Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

DYING FOR AN iPHONE

Jenny Chan Ngai Pun Mark Selden

Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China's Workers

Suicides, excessive overtime, and hostility and violence on the factory floor in China. Drawing on vivid testimonies from rural migrant workers, student interns, managers and trade union staff, Dying for an iPhone is a devastating expose of two of the world's most powerful companies: Foxconn and Apple.

As the leading manufacturer of iPhones, iPads, and Kindles, and employing one million workers in China alone, Taiwanese-invested Foxconn's drive to dominate global electronics manufacturing has aligned perfectly with China's goal of becoming the world leader in technology. This book reveals the human cost of that ambition and what our demands for the newest and best technology means for workers.

Foxconn workers have repeatedly demonstrated their power to strike at key nodes of transnational production, challenge management and the Chinese state, and confront global tech behemoths. Dying for an iPhone allows us to assess the impact of global capitalism's deepening crisis on workers.'

Jenny Chan is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is also the Vice President of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Labour Movements.

Mark Selden is Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University.

Pun Ngai is Professor of Sociology at The University of Hong Kong.

Available products
Book Published 2020-06-01 by Haymarket Books

Comments

Dying for an iPhone is an absolutely necessary read for anyone seeking to understand the realities of modern-day capitalism. Contrary to the mythology of Silicon Valley, this carefully researched book explains why companies like Apple owe their success more to exploitation than to innovation Wendy Liu, author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism Dying for an iPhone takes readers deep inside the dark Satanic mills of Foxconn's industrial empire. Drawing on the words of the workers themselves, the book offers an invaluable portrait of the Chinese working class as it pumps blood (sometimes literally) into the productive heart of world capitalism Ben Tarnoff, co-founder of Logic Magazine Critical, accessible, and rigorously researched, this book offers the most comprehensive analysis of Foxconn, the world's largest electronics factory: its bleak landscape, dire consequences, and inspiring efforts to change it for the better. Jack Linchuan Qiu, author of Goodbye iSlave: A Manifesto for Digital Abolition A sobering investigation into the human, social and environmental costs of producing the devices we have come to rely on, a process in which both corporations and we, the consumers, are complicit. Nick Holdstock, author of Chasing the Chinese Dream