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Through new modes of dress and image-making, the informatics workers seek to distinguish themselves from factory workers, and to achieve these new modes of consumption, they engage in a wide array of extra income earning activities. Freeman argues that for the new Barbadian pink-collar workers, the globalisation of production cannot be viewed apart from the globalisation of consumption. In doing so, she shows the connections between formal and informal economies, and challenges long-standing oppositions between first world consumers and third world producers, as well as white-collar and blue-collar labour. Written in a style that allows the voices of the pink-collar workers to demonstrate the simultaneous burdens and pleasures of their work, "High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy" will appeal to scholars and students in a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, women's studies, political economy, and Caribbean studies, as well as labour and postcolonial studies.
List of contents
List of tables, maps, and figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
1. Introduction 1
2. Pink-Collar Bajans: Working Class through Gender and Culture on the Global Assembly Line 21
3. Localizing Informatics: Situating Women and Work in Barbados 66
4. Myths of Docile Girls and Matriarchs: Local Profiles of Global Workers 102
5. Inside Multitext and Data Air: Discipline and Agency in the "Open Office" 140
6. Fashioning Femininity and "Professional" Identities: Producing and Consuming Across Formal and Informal Sectors 213
7. Epilogue 253
Notes 263
Bibliography 293
Index 323
About the author
Carla Freeman is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies at Emory University.
Summary
Suitable for scholars and students in a range of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, women's studies, political economy, and Caribbean studies, as well as labour and postcolonial studies, this book presents an ethnography of globalisation positioned at the intersection between political economy and cultural studies.
