Carry Burawoy’s legacy forward: Public sociology and Chinese labour scholarship in the age of platform capitalism

This paper examines the impact of Michael Burawoy’s notion of public sociology on Chinese labour scholarship and highlights the value of the Gramscian concept of civil society for understanding changing state-labour relations in China. Starting with Burawoy’s 2005 visit to Hong Kong, it traces how his vision of public sociology resonated with a decade of “organic public sociology” practised by Chinese labour scholars between 2005 and 2015. It then situates the 2015 crackdown on labour NGOs within a broader political-economic reconfiguration marked by the failure of the Hu–Wen hegemonic project, the consolidation of Xi-era authoritarianism, and the rise of state-led platform capitalism. Under these conditions, labour scholars shifted towards new forms of traditional public and policy sociology. The paper concludes by arguing for looking beyond academia to identify organic intellectuals emerging from the working class in China and beyond.