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The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class

Recent literature concerning regional development has placed significant emphasis on local institutional structures and their capacity to ‘hold down’ the global. Conversely, work on inter-firm networks – such as the global commodity chain approach – has highlighted the significance of the organizational structures of global firms’ production systems and their relation to industrial upgrading. In this paper, drawing upon a global production networks perspective, we conceptualize the connections between ‘globalizing’ processes, as embodied in the production networks of transnational corporations, and regional development in specific territorial formations. We delimit the ‘strategic coupling’ of the global production networks of firms and regional economies which ultimately drives regional development through the processes of value creation, enhancement and capture. In doing so, we stress the multi-scalarity of the forces and processes underlying regional development, and thus do not privilege one particular geographical scale. By way of illustration, we introduce an example drawn from recent research into global production networks in East Asia and Europe. The example profiles the investments of car manufacturer BMW in Eastern Bavaria, Germany and Rayong, Thailand, and considers their implications for regional development.

Globalizing regional development: aglobal production networks perspective

This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

Sociology was born as an attempt to delimit an object of investigation offered by society as a social reality. The ambition was that of “treating the social facts as things” (Durkheim) or of understanding and explaining the social relations by respecting an “axiological neutrality” (Max Weber). Today, however, we are in the presence of a new kind of sociologists, and they are by no means the less popular ones, who are not trying to avoid assessments in their analysis of the present social world. I have in mind especially two sociologists, Ulrich Beck (Munich) and David Held (London). I will discuss in particular the view of sociology presented in a recent book of Ulrich Beck (Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter, 2002, translated into French under the title Pouvoir et contre-pouvoir a l’ere de la mondialisation, 2003), and I will show some analogies between Beck and Held. Finally, I will try to identify the points hat make the present sociological epistemology different from that of the great founders of this science.

The cosmopolitan vision

Review of Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, New York, Verso, 1st edition, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-781-68079-7, 384 pagesPhilip Mirowski's work is an important contribution to the post-2008 crisis economic literature. The book aims to show how Neoliberalism (or the Neoliberal Thought Collective - NTC, as it is referred to here) took over aspects of society beyond the economy and became integrated in everyday societal life, to the degree to which neoliberal thinkers were able to manipulate evidence and realities.One of the great themes of the book is the concept of 'Russian dolls'. In order to explain how Neoliberalism became so influential, Mirowski introduces the 'Russian dolls' as a concept, essentially agents of influence in favor of Neoliberalism that operate at the societal level in the United States, from think-tanks, to politicians to the media. The doll in the very core of this interlocking system is represented by the Mont Pelerin Society, a Neoliberal laboratory of ideas.This innermost doll was subsequently wrapped in a favorable rhetorical campaign aimed to promote Neoliberalism. The theory and ideas were there, the next phase, as Mirowski shows, was to make them acceptable for the masses as a mainstream current. To Mirowski, the acceptance and embrace of Neoliberalism came as a result of its resonance with basic American principles, such as the laissez-faire. Neoliberalism relied on ideas such as promoting entrepreneurship and reduced government to resonate with many of the Americans for whom all these were principles of successful leadership. To the degree to which this was initially an economic current and a public policy approach, it is now today a cultural and societal expression. This is the primary reason for which Neoliberalism remains so successful today, despite the economic and financial crisis it has passed through.After presenting some general considerations on the crisis in chapter 1, Mirowski goes down history lane in Chapter 2 ('Shock Block Doctrine') in order to present to the reader key incipient figures of Neoliberalism (primarily Friedrich von Hayek) who shared a common belief: all economic issues could be solved by further encouraging the development of free markets.The acceptance of Neoliberalism at the societal level is a result of the interlocking relationship between different entities, from corporations to the government to the individual and academic institutions. The informational society in which we live today is fundamentally and culturally Neoliberal, it favors the free flow of information, increased communication through new forms and platforms of interaction and so on. Mirowski's belief is that Neoliberalism has become an everyday activity for the masses, redefining today's society, and he argues this throughout chapter 3 ('Everyday Neoliberalism'), using an analysis of French philosopher Michel Foucault and various views on today's American society.It is also, in Mirowski's view, a gross manipulation of realities by the Neoliberals, as emphasized in chapter 5 of the book. The manipulation is done perfectly, because reality is not only altered, but new realities are actually created for the individual. The author resumes his argument from chapter 2, per which 'the relation of the control of knowledge to political power has been a neoliberal specialty' (p. 242). He quotes a Bush administration official saying, in 2002, that, embracing its new quality as a global empire, when the US acts, 'we create our own reality' and that 'while you are studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities. …

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown

Indian policymakers are now centrally concerned with the future of manufacturing as the basis for economic development, prosperity and rising living standards. The automotive industry is pivotal to this transformation. All global carmakers now have major investments in India, often operating alongside major Indian transnational corporations. Key automotive clusters are in the National Capital Region, the Chennai Metropolitan Region and the “Chakan corridor” near the city of Pune, as well as emerging clusters and production facilities in several other parts of the country. Much of the optimism about the auto industry flows from its historically transformative role in Western Europe, the USA and Japan where it sets standards in quality manufacturing, technology, wages and employment relations. Understandably, some have predicted that the expansion of auto production in India should lead to similar “high road” labour relations, based on high wages, long-term employment contracts, stable career paths, social protection and enterprise-based benefits. But the evidence suggests otherwise. The Indian auto industry has instead reproduced “low road” employment relations based upon high wage inequality and employment relations that are over-reliant upon labour contractors. Serious industrial conflict has been common. Given the global developmental promise of the auto industry, why has this happened? Critiquing the global production networks framework from an uneven and combined development perspective, this chapter argues that the answer lies in a combination of India’s distinctive national and regional norms, social relations and institutions with the global carmakers’ governance practices.

Why Has the Indian Automotive Industry Reproduced “Low Road” Labour Relations?

Research on labour in global production networks has raised serious questions about the role played by labour contractors. This article uses a case study of automotive components production in north India to show how labour contractors assist firms to adapt to the rigours of competition in supply chains. We demonstrate that a regional contract labour system has enabled employers to keep wages low, increase firm flexibility, offload the burden of monitoring and controlling workers and undermine collective bargaining and trade union rights. These problems further expose serious weaknesses in the implementation and enforcement of labour laws in India.

Labour Contractors and Global Production Networks: The Case of India’s Auto Supply Chain

Work on large-scale plant closures has provided a rich vein of scholarship and academic debate. This paper articulates a new set of methods and concepts for understanding how large-scale redundanci...

https://tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21681376.2019.1622440

The urban and regional impacts of plant closures: new methods and perspectives

Auto manufacturing holds the promise of employing many young Indians in relatively well-paid, high-skill employment, but this promise is threatened by the industry's role as a site of immense conflict in recent years. This book asks: how do we explain this conflict? What are the implications of conflict for the ambitious economic development agendas of Indian governments? Based upon extensive field research in India's National Capital Region, this book is the first to focus on labour relations in the Indian auto industry. It proposes the theory that conflict in the auto industry has been driven by twin forces: first, the intersection of global networks of auto manufacturing with regional social structures which have always relied on informal and precariously-employed workers; and, second, the systematic displacement of securely-employed 'regular workers' by waves of precariously-employed 'de facto informal workers'.

Making Cars in the New India: Industry, Precarity and Informality

Many scholars have questioned the role of the IT industry in India’s economic development. Some have correctly highlighted the limited impact of IT firms in creating occupations accessible to less-educated people or the modest impact of industry output on the livelihoods of people from poorer households and communities. There are thus strong arguments against governments giving fiscal and industrial priority to the IT industry. However, this article explains why the state is unlikely to heed this redistributive agenda. It argues that state assistance to the IT industry has been predicated upon four main factors: India’s surplus of skilled and technically qualified young workers, the dominant role of software services within the IT industry, the formation of political relations between industrialists and state institutions and, finally, the crucial role of software service export earnings in the stabilisation of India’s external position. Even the uncertainty generated by the global financial crisis has, t...

Tom Barnes

Papers

Why Has the Indian Automotive Industry Reproduced “Low Road” Labour Relations?

Labour Contractors and Global Production Networks: The Case of India’s Auto Supply Chain

The urban and regional impacts of plant closures: new methods and perspectives

Making Cars in the New India: Industry, Precarity and Informality

The IT Industry and Economic Development in India: A Critical Study: