Short Biography

Lefeng Lin is an assistant professor in the Department of China Studies at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. As a sociologist, his research and teaching interests fall into four major areas: sociology of labor, urban sociology, sociology of development, and social movements. Lin received a Ph.D. degree from the Sociology of Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently, he is working on two research projects. he is writing a book about Chinese labor movement, focusing on grassroots labor activism and trade union reform in the 2010s. Lefeng Lin is also beginning to collect data for a new research project on the urban precarity, focusing on work and employment in informal sectors in Chinese cities.    

Project

 Social Worlds: China's Cities as Spaces of Worldmaking    

This project examines the social worldmaking in an informal nightfood market in a Chinese city. Drawing on data from ethnographic observation and interviews, this project explores questions such as: Who are the (essential) individual and collective actors in making the informal nightfood market? What are the major issues debated? What is the work of the world of nightfood market? What are the commitments in that informal market? How do its individual venders believe they should go about fulfilling them? To what degree is this informal market institutionalised by the city government and where are its boundaries?     

Funded by DFG-Walter Bejamin Fellowship.