1,721,011 research outputs found
“Un nuovo tipo umano”. Per un’antropologia del lavoro industriale a partire da "Americanismo e Fordismo"
Full text linkThis article aims to show the relevance of Gramsci’s reflections presented in “Americanism and Fordism” in ethnographic practice and the anthropological analysis of contemporary industrial work. Starting from research on working conditions in Romania, the author analyzes work discipline and the discipline of sexual life, showing how capitalism proceeds at the level of the relationship between capital and labour and between the sphere of production and reproduction
Commodity Fetishism Again. Labour, Subjectivity and Commodities in “Supply Chains Capitalism”
Full text linkThe aim of this essay is to reconnect Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism and the use that he makes of this anthropological category with a general critique of global capitalist relationships. Based on Marx's anthropological insights into the concept of fetishism, it explores the political relationship between labour, subjectivity and commodities in supply chains capitalism. For this purpose, it empirically examines the materials of ethnographic research on the production of Italian companies that produce in an Eastern European country (Romania) and then sell mainly to countries in Western Europe. In this way, the spatial separation between the places where the investments are made (production) and those where profits are generated (market) becomes very clearcut, just like the alienating division between people and the products of their work. In the light of the Marxian analysis of the commodity form, this detachment will be analysed in a fragment of the productive, organisational and social mosaic of contemporary capitalism
Working on Margins : an Anthropological Analysis of the Italian Supply Chains in two Eastern European Countries = Travailler sur les marges : Une analyse anthropologique des chaînes d’approvisionnement italiennes dans deux pays est‐européens
No full textBy diversifying working methods and conditions, outsourcing on a world scale has led to new production of geographies, complicating the idea of a strictly limited economic area. Based on ethnographic research on Italian firms’ supply chains in Romania and Moldova, the purpose of this article is to show the formation of marginal figures of the European and non-European labour market. In highlighting the strategic role of borders, I seek to anthropologically deconstruct the concept of the division of labour, showing the strategies of multiplication and diversification of work processes in the global production network.
These processes contain programmes, institutions and economic development practices analysed here as classifications that produce representation and finally the presence of low-cost labour
Fabule e Trame. Una prospettiva etnografica su lavoro e movimento nella produzione globale
Full text linkCon il contributo dei materiali di un’etnografia condotta in Moldova, lo scopo di questo articolo è di esaminare criticamente alcune delle nozioni più utilizzate nell’analisi del lavoro nella produzione globale. Attraverso le testimonianze di subappaltatori e lavoratori si mostrerà come le categorie di global value chains e global production networks rivelano un approccio che penalizza la dimensione sociale del lavoro “cartografando” la produzione e i contesti in cui essa prende forma. Per esaminare la distribuzione e la continua ristrutturazione delle reti globali di fornitura questo articolo adotta invece come lente analitica la mobilità dei lavoratori. La categoria di supply chains capitalism risulta in questo senso particolarmente preziosa perché più attenta a considerare la strategica combinazione di elementi sociali, economici e politici nella messa al lavoro della vita
Gender and Labor in Supply Chains Capitalism: a Review
No full textPurpose of Review
This article reviews some essays recently published that have focused on the social and material relations within production, combining an analytical approach on the spatiality of supply chain capitalism with empirical data on important aspects of life at work for women.
Recent Findings
Global value chains, a term commonly used today in discussion of global production, represents a field of anthropological, sociological and political analysis of contemporary capitalism. This research area has become richer and more defined in recent years as the result of prominent multidisciplinary studies and innovative research projects that have investigated supply chains as tropes that on the one hand enable the exchange of people, things and ideas across distance and on the other form relations that make new social, economic and political orders possible.
Summary
The studies reviewed provide detailed and original analysis of how gendered capital-labor relations underpin the expansion of supply networks. They also discuss and reconceptualize this expansion as a growth creating misery that based upon the exploitation and impoverishment of the female workforce
“Antonella Ceccagno. City Making & Global Labor Regimes. Chinese Immigrants and Italy’s Fast Fashion Industry”
No full textMade in Italy. Estetica e politiche di autenticazione sociale delle merci italiane prodotte in Romania
No full textIn questo scritto affronto la questione dell’autenticazione come merci ‘italiane’ dei prodotti di abbigliamento realizzati da alcune aziende italiane delocalizzate nella zona di Timişoara, in Romania. A partire dalle sollecitazioni del dibattito legislativo sviluppatosi in Italia sulla definizione del marchio made in Italy, e alla luce delle teorie antropologiche sulla patrimonializzazione e di quelle sociologiche sull’arte, tento una individuazione dei fattori attraverso i quali si definisce lo statuto particolare di un bene sia esso una merce, un’opera d’arte, un prodotto ‘vero’ rispetto ad uno contraffatto. Attraverso l’osservazione etnografica dei luoghi della produzione e di quelli del consumo, fattori quali il nome del produttore, le qualità associate al prodotto, ma soprattutto i suoi specifici canali di circolazione si presentano come elementi indispensabili nel processo di definizione di un prodotto ‘italiano’. Allo stesso tempo i criteri attraverso cui Si definisce l’identità degli oggetti, mediatori nelle relazioni economiche, politiche e sessuali tra italiani e romeni, appaiono continuamente ridiscussi e trasformati.
This essay deals with the authentication as Italian goods of clothing products made by some Italian firms that are de-localized in the area of Timişoara, in Rumania. Starting from the impulse originated by the Italian jurisdictional debate on the definition of a “made in Italy” brand, and based on anthropological theories on the processes of heritage construction as well as on the sociological ones on art, I attempt to identify the factors through which the specific statute of a good is defined, being it a good, a work of art, or a “real” product in relation to a counterfeit one. Through ethnographic observation in the locations of production and of consumption, factors such as the name of the producer, the qualities associated to the produce, and most of all its specific channels of circulation, appear as crucial elements in the process of definition of an “Italian” product. At the same time, the criteria that define the identity of objects – as they mediate economical, political and sexual relations between Italians and Rumanians – seem to be continuously re-discussed and transformed
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