Contradictory Control: How Employers’ Multiple Control Practices Clash and Enable Workers’ Acts of Resistance

Employers seek to transform labor power into labor by implementing multiple forms of labor control. These multiple control practices, however, may not obtain consent but rather resistance from workers. Why do employers’ multiple control practices fail, and how is this failure related to workers’ acts of resistance? The author draws on existing research to classify employers’ control practices into three categories—technical, organizational, and ideational—and argues that these practices contradict each other systematically and give rise to resistance. An ethnographic study at factories in China shows that employers’ control practices impose conflicting demands on workers. These tensions create the basis, grievance, and mentality for workers’ acts of resistance. This article provides a unified theoretical framework for analyzing contradictions within labor control and contributes to a long tradition of Chinese factory life ethnographies.