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Abstract
The dissertation “Mao’s Clever Hands: Export Lacemaking and Socialist Flexibility in the Cold War, 1949–1980s” examines the intersections of gender, labor, and industrialization by introducing the concept of “socialist flexibility.” In a centrally planned economy, flexibility rose from the instability of planning and was made possible primarily outside the socialist factory system. The success of China’s export trade—especially in labor-intensive sectors like lacemaking and embroidery—depended on the capacity of local actors to respond adaptively to shifting global market demands. This flexibility manifested in multiple ways: the use of layered networks of state and local actors, the strategic deployment of gendered labor hierarchies that drew on women’s domestic craft skills, and the ability to mobilize and reorganize production into different rural units. These forms of improvisation and adaptation, often informal or semi-official, were not deviations from socialist development but integral to its functioning—supplying foreign exchange and supporting the broader industrialization agenda of the state. Focusing on the export-oriented lacemaking and embroidery industry in the Chaoshan region, the project uncovers a previously uncharted history of labor-intensive craftwork carried out by millions of rural Chinese women. Marketed under the brand name “Clever Hands,” this handmade lace was customized for Western and Latin American markets and ranked the sixth-largest export industry by the end of the Maoist era. Yet the women who sustained this sector remain largely invisible in both the historiography of socialist China and broader studies of the international division of labor. By tracing various actors along the production chain, the dissertation shows how “socialist flexibility” functioned through the strategic use of gendered labor to fulfill non-agricultural production goals, often outside of highly mechanized or urban contexts. It reveals how socialist managers sought to scientifically manage craft production by transferring the embodied expertise of female lacemakers into the control of male managers in state-run companies. Central to this process was “social deskilling”—the codification of artisanal knowledge through manuals, diagrams, and sample books that abstracted technique from practice and repurposed it for institutional profit and export value. The dissertation challenges traditional understandings of industrialization, which prioritizes mechanical manufacturing in modern factories, and offers a critical perspective on how the epistemological separation of making and knowing has historically perpetuated social injustice and gender inequality.