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From Disposable to Empowered: Rearticulating Labor in Sri Lankan Apparel Factories

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  • Annelies Goger

    (Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Saunders Hall, Campus Box 3220, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3220, USA)

Abstract

This paper engages the dis/articulations perspective to analyze everyday processes of upgrading in the Sri Lankan apparel industry Using feminist ethnographic methods that see management discourses as tools of interpellation that partially configure systems of power, I examine how managers are rearticulating worker subjectivities, restructuring the labor process to organize consent, and selectively mobilizing ‘Sri Lankan’ culture to legitimate a shift to flexible production. I argue that value is not only produced through interfirm or firm–state relations, but is also determined by the labor process as it is shaped by legacies of colonialism, persisting hierarchies, and the everyday reproduction of social difference. This research suggests that upgrading cannot be reduced to an economic logic and that it does not guarantee sustained global competitiveness or more egalitarian development. These findings call for more attention to be paid to the ways in which upgrading is a complex process of disarticulation and rearticulation that is occurring through an embodied, global labor-management process.

Suggested Citation

  • Annelies Goger, 2013. "From Disposable to Empowered: Rearticulating Labor in Sri Lankan Apparel Factories," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(11), pages 2628-2645, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:11:p:2628-2645
    DOI: 10.1068/a45694
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Alex Hughes, 2012. "Corporate ethical trading in an economic downturn: recessionary pressures and refracted responsibilities," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 33-54, January.
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    3. Cornelia Staritz, 2011. "Making the Cut? Low-Income Countries and the Global Clothing Value Chain in a Post-Quota and Post-Crisis World," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2547, December.
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    7. Marion Werner, 2012. "Beyond Upgrading: Gendered Labor and the Restructuring of Firms in the Dominican Republic," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 88(4), pages 403-422, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Oya, Carlos & Schaefer, Florian, 2021. "The politics of labour relations in global production networks: Collective action, industrial parks, and local conflict in the Ethiopian apparel sector," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Jennifer Bair & Christian Berndt & Marc Boeckler & Marion Werner, 2013. "Guest Editorial," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(11), pages 2544-2552, November.
    3. Muhammad Ayaz & Muhammad Junaid Ashraf & Trevor Hopper, 2019. "Precariousness, Gender, Resistance and Consent in the Face of Global Production Network’s ‘Reforms’ of Pakistan’s Garment Manufacturing Industry," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 33(6), pages 895-912, December.

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