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This book concerns the broad theme of globalization and labour, particularly female labour, and applies the labour geography approach to examine contemporary forms of labour control, conflict, and response under a globalization regime, through four diverse in-depth empirical case studies set in the Indian state of Kerala. Questioning global stereotypes, the book argues that labour becomes actively involved in the very process of globalization and the expansion of capital.
List of contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- I. Contemporary Globalization, Spatiality of Work, and Labour Geography
- II. Kerala in Focus
- III. A Case of an Apparel Park
- IV. A Case of an Electronics Firm and the Involvement of the Church
- V. A Case of a Food Processing Firm: Issues of Gender and Space
- VI. A Case of Cochin Port: Privatization of Ports and Workers Spatial-Fix
- VII. Globalization Lived Locally: A Concluding Note
- References
- Index
- About the Author
About the author
Neethi P. is Faculty, Azim Premji University, Bangalore
Summary
The various meta-narratives of globalization project hyper-mobile capital as the leading factor for global economic integration, ignoring the active role that labour plays in the very process of capital expansion. This book debunks myths concerned with globalization, employing a labour geography approach that focuses on how workers actively participate in differentiated geographies of capitalism.
The geographic perspective sheds light on local variability and uneven development in labour market, helping chart the complex landscapes in which contemporary workers live, work, and struggle. Through four in-depth empirical case studies set in Kerala, where the labour scenario has dramatically changed over the second half of twentieth century, this book constructs a collage of trends in labour market in an analysis that departs from economic orthodoxy and borrows from sociological, anthropological, and partly ethnographic approaches to highlight the role played by seemingly unlikely actors in the process of globalization.
Additional text
I would strongly recommend the book to people working on labour studies from anthropology, sociology, geography and economics. P. Neethi's work is an important contribution in the domain of labour geography and is immensely rich for scholars working on changing labour geographies in India and South Asia post-liberalization.
