Sweatshop Exchanges: Gifts and Giving in the Global Factory

Jamie Cross

A chapter in Political Economy, Neoliberalism, and the Prehistoric Economies of Latin America, 2012, pp 3-26 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Purpose – This chapter asks what we should make of the gift exchanges that take place between workers and their managers on the floor of a massive offshore manufacturing unit in South India. Such exchanges appear anomalous in the ethnography of global manufacturing yet here they underpinned the organisation of hyper-intensive production processes. Findings – Following diverse acts of giving, this chapter shows how these transactions constituted the performative and relational grounds on which workers came to know themselves and sought to shape the world around them. In doing so it extends the anthropology of work and labour by showing that acts of giving are integral to global commodity production.

Keywords: India; labour; production; exchange; the gift; Graeber (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-1281(2012)0000032005

DOI: 10.1108/S0190-1281(2012)0000032005

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