Alessandra Mezzadri - Böcker

This book explores the processes producing and reproducing the garment sweatshop in India. Drawing from Marxian and feminist insights, the book theorises the garment sweatshop in India as a complex 'regime' of exploitation and oppression, jointly crafted by global, regional and local actors, composed of factory and non-factory settings, and working across productive and reproductive realms. The analysis shows the tight correspondence between the physical and social materiality of garment production in India; illustrates the great social differentiation and complex patterns of labour unfreedom at work in the industry; and depicts the sweatshop as a composite 'joint enterprise' against the labouring body, which is inexorably depleted and consumed by garment work, even in the absence of major industrial disasters. By placing labour at the centre of the analysis of processes of development and globalisation, the book critically engages with key debates on industrial modernity, modern slavery, and ethical consumerism.

This book explores the processes producing and reproducing the garment sweatshop in India. Drawing from Marxian and feminist insights, the book theorises the garment sweatshop in India as a complex 'regime' of exploitation and oppression, jointly crafted by global, regional and local actors, composed of factory and non-factory settings, and working across productive and reproductive realms. The analysis shows the tight correspondence between the physical and social materiality of garment production in India; illustrates the great social differentiation and complex patterns of labour unfreedom at work in the industry; and depicts the sweatshop as a composite 'joint enterprise' against the labouring body, which is inexorably depleted and consumed by garment work, even in the absence of major industrial disasters. By placing labour at the centre of the analysis of processes of development and globalisation, the book critically engages with key debates on industrial modernity, modern slavery, and ethical consumerism.

Marx in the Field is a unique edited collection illustrating the relevance of the Marxian method to study contemporary capitalism and the global development process. Essays in the collection bring Marx ‘to the field’ in three ways. They illustrate how Marxian categories can be concretely deployed for field research in the global economy; they analyse how these categories may be adapted during fieldwork; and they discuss data collection methods supporting Marxian analysis. Crucially, many of the contributions expand the scope of Marxian analysis by combining its insights with those of other intellectual traditions, including radical feminisms, critical realism and postcolonial studies. The volume defines the possibilities and challenges of fieldwork guided by Marxian analysis, including those emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. The collection takes a global approach to the study of development and of contemporary capitalism. While some essays focus on themes and geographical areas of long-term concern for international development – like informal or rural poverty and work across South Asia, Southern and West Africa, or South America – others focus instead on actors benefitting from the development process – like regional exporters, larger farmers, and traders – or on unequal socio-economic outcomes across richer and emerging economies and regions – including Gulf countries, North America, Southern Europe, or Post-Soviet Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Some essays explore global processes cutting across the world economy, connecting multiple regions, actors and inequalities. While some of the contributions focus on classic Marxian tropes in the study of contemporary capitalism – like class, labour and working conditions, agrarian change, or global commodity chains and prices – others aim at demonstrating the relevance of the Marxian method beyond its traditional boundaries – for instance, for exploring the interplays between food, nutrition and poverty; the links between social reproduction, gender and homework; the features of migration and refugees regimes, tribal chieftaincy structures or prison labour; or the dynamics structuring global surrogacy. Overall, through the analysis of an extremely varied set of concrete settings and cases, this volume illustrates the extraordinary insights we can gain by bringing Marx in the field.

This ground-breaking Handbook broadens empirical and theoretical understandings of work, work relations, and workers. It advances a global, intersectional labour studies agenda, laying the foundations for the politically emancipatory project of decolonising the political economy of work.Moving beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, this Handbook provides a comprehensive account of the relations between different forms of work, exploitation, class configuration and worker resistance. With insights from global experts across the social sciences, it examines changes in technology, geographies of production, and the dynamics of the global capitalist political economy to map modern configurations of work. Using ongoing empirical qualitative research, contributors explore key issues such as capital accumulation, migration, digital work, trade unionism and reproductive labour. There is a particular focus on perspectives from the Global South, with in-depth analyses of class and work in countries and regional economic blocs used to explore the dynamics between the local and the global.Providing an authoritative overview of traditional and current debates, this Handbook will be an essential resource for students and researchers of political economy, industrial relations and the sociology of work, critical management studies, social movement studies, and development.