Abstract

Bringing together ethnographic case studies of industrial labor from different parts of the world, Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism explores the increasing casualization of workforces and the weakening power of organized labor. This division owes much to state policies and is reflected in local understandings of class. By exploring this relationship, these essays question the claim that neoliberal ideology has become the new ‘commonsense’ of our times and suggest various propositions about the conditions that create employment regimes based on flexible labor.

Jonathan Parry is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, where he has been affiliated since 1974. He is the author of several classic ethnographies of India, and of major contributions to economic anthropology and general anthropological theory.

“This well-written, carefully integrated volume, edited by two of the more outstanding British social anthropologists of their generation, offers a valuable contribution to the field.” · John Harriss, London School of Economics

Chris Hann is a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Previously he was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent (Canterbury). He has authored and edited numerous books in economic anthropology, especially with reference to socialist and post-socialist societies.