循环式国家:转型中国的符号式劳动治理机制探析

The Circular State:A Case Study of the Symbolic Labor Governance System in Transitional China

抗争政治与国家建设之间的关系是社会运动研究中的一个经典问题。本文通过对一组国有企业退休工人为维护退休金权益所展开的十年抗争进行过程事件分析,来勾勒国家在劳动治理过程中逐步形成的官僚场域。这个官僚场域由三个相互交叉的圈子所构成:信访办圈子、信访办与法院之间的圈子、中央与地方之间的圈子。这些交叉的圈子所构成的国家场域一方面通过对抗争的制度化循环而拉长了工人的斗争时间,分散了抗争的空间,从而有效遏止了抗争的激进化,另一方面则通过抗争工人与国家代理人之间的叙事化互动促进了国家资本的激活与流通,从而实现了对抗争者的象征性支配。

The relationship between contentious politics and the state building is a classic topic in the study of social movements. Through detailed analysis of a ten-year struggle of a group of state workers to defend their pensions by active engagement with state agents, this paper attempts to explore the circular feature of the state and how this circular state functions to absorb the labor contentions. From August 1998 to October 2008, a group of retired state workers in H Steel Factory carried out radical street protests, persistent legal litigations and peaceful collective petitions to fight against their factory＇ sretention and reduction of their pensions. The trajectory of the workers＇ struggles delineates a gradually formed state bureaucratic field of labor governance. This state is composed of three intersecting circles--a circle between different petition offices,a circle between petition offices and courts, and a circle between the local and the center. This system full of tensions within and between different circles produces the negotiation and bargaining relation between different levels and sectors in the state, which in turn leads to the circulation mechanism of social conflicts rather than a resolution structure. The institutional configuration of this circular state includes the double bind between decentralization and marketization and the mutual reference between the petition system and the legal system. The circulation of the workers＇ case in this circular bureaucratic field, on one side elongates the struggles of the workers and prevents the radicalization of their resistance~ on the other side, promotes the circulation and inculcation of the statist capitals among the workers.