….. 151 6 Beyond the Futility of Labor: Migrant Workers’ Culture in an Emerging Civil Sphere. 154 Workers’ Culture as an Object of Social Control ………………………………….. 156 Futility vs. Productivity: The Problem of Labor (Part 1) …………………………... 164 Futility vs. Productivity: The Problem of Labor (Part 2) …………………………... 175 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… 190 7 Dreaming in a Borderland: Social Imaginaries at Grassroots Home …………………. 192 “The Red Army Was Not Built Strong from the Outset….” ………………………. 197 “I’m Sorry, Confucius….” …………………………………………………………. 204 Green Villages & Blue Cities ………………………………………………………. 216 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….. 222 vii 8 Toward an Emerging Civil Sphere and a Rhetorical Ethnography …………………… 227 The Vernacular Voices: Grassroots Home Revisited ……………………………… 227 The Vernacular Realm: Implications for China’s Emerging Civil Sphere ………… 238 The Vernacular Lessons: A Rhetorical Ethnographer’s Reflections ………………. 248 9 Epilogue ……………………………………………….……………………………….. 265 The Star-and-Moon Song …………………………………………………………... 266 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………..…………………………… 268 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Entrance of Grassroots Home (viewed from the balcony) …………………………. 11 2 Google map of Gefan Neighborhood where GH was located (2011) ……………….. 13 3 The inter-space (debris) between GH’s neighborhood and the adjacent high-rise apartments ……………………………………………………………………………. 15 4 At 4-ish PM, the sellers already set up stands for hostel-returning workers …………. 17 5 First face-to-face meeting of GH members, with its organizational flag (January 1, 2007) ………………………………………………………………………………….. 83 6 Xu Wencai (in front of the computer) with two GH volunteers in his dorm room (mid 2007) ……………………………………………………………………………. 84 7 “Give me a firm spot, and we shall move the earth. – Grassroots Home” …………… 96 8 Grassroots Home on its opening day (November 23, 2008) …………………………. 99 9 South-facing interior wall of Grassroots Home ………………………………………. 103 10 Liu Ming accepting the official plague of the Station (June 17, 2010) ………………. 137 11 A view of the new facility of the Station …………………………………………….. 147 12 A snapshot of the entrance of the Station, with the newly conceived slogan printed by the right side of the door …………………………………………………………. 151 13 Cover of the fourth album of migrant workers’ songs made by the art troupe of Beijing Home of Workers ……………………………………………………………. 185 14 Xuduo (of Bejing Home of Workers) led the singing group of workers as they performed hand gestures at a fundraising event,