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Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation
A vivid look at China's shifting place in the global political economy of technology production
How did China's mass manufacturing and "copycat" production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets? Prototype Nation offers a rich transnational analysis of how the promise of democratized innovation and entrepreneurial life has shaped China's governance and global image. With historical precision and ethnographic detail, Silvia Lindtner reveals how a growing distrust in Western models of progress and development, including Silicon Valley and the tech industry after the financial crisis of 2007-8, shaped the rise of the global maker movement and the vision of China as a "new frontier" of innovation.
Lindtner's investigations draw on more than a decade of research in experimental work spaces-makerspaces, coworking spaces, innovation hubs, hackathons, and startup weekends-in China, the United States, Africa, Europe, Taiwan, and Singapore, as well as in key sites of technology investment and industrial production-tech incubators, corporate offices, and factories. She examines how the ideals of the maker movement, to intervene in social and economic structures, served the technopolitical project of prototyping a "new" optimistic, assertive, and global China. In doing so, Lindtner demonstrates that entrepreneurial living influences governance, education, policy, investment, and urban redesign in ways that normalize the persistence of sexism, racism, colonialism, and labor exploitation.
Prototype Nation shows that by attending to the bodies and sites that nurture entrepreneurial life, technology can be extricated from the seemingly endless cycle of promise and violence.
Cover image: Courtesy of Cao Fei, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers
How did China's mass manufacturing and "copycat" production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets? Prototype Nation offers a rich transnational analysis of how the promise of democratized innovation and entrepreneurial life has shaped China's governance and global image. With historical precision and ethnographic detail, Silvia Lindtner reveals how a growing distrust in Western models of progress and development, including Silicon Valley and the tech industry after the financial crisis of 2007-8, shaped the rise of the global maker movement and the vision of China as a "new frontier" of innovation.
Lindtner's investigations draw on more than a decade of research in experimental work spaces-makerspaces, coworking spaces, innovation hubs, hackathons, and startup weekends-in China, the United States, Africa, Europe, Taiwan, and Singapore, as well as in key sites of technology investment and industrial production-tech incubators, corporate offices, and factories. She examines how the ideals of the maker movement, to intervene in social and economic structures, served the technopolitical project of prototyping a "new" optimistic, assertive, and global China. In doing so, Lindtner demonstrates that entrepreneurial living influences governance, education, policy, investment, and urban redesign in ways that normalize the persistence of sexism, racism, colonialism, and labor exploitation.
Prototype Nation shows that by attending to the bodies and sites that nurture entrepreneurial life, technology can be extricated from the seemingly endless cycle of promise and violence.
Cover image: Courtesy of Cao Fei, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers
272 pages, Hardcover
Published September 15, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 6, 2021
Prototype Nation is a detailed exploration of how narratives of China's technological success are not alternatives to the Western models of technocapitalism, but simply leaves those structures in place "in its claims to universality" which "[mask] how it [is] deeply entwined with specific national, state, and commercial interests."
I've heard of this main premise before, but did not know how many actors contributed to these narratives: government, migrant rural workers, both Chinese and American entrepreneurs, happiness workers, urban villages, and more. Lindtner writes, "They have differential yearnings rooted in their respective positionalities and lives, but to investors they all look the same; they are relevant only if their dreams can scale; only the dreams that are dramatized or spectacularized are eligible for investment."
Lindtner's position as an ethnographer means she actually includes the voices of these actors, not just ivory tower analysis. In fact, she even participates in a startup training so she can continue her research. My favorite voices she includes are the Chinese women, specifically happiness workers, who exist on the margins of the Chinese tech world -- crucial to its functioning, but never visible.
Though the rise of Chinese innovation is a more recent event, I also like how Lindtner traces the origins of Chinese ambitions to the century of humiliation. After all, we don't live in truly a post-colonial world; the legacies of colonialism are central in shaping geopolitics.
Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same problems that characterize much of academia. It is dense and likely not so accessible to people who are not used to the vocabulary of the ethnography and social sciences. There were many times I would have to reread paragraphs to grasp its main point.
I've heard of this main premise before, but did not know how many actors contributed to these narratives: government, migrant rural workers, both Chinese and American entrepreneurs, happiness workers, urban villages, and more. Lindtner writes, "They have differential yearnings rooted in their respective positionalities and lives, but to investors they all look the same; they are relevant only if their dreams can scale; only the dreams that are dramatized or spectacularized are eligible for investment."
Lindtner's position as an ethnographer means she actually includes the voices of these actors, not just ivory tower analysis. In fact, she even participates in a startup training so she can continue her research. My favorite voices she includes are the Chinese women, specifically happiness workers, who exist on the margins of the Chinese tech world -- crucial to its functioning, but never visible.
Though the rise of Chinese innovation is a more recent event, I also like how Lindtner traces the origins of Chinese ambitions to the century of humiliation. After all, we don't live in truly a post-colonial world; the legacies of colonialism are central in shaping geopolitics.
Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same problems that characterize much of academia. It is dense and likely not so accessible to people who are not used to the vocabulary of the ethnography and social sciences. There were many times I would have to reread paragraphs to grasp its main point.
December 30, 2022
Prototype Nation is an ethnographic work about the maker field in China, how it was developed, and how it aims to display China, especially Shenzhen, as new and innovative.
As a good ethnographer, the author does an effective job at immersing herself in the field, mixing inner understanding and contrast to bring about a competent analysis of why and how making became so successful in China. She looks at the infrastructure, expectations, uses and sentiments that allow making to happen - and continue - in China.
Making became important in China at a convergence between a few factors: a disappointment with the modernist ideals of progress through technology, mainly after the 2008 financial crisis; a desire by the CCP to sell China as forward looking, overcoming the colonial trope of lagging.
In a few words, China adopted making via a strong desire to overcome colonial ideas of lagging and lack of innovation, while, at the same time, adopting the Western ideal of what it means to be innovate. Making, then, became a good strategy for the CCP to sell China as innovate and forward looking. However, it is also malleable enough to contain promises of redemption, justice and equality via grassroots technology - which she conceptualizes as the “socialist pitch”. This usually happens by interpreting shanzhai, the industrial pattern of copy so prevalent in Shenzhen, as a Chinese characterist to be remembered, but also overcome.
Silvia’s analysis demonstrate how colonialism is a strong force in influencing China’s approach to technology. One of the gret objectives - and strengths - of her work is to describe how the entrepreneurial neoliberal development is not natural, but must be continuously nurtured.
In summary, Prototype Nation is a great work of analysis of the Chinese industry of technology, with useful reflexive concepts to frame the patterns identified, going beyond the obvious.
As a good ethnographer, the author does an effective job at immersing herself in the field, mixing inner understanding and contrast to bring about a competent analysis of why and how making became so successful in China. She looks at the infrastructure, expectations, uses and sentiments that allow making to happen - and continue - in China.
Making became important in China at a convergence between a few factors: a disappointment with the modernist ideals of progress through technology, mainly after the 2008 financial crisis; a desire by the CCP to sell China as forward looking, overcoming the colonial trope of lagging.
In a few words, China adopted making via a strong desire to overcome colonial ideas of lagging and lack of innovation, while, at the same time, adopting the Western ideal of what it means to be innovate. Making, then, became a good strategy for the CCP to sell China as innovate and forward looking. However, it is also malleable enough to contain promises of redemption, justice and equality via grassroots technology - which she conceptualizes as the “socialist pitch”. This usually happens by interpreting shanzhai, the industrial pattern of copy so prevalent in Shenzhen, as a Chinese characterist to be remembered, but also overcome.
Silvia’s analysis demonstrate how colonialism is a strong force in influencing China’s approach to technology. One of the gret objectives - and strengths - of her work is to describe how the entrepreneurial neoliberal development is not natural, but must be continuously nurtured.
In summary, Prototype Nation is a great work of analysis of the Chinese industry of technology, with useful reflexive concepts to frame the patterns identified, going beyond the obvious.
July 16, 2025
Read this with a book club. This book is very academic, aimed at other ethnographers and I am not at all trained in that field so I will admit that some of my complaints are a function of my not being the intended audience. The writing is very dense and I'm sure I'm missing some of the nuance in vocabulary as it is used in the field. However, my main gripe with the book is that it doesn't deliver convincing proof of its main points. The premise is excellent: "making" was used by the CCP to convince Chinese citizens that it was their personal responsibility to get out of poverty and all the democratizing promises of making obscured the fact that it was just as exploitative as the other techno-solutions that had come before. The author argues that paying attention to the work that goes into promoting the techno-solutions can show how fragile they actually are and thus how alternatives can be found. A few of the chapters about how these promises were being sold in China were interesting. But there was very little discussion of the real exploitation that was occurring and/or the alternatives that we should be looking to instead. There was a single chapter that consisted mostly of stories about a single woman that was supposed to stand in for all of the exploitation and all of the resistance going on and it was just not compelling. The author spoke from personal experience but you cannot expect to make an argument about a movement going on in one of the world's largest countries with such a narrow focus.
October 5, 2025
Saw this on Hack A Day and was immediately intrigued. Investigating the unseen machinery that puts devices into the hands of westerners is a compelling topic, especially given my job in tech. Sadly the book itself is a tougher read. It's well-cited and researched, not too far off the academic buzzword deep end, and undeniably important and relatable. Nevertheless it can't help but feel obvious to people the most likely to read it.
This would be a great book to any people in tech somehow unaware of the deep sexism of the industry, the way that capitalist enterprises twist empowerment into blame, or the way narrative is all it takes to turn a knockoff into an inspired improvement. But I don't think those people are willing to read anything deeper than 6th grade reading level Leadership slop and certainly not if it communicates anything challenging.
Worth going thru if you have a hardware interest and aren't that plugged into online discourse
This would be a great book to any people in tech somehow unaware of the deep sexism of the industry, the way that capitalist enterprises twist empowerment into blame, or the way narrative is all it takes to turn a knockoff into an inspired improvement. But I don't think those people are willing to read anything deeper than 6th grade reading level Leadership slop and certainly not if it communicates anything challenging.
Worth going thru if you have a hardware interest and aren't that plugged into online discourse
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews