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October 25, 2002
Out-of-the-Ordinary
Calvin Chen: MHC's New Luce Assistant Professor of Politics
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Photo: Fred LeBlanc
Calvin
Chen
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If
you see a bundled-up figure doing the graceful, meditative movements
of tai chi on Skinner Green, you have spotted Calvin Chen, Luce
Assistant Professor of Politics. Born and raised in busy Los Angeles,
Chen is enjoying the tranquillity of life in South Hadley, especially
Mount Holyoke's beautiful, treed campus and the five-minute
walking commute that has replaced stressful drives on California's
six-lane highways, but he hasn't quite adjusted to the cool
weather of his new home. "People keep telling me I will have
to pick up a hobby related to snow," jokes Chen, who is bracing
for his first New England winter and for his first season with
the "dreaded Celtics" after a lifetime of devotion to
Magic Johnson and the Lakers.
An expert in the political
economy of East Asia, particularly Chinese politics and the industrialization
of the Chinese countryside, Chen comes to Mount Holyoke's
politics department through a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation's
Fund for Asian Studies. He was attracted by the College's
distinguished history of educating women for leadership positions
and is already impressed by his students' global experiences
and ability to analyze those experiences. He said, "They
successfully combine analytical rigor and real world experience
and do the things that social scientists do, which is to find
new ways of understanding how the world works."
Chen's interest
in East Asia began early: both of his parents were born in China
and raised in Taiwan. Chen found his own connection to the region
during high school, when he learned that China's population
of panda bears was threatened by encroachment of settlements and
a dwindling food supply. He and other students campaigned for
China's pandas at the Los Angeles Zoo, raising nearly $100,000
in one summer to support preservation of panda habitats, then
formed a student delegation that delivered the funds to China.
That trip, which culminated in a visit to a panda rehabilitation
center in the mountains of central China, solidified Chen's
fascination with China and his desire to know more about ordinary
life and struggles there.
Finding that many
resources on China were not detailed and often lacked a sense
of the Chinese people as individuals, Chen began his own investigations
in the 1990s. Those included two four-month visits in the southeastern
province of Zhejiang, south of the city of Shanghai. He stayed
in dormitory compounds in the townships of Jinhua and Wenzhou,
hoping to uncover why the collective and private factories that
emerged there in the 1970s and '80s have grown and thrived
in the hands of former farmers, to the great surprise of both
scholars and Chinese policymakers. "Traditionally there has
been a bias or prejudice against people who live in rural areas,
not just in China but throughout the world," said Chen. "They're
not thought of as having the kind of skills or knowledge to be
good workers—maybe good farmers, but not good workers. I
wanted to see why these ex-farmers, just a few years removed from
working the land, have become such outstanding,
productive workers."
What Chen found, as
he lived, socialized, and labored alongside workers making electrical
switches and audio speakers, was that working long, hard days
is only one part of their success. Perhaps more critical, he found,
is a business structure based on community ties and trust, a structure
far different from the impersonal exchange of labor for money.
"They made each enterprise into a surrogate community guided
by the norms that typically guide families and kinship groups,"
said Chen. "There was a lot of mutual trust and support provided
by people who hailed from the same places, not just the hierarchical,
mechanical structure of boss and workers. These ties and relationships
eased the transition into the very alien environment of industry
and helped take the sting out of problems arising on the shop
floor. In these factories, I could see in operation the ‘social
capital' that Harvard's Robert Putnam talks about—the
trust and reciprocity that facilitates coordination and cooperation
for mutual benefit."
Letting the strong
kinship ties and "native place allegiances" of Chinese
society become central to business operations is one of many developmental
possibilities, says Chen. While most investors are tending toward
"Starbucks-style glamour" and are fixated on material
gain through "cookie cutter, homogeneous production,"
he says, the factories of Jinhua and Wenzhou remind us to keep
open minds to other, equally successful production possibilities
that originate at the grassroots level.
Through teaching,
Chen shares the stories of such grassroots enterprises and of
people who traditionally don't get much attention. "My
goal is to use my research to remind students that politics encompasses
more than laws, formal institutions, and politicians," says
Chen. "Politics is also about ordinary citizens making important
choices and contributions, ones no less significant than those
made by prominent figures." By looking at the stories of
these people, he says, students learn not only about the broader
world in which we live but, through a comparative perspective,
about themselves, their own priorities, and values. "What
animates my teaching is the possibility of examining and sharing
diverse ideas and experiences, ones that reflect more enduring
truths. I hope self-reflection remains a central part of students'
lives outside the classroom and beyond Mount Holyoke."
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