Anthropology of Work Review
'Leb I Sol' (Bread And Salt):
The Meanings Of Work In The Changing Society Of Macedonia
Ilka Thiessen, St. Thomas University
"When I got the job I did not really
know what I was supposed to do and I
still do not know; I do a little bit of this,
a little bit of that Basically I can do
whatever I feel like. The boss is never
there anyway and he does not care.
When I started I always came at 8 in
the morning. One day my supervisor
came and told me I was making others
feel bad. Why couldn't I come a bit
later, like 11 am. Now I come around
this time. I talk to my colleagues and
then we go to the cafe. Only when the
boss is in then he should not see us
sitting in the cafeV' (Anonymous
Informant 1995)
There was a peculiarity about the meaning of
work in Skopje during the time of my fieldwork. From
1988 to 1996 I spent my time in Skopje, capital city of
the now Republic of Macedonia and Former
Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, following the lives
of young women and men entering the faculty of
engineering at the university in Skopje, following their
years at the university and their eventual search for
employment after finishing their degrees. This search
for work became a frustrating experience in a world
that they had not anticipated in 1988. This paper is a
reflection on this experience, an experience that
identifies conflicting ideologies about the meaning of
work in a society that was held to have changed from
socialism to capitalism. This paper will question the
adequacy of speaking about Macedonia as a postsocialist
society moving towards capitalism and instead
suggests that Macedonia might choose a different
solution.
Work Ethics
My friends in Skopje discuss work as a matter of
work ethic. They have established that people in the
Balkans do not work as hard as people from Northern
Europe or the United States, disregarding the fact that
their parents worked very hard to pull Skopje out from
the ashes when it collapsed in 1963 under a devastating
earthquake. In such a perception of Balkan work ethic
there is also no place for recognition of the hard, bonebreaking
work my friends' grandparents performed in
the villages in order to raise their children. I argue that
this negative perception of Balkan work ethic points
towards how "the outside perceptions of the Balkans
has been internalized in the region itself" (Todorova
1997, 39). The outside - represented by government
agencies, NGO's, UNPROFOR, and Western journalists
covering the events of the region - are seen to suggest
that a 'traditional' concept of time can be found in the
Balkans (see Thompson, 1967). Members of foreign
agencies in Macedonia often commented on the 'Balkan
work ethic' and its socialist 'time conception' that
hindered their work in Macedonia, suggesting the strict
implementation of liberal market economy principles in
the new emerging society. (This argument is based on
numerous representatives of Western authorities in
Macedonia, such as members of the German embassy,
UNPROFOR officials, American evangelists, Austrian
Jehovah witnesses, French businessmen, and American
NGO members). In coming to Macedonia, Western
agencies attempt to replace the so-called real socialist
state of affairs' with liberal market economy (Firlit,
1992, Pawlik, 1992, Wedel, 1992). Wedel (1992) argues
that when the degree of synchronisation demanded
was slight, task-orientation was still prevalent, as in
former socialist societies, where waiting for materials
and other delays were common. Thompson concludes
that "unpurposive passing of time would be behaviour
which the culture approved. It can scarcely find
approval among those who see the history of
'industrialisation' in seemingly neutral but, in fact,
profoundly value-loaded terms, as one of increasing
rationalization in the service of economic growth....
there is no such thing as economic growth which is not,
at the same time, growth or change of culture"
(Thompson, 1967: 96-97). As such it is concluded that
Macedonia, in order to gain access to Europe, needs not
only to turn to democracy but has to turn to liberal
market economy. This in turn means dramatic social
change. Citing Nane Ruzin, MP of the Macedonian
Assembly (May 1995):
"People expect that the free market
would solve all their problems and
lead people into a Western life.
However, reality is quite different. We
are lacking three substantial factors of
Western democracy: 1) capital 2)
tradition 3) a democratic and civil
society. The post-socialist paradigm
and its characteristics cause specific
anomalies, and despite the fact that we
have democratic institutions, they do
not function."
Nane Ruzin, referring to the lack of tradition, is
referring to the lack of the Western protestant work
ethic (see Applebaum 1992). Skipping over the socialist
period where 'one only waited to work' (Ana 1991) in
the past Macedonian peasants worked for 'bread and
salt' (a expression taken from a popular Macedonian
Volume XXIII, Numbers 1-2
Anthropology of Work Review
music group) and today, because of the lack of
institutionalised work ethic as found in industrial
societies, Macedonians again work for bread and salt. I
argue that these definitions of what work is, how it is
and should be performed, and what implications these
different definitions raise are at the forefront of social
change in Macedonia that has come with the
disintegration of Macedonia and its independence.
However, some consequences have been overlooked by
Western agencies and authorities (see for example the
discussion on Albania by Lemel 2000). Because my
informants reject this outside perception of the Balkans,
they frame work in terms of the ethnic divisions that
resurfaced in the 1990s.
According to Allcock, three dominant general
themes may be distinguished in Western
representations in the Balkans: the marginal status of
the Balkans vis-a-vis the Orient ("the Balkans as
incompletely Oriental"); the ancient (Greek and
Roman) heritage of the peoples in the peninsula; and
the preservation of ways of living and folk traditions
close to nature despite the increasing tendencies for
modernization that may be observed in the peninsula in
the beginning of the twentieth century (Allcock and
Young 1991:179). They view Albanian women in
particular as steeped in traditions, non-emancipatory,
peasant like, uneducated, and ne kulturni (Bringa 1995).
The Image of the 'Balkans'
Finishing university and starting employment, my
informants entered a new phase in their lives, at a time
that coincided with the political changes from
Yugoslavia to The Republic of Macedonia. Their
parents had come to play an important part in
Macedonia's society after 1945 through hard labour and
the responsibility of transforming it from a peasant
society towards an industrial nation. The graduates in
their time, in the last years of Yugoslavia, saw
themselves as the elite because of their advanced
knowledge and 'Western' attitudes - bridging the gap,
in their eyes, between Northern Europe and the
Balkans. As their parents changed their society through
socialist ideology, my friends intended to change their
society through their credentials, qualifications, and
skills. They saw their parents' generation still bound to
Balkan principles within Yugoslav socialist ideology.
In the same way their parents wanted to better the lives
of their parents, whom they viewed as downtrodden
and oppressed peasants who had to be brought into
modern, industrial Yugoslavia, my friends wanted to
move their society away from the notion of Balkans as
the backward, non-European side of Macedonia,
instead aspiring to become more like Western Europe.
In 1991, my friends celebrated the 1989 event as a sign
that Macedonia soon would be part of the European
Union.
As such, they saw work as far more than just
working for bread and salt, aiming to have successful
careers as electrical engineers inside Macedonia as well
as inside Europe. A career was seen as something that
Northern Europe and the United States offered its
citizens. A career demanded changing positions,
challenges at work, a work community, and leisure
time. However, times were very volatile. The fall of
Yugoslavia and Macedonia's subsequent independence
then had obvious dramatic economic consequences for
Macedonia. One of those consequences was that
Macedonia's industry was halted since YugoslavMacedonia's
main industry, the production of parts
that would be assembled in other Yugoslav Republics,
was now unable to ship parts to assembling factories in
Croatia or Slovenia because of high custom duties that
had to be paid to Serbia. Plus, the embargo on the rogue
state of Serbia at the time led to massive smuggling
activities that, according to my informants, were
overlooked' by UNPROFOR's border controls in order
to not acerbate the situation further. This was
financially counteracted by the European Union and
the United States, who feared further instability of the
region.
Not surprisingly, however, this aid came with an
ideological price tag: a liberal market economy and a
de-valuation of the socialist past. It became impossible
for Macedonians to seek an identity that built upon the
experiences of the socialist past, a socialist past that
was, for example, marked by the principles of
brotherhood and unity, and a socialist past that had
been the source of pride for many Macedonians,
especially in Skopje. I argue that very specific images
of socialism and the Balkans, those introduced by the
West at that time, exacerbated ethnic conflict in
Macedonia. (Similar to the notorious television cartoon
in 1990 in Germany of the first West German chancellor
Conrad Adenauer teaching his dog - and East Germans
- about liberal market economy). My friends had been
proud Yugoslavs with the freedom to travel anywhere,
seeing themselves still in 1991 as "soon becoming
members of the European community." In 1992 this
dream had been taken away from them, as
Macedonians they were landlocked and were not able
to travel anywhere in Western Europe without a visa
which was nearly impossible to obtain.
Simultaneously, many NGO's and foreign companies
sprang up in Macedonia, treating Macedonians as
cheap labour. In order to prove to 'The West' that they
were worthy world citizens, many of my Macedonian
friends developed strategies that ranged from starving
themselves to excessive shopping (Thiessen 1999). As a
consequence, Macedonians viewed themselves firmly
as 'Western' while recreating Albanians as 'Balkan,'
those uneducated, violent peasants that the West saw as
primary inhabitants of Macedonia.
The Identity Paradox and the History of Work
As my friends finished university and struggled
to make sense of the life that stood before them, some
Volume XXIII, Numbers 1-2
Anthropology of Work Review
peculiar paradoxes were introduced by what was called
in Macedonia 'The West' (Europe and the United
States). With respect to work, my friends perceived the
'unpurposive' passing of time as identifying Macedonia
as a place of origin belonging to the Balkans, whose
people "know how to live life." Simultaneously they
rejected time spent in this way in the attempt to present
Macedonia as European and modern. In its
nationalistic discourse, Macedonians are faced with the
same paradox of seeking the peasant past as place of
origin, finding this peasant past occupied by the
Albanians living in the abandoned Macedonian
villages, and rejecting this peasant past as being
symbolised through the Albanian population as
'Balkan* and non-Western (also see Thiessen 1999).
Such definitions are endorsed and reflected upon in
Skopje, creating a very specific history. In this history,
Macedonia is portrayed as a generally unproductive,
non-industrialised country. Small farm-holders have
worked the rugged land through centuries of
exploitation by the Ottomans, gaining just enough from
the land to sustain the family. At the turn of the
century, Europe, Australia and the United States appear
as dominant economic forces attracting thousands of
'workers' in the wake of heavy industrialisation.
Macedonian men started to leave Macedonia in search
for 'work/ going onJ
pechalba,' leaving their villages and
wives, returning home only once every few years,
sending home money and otherwise disappearing in
the factories of more 'advanced' societies.
Then, after the Second World War, Tito brought
'modernity' to Macedonia by building factories. With
the earthquake of 1963, Skopje attracted young people
from the countryside who worked hard to pull Skopje
out of the rubble, creating an icon of socialism. Here
'work' as a concept is portrayed in a historical
development: working in the fields as subsistence and
oppression; work abroad as disruptive and lower
status; and socialism as working together. What my
friends then expected from post-socialism was a career.
Proud and oblivious of the fact that they lived in a
deceased' world (according to Western media), my
young friends travelled through Europe. They felt
young and equal to their fellow Germans or French
colleagues. Interestingly, my friends even felt superior
to their European counterparts, they felt Europeans and
Americans did not know how to live life, how to pass
time appropriately. They were proud to be from
Yugoslavia, where they could achieve the same things
as their friends in Europe, but with a 'South-European'
flair. With the disintegration, the knowing-how-to-livelife
became a 'Balkan' attitude towards work. As such,
knowing-how-to-live-life had to be re-defined.
Albanians and Gypsies were defined as exhibiting a
'Balkan' attitude towards for work, as well as former
members of the socialist cadre that had refused to
change. However, my friends also were faced with
their own ample amount of 'passing-of-time,' which
became re-defined as leisure time.
The Images of 'Western' Work Life
in Macedonian Discourse
With the disintegration of Yugoslavia, my friends,
as striving engineers, sought a new world that would
reconnect them to Western Europe and give them
access to a world they felt belonged to them. Without
physical access to this world any longer, visas denied,
borders re-adjusted, they discussed the perception of
this world as seen on American and European
television pirated through satellite dishes. Of great
interest for my friends, and commented on many times,
was that this world was not portrayed as a world in
which one worked to make a living, but a world that
endorsed a very specific image of 'Western work life'
captured in the two TV shows Beverly Hills 90210 and
Ally McBeal. In this perception, work itself was
identified as a manual activity, manual labour denoting
lower status. Thus, the modern status of my friends
had to be achieved by passing time as seen on
television and not through work. However, this
created a paradox. As professionals, my friends felt
strongly connected to the world of Ally McBeal and
Beverly Hills 90210. They refused to see themselves as
cheap labourers of Europe, even though some of them
worked for foreign agencies for $500 to $1000 a month
(a fortune in Macedonia, but exploitative by European
standards).
The idea of labour as working for others was now
dressed in ethnic terms. Albanians were guest workers
in Germany, seeking careers on the international
market to create enough free time to pass the time
fashionably. The truth was that Macedonians in Skopje
barely made a living, earning, like their grandparents,
through hard labour working the soil, only enough to
afford 'leb i sol' - bread and salt. Thus, working for 'leb
i sol' contrasted with work as fulfilment, as a career. At
the same time, work connected to modernisation,'
'industrialisation/ and 'progress' was contrasted with
the heavy, non-rewarding peasant work to simply
sustain life, which was far from rewarding. My
informants rejected this life very much, the life of their
grandparents, the life that they felt was still led in
Macedonia by Albanians and in which they seemed to
be thrown back again. They rejected this world, the
world of their grandparents at the very time Macedonia
needed to define itself to the world and especially to its
neighbors. Since Macedonia was classified now as a
new emerging democracy, as post-socialist, the only
reference available for nationalists and my friends alike
was their identity as Macedonian, which derived,
ultimately, from their peasant past and 500 years of
Ottoman oppression. Songs were sung recounting
these days, Christian celebrations and traditions were
revived and connected people to their peasant past
stories were enacted that all recounted the lost and
Volume XXIII, Numbers 1-2 10
Anthropology of Work Review
found past of a people that did indeed exist. It was
problematic, however, that the past that was recounted
was 'occupied' by a people defined as 'those people we
are not* Today Albanians were seen as living in the
villages that once had been Macedonian but had been
deserted when Macedonians moved to the cities.
Albanians were seen as living lives similar to the lives
of Macedonia's grandparents, a peasant life in which
people were uneducated, ne kulturni, women had no
rights, families had numerous children, and people
lived close to poverty, according to their emotions
instead of reason. This image was also being carried
forward by the West (see for example Rebecca West
1982). My friends positioned themselves as belonging
to the West, occupying the negative image of the
Balkans with the Albanian population. They re-defined
their 'belonging' through manipulations of meaning.
The Meaning of Work
In Macedonia during my research, the meaning of
work defied a universal concept of work (see
Schwimmer, 1984), but created a new form of
'colonisation', the 'colonisation' of what is called the
post-socialist world. As such I am arguing that the
definition of work' itself was an agent in this
'colonisation.* Today, my friends in Skopje pass time at
work for a living, or they work abroad for highpowered
companies. 'Colonisation' might be a strong
term, but by using 'colonisation' I am pointing out a
very specific power relationship my friends identified:
USA-Europe-Macedonians-Albanians. This hierarchy
has been justified by economic achievement and in turn
by the attitude towards work. By 'attitude towards
work' I refer to the investigation into what work is and
what value it has, depending on the type of work.
Work as seen by my friends was given a specific
measurement of power. Manual labour has less power
than white-collar-labour, professional more than whitecollar
labour, and so forth. I argue that the value of
'work' in Macedonia is determined by an evaluation of
time. This points away from a definition of work as the
opposite of free time and towards a discussion of work
intensity. Work that allows for much free time (by
virtue of intense production) is valued higher than
work that requires more time for similar production
and therefore gives less free time. I argue that it is this
calculation that underlies my friends' definition of the
Western World and modernity, as well as provides an
explanation for ethnic tensions within Macedonia.
I first observed this while watching Beverly Hills
90210 with my female friends in Skopje. They loved
this show and would even watch it in Italian, with none
of us understanding what was being said. The first
thing that one notices in this show is that none of the
protagonists worked in any visible form, but instead
had a lot of money and lived more or less happily
among friends and family. Watching German
advertisements through pirated satellite television, my
friends were very intrigued by the production of
efficiency. By intensifying the efficiency of laundry
detergent, Germans seemed to be able to stroll along
washing lines leading into nature accompanied by an
energetic dog that had been fed with super-powered
dog food.
The Paradox of Work
The paradox of work in Macedonia lies in the fact
that my friends want to be young, modern Europeans,
passing time leisurely with short intervals of intensive
(yet hidden) work which they also identify as a 'Balkan
attitude' - pretension of work - and which they see as
reflecting the Albanian and Rom populations. This
creates a difference between ethnic groups in place of
the former difference between socialism and liberal
market economy.
When those young engineers started to work,
they complained of being introduced to a work culture
that neither gave them the experience of "really making
a living" nor taught them a role they would like to
perform. They thought of themselves as aspiring to a
'West-European' work ethic and they voiced their
frustration at meeting only a 'Balkan' style of work. The
contrast that was offered was termed 'liberal market
economy.' Though they saw this as something that
they should be striving towards, at the same time, they
saw it as being impossible to achieve in a former
socialist country. Accordingly, stories circulated that
some foreign agency gave Skopje a Radar System for its
airport but that this money was used to build a
beautiful house for the airport manager on Vodno, with
the result of four airplanes crashing within a year.
(Causing the headline in Albania, "Albanians killed in
Macedonia," since the planes were bringing Albanian
guest workers home or flying them to their guest
country.) Another told of a ministry of government
receiving a gift of 10 million dollars that was used to
buy computers from the cousin of the Minister,
computers that were never used since they did not have
the personnel to operate these computers or train
current staff. These were seen as stories from 'The
Balkans' and the 'liberal market economy' as my
friends termed it.
Liberal Market Economy
In 19941 was sitting in a cafe one afternoon with a
friend when three girls burst in, the one girl in tears, all
of them obviously upset When we inquired about
their distress, we learned that the girl in tears had just
finished at the university and had started to work for a
private computer company. Such companies were
springing up everywhere. Since the factories were
closing down, primarily the private businesses or
ministries were hiring engineers. She had worked for
three months with much of the work being over-time.
No contract was signed and payment was promised
after three months of observing her work performance.
Volume XXIII, Numbers 1-2 11
Anthropology of Work Review
After three months, she was laid off without any
payment and someone new was hired.
Stories such as this fed the idea of what a liberal
market economy meant in Macedonia, reinforcing the
idea that Macedonia was not ready for a liberal market
economy because of its socialist history and its location
in the Balkans. This idea was perpetuated by many of
the NGO's and Western government organisations
present in Macedonia. Being placed in this situation,
my friends felt it was even more necessary to convince
the Western World that they could work and were not
from the Balkans. My friends came to see the Balkans
as represented by Albanians and Rom and by some old
conservative people from the country, but not by the
young generation of Skopje.
The conclusion of my friends was that a 'good'
future could only be pursued outside their country.
Immigration forms were filled out. They did not live
with the hope of a better life by virtue of their new
position as a 'post-communist' country. To them,
Macedonia did not have the capital, the tradition or
history to relate to or be recognised under, or the
democratic and civil 'knowledge' that would form a
society they could live in.
Conclusion
There are specific changes in the social life of
Macedonia that are directly linked to its political fate,
changes such as the ideology about work. In
Macedonia today, the young urban generation see
themselves as unable to change their society and
believe" that they can only obtain the means and
security that would enable them to change their society
through emulating a Western-style attitude towards
work that is marked by leisure-time. Paradoxically, this
leisure time is also identified as genuinely 'Balkan,'
attributable to those they see as representing either a
peasant or socialist past. Young, well-educated people
in Macedonia are hired for their capacity to seemingly
work' in many companies that are involved, according
to general belief, in money laundering or illegal
weapons trade. Since they cannot find an identification
of themselves in this new liberal market economy, they
seek it outside of work, but not void of a definition of
work. The value of their work becomes defined by
their leisure-time. The more leisure-time, the more
high-powered the work they do': this they identify as
'Western.' The Balkans, as represented by the West as
un-stratified peasant society marked by hard manual
labour, is assigned to a rural past and to a specific
ethnicity, the Albanians.
Essentially, in my friends' eyes, it is the Albanian
with his Balkan attitude that holds Macedonia back
from joining Europe in its liberal market economy. In a
world that does not offer many rewards, only offers
condescension, my young friends try to share in this
condescension by associating ethnicity with economic
strategies. The outcome of this has been amply
documented. To work hard in order to earn money, to
provide your family with bread and salt, is not seen as
a reasonable survival strategy today. My friends have
decided either to emigrate (some very successfully), or
they have stayed behind seeking their fulfillment in the
cafe life of Skopje or in family life by emulating a
Western life-style of consumption and leisure. The
question remains whether or not this change of culture'
brings about economic growth. Essentially, the West is
supposed to realise how European Macedonia is. By
embracing sameness with the West my friends
seemingly embrace economical and political survival.
The political consequence of such action is, however,
that by trying to be like the West, 'the other Balkan' has
been created and this, in turn, has entailed an explosive
volatile political situation. Maybe liberal market
economy is not a solution for Macedonia, but instead an
embracing of its socialist past in order to develop new
economic strategies supported by the European Union.
But it seems that it is already too late for this.
References
Allcock, John R., and Antonia Young. 1991. Black
Lambs and Grey Falcons: women travelers in the
Balkans. University of Bradford: Bradford, England.
Ana 1991. Informant Personal communication.
Applebaum, Herbert. 1992. The Concept of Work:
ancient, medieval, and modern. State University of
New York Press.
Bringa, Tone. 1995. Being Muslim the Bosnian Way:
identity and community in a central Bosnian village.
Princeton, N.J.; Chichester: Princeton University Press.
Firlit, Elzbieta, and Jerzy Chlopecki. 1992. When Theft
is not Theft. In The Unplanned Society. Poland during
and after communism. Pp. 95-109. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Lemel, Harold. 2000. Rural Property and Economy in
Post-Communist Albania. New York; Oxford: Berghahn
Books.
Pawlik, Wojciech. 1992. Intimate Commerce. In The
Unplanned Society: Poland during and after
communism. Pp. 78-95. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Ruzzin, Nane. 1995. Interview, Member of Parliament
of the Macedonian Assembly in 1995.
Schwimmer, Eric. 1984. The Self and the Product:
concepts of work in comparquative perspective. In (s.
Wallman, ed.) Social Anthropology of Work. Pp. 287-
315. London: Academic Press.
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Thiessen, Ilka. 1999. T'ga za jug - Waiting for
Macedonia: the changing world of a group of young
female engineers in the Republic of Macedonia. Ph.D.,
London School of Economics.
Thompson, Edward P, 1967. Time, Work-Discipline,
and Industrial Capitalism. Past and Present 38:56-97.
Todorova Mariia, Nikolaeva. 1997. Imagining the
Balkans. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wedel, Janine. 1992. Introduction to: "Enterprising
Inner Circles" and "Reclaiming Responsibility." In The
Unplanned Society: Poland during and after
communism. Pp. 73-78/153-158. New York: Columbia
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West, Rebecca. 1982. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: a
journey through Yugoslavia. London: Papermac.
Work and Love: The Limits of Autonomy for Female Garment Workers in India
Johanna Lessinger; Barnard College
Introduction
Throughout a scholarly career devoted to the
framing of work as a distinctive subject of
anthropological study, Herb Applebaum had two
constant themes, which I would like to elaborate and
comment on via a study of women's work in urban
India. First, Applebaum insisted that the concept of
work be contextualized, both socially and historically, if
we are to understand both the cultural conceptions and
the practice of work (Applebaum 1984a, 1992).
Second, he emphasizes the importance of occupational
cultures in particular areas of work (Applebaum, 1981,
1984b, 1999).
I would like to use these as points of departure to
examine the situation of a group of women factory
workers in the South Indian city of Madras, now called
Chennai. As India becomes part of a global economy,
and develops an export-oriented form of
industrialization, which draws heavily on female labor,
the young women who work in Madras' export
garment factories, known as "garment girls" or "sewing
girls," are emerging as an identifiable new occupational
group. This occupational identity constructs these
workers in several ways: as dutiful breadwinners for
their families, as transgressive and threatening women
out of place, as socially mobile young moderns. The
garment workers themselves, as well as their families
and communities, have multiple and often conflicting
understandings of their roles and of the meanings of
their work.
Women's Work in the Global Assembly Line
The typologies of work which Applebaum
delineated are today somewhat limited. It is no longer
enough simply to categorize India as a market-based,
"transitional," partially industrialized society, as
Applebaum did in 1984 (1984a: 24); today we must talk
about India's relationship to a rapidly evolving global
capitalism. What is also missing from Applebaum's
writing is the whole stream of feminist scholarship
which has considered the meaning and impact of
women's work and which began, early on, to consider
the role of a global economy in creating new forms of
feminized work - work in which women's unequal
social statuses are crucial to their constitution as
workers in labor-intensive, assembly-line
manufacturing (Some of the classic ethnographies of
this phenomenon are Fernandez-Kelly 1983; Safa 1986;
Ong 1987; Beneria and Roldan 1987; Wolf 1992; Kim
1997). The focus on globalization and the focus on
gender are both essential if we are to understand a new
form of work as it emerges all round the world. As
Aihwa Ong notes, "The literature on exportindustrialization
and the feminization of industrial
work challenges theory to catch up with lived realities."
(1991:279)
India's decision in the 1970s to plunge into the
vortex of global capitalism, in the role of supplier of
skilled but low-wage labor-power is part of a larger
economic restructuring which has remade the
agricultural and industrial workforces, shrunk the
public sector which once employed so many urban
workers, and altered production processes. Inevitably
this "economic liberalization," as it is known to the
Indian elite, brings in its wake social changes which are
just beginning to be widely felt (Amin 1990). Indian
planners and politicians have turned to both foreign
investment and intensified export production to offset
India's outmoded industrial infrastructure, its lagging
industrialization and widespread poverty (Vanaik
1990).
Volume XXni, Numbers 1-2 13