ments in other sectors, especially manufacturing. With a focus on the local market, Gamble notes,... more ments in other sectors, especially manufacturing. With a focus on the local market, Gamble notes, there is an investment in and interaction with local culture and institutions that presents distinct challenges and forms of engagement. Gamble is also extremely adept at situating his analysis within a larger debate about organizations in a global business environment. While the detailed discussion of conceptual frameworks to explain transfer of organizational practices at the beginning of each substantive chapter felt redundant at times, given that a number of the chapters explore closely related themes, this does mean that each chapter can easily stand alone and be read individually. Most existing approaches to understanding organizational practices that Gamble discusses are discarded as inadequate, the need being for more context-attentive approaches, a conclusion to which detailed case studies seem likely to lead us. Nevertheless, the study provides ample evidence that both firm agency and countryspecific institutional and cultural features have a significant impact on the concrete organizational practices and social relations that emerge in foreign retailers in China.
This symposium-style article brings together scholars from history, sociology and political scien... more This symposium-style article brings together scholars from history, sociology and political science to explore how different disciplinary traditions can contribute to a productive dialogue on workers’ collective action and labour power around the world. Grounded in reflections on recent research in three disciplinary communities, the article encourages scholars to tap into findings from other academic traditions to refine the focus and the contextualization of their own analyses. This strategy of moving beyond disciplinary boundaries, the article argues, promises to expand inherited styles of inquiry by encouraging analyses with a wider selection of cases, a more conscious temporal anchoring and broadened geographic reach. The evolution of scholarship along these lines would honour each discipline’s particular conceptual commitments and simultaneously seek to enlist them more broadly for a deeper understanding of labour’s contemporary reorientation.
... Edited by Anne POSTHUMA and Dev NATHAN. ... This has led to a number of cognate analytical fr... more ... Edited by Anne POSTHUMA and Dev NATHAN. ... This has led to a number of cognate analytical frameworks, from global commodity chains and global value chains to global production networks (Henderson et al., 2002; Gereffi, Hum-phrey and Sturgeon, 2005; Coe, Dicken and ...
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the focus of a roundtable review on John D. French’s Lula and His Po... more Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the focus of a roundtable review on John D. French’s Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil. The reviewers offer a reading of Lula and his legacies from perspectives that range from LGBTQ+ studies to racial politics, including an analysis centered on the story of a humble man that rose from below, “a most exceptional common man,” from his humble beginnings up to his election as president; a review that underscores how the book addresses Lula’s work with regards to human rights, including race and the LGBTI+ community; a deconstruction of the use of the word “cunning” as a positive term of appreciation, comparing Brazil’s journey under Lula with the promise of post-apartheid South Africa; and a reflective commentary that seeks to understand how a figure like Lula is not born but created, in this case through class struggle. Finally, John French responds to these observations and offers additional insight on his book and the living legacy of Lula’s Brazil.
O V E R T HE PAST T H R E E D E C A D E S , GL OB AL IZAT ION HAS CR EA TED new regulatory challe... more O V E R T HE PAST T H R E E D E C A D E S , GL OB AL IZAT ION HAS CR EA TED new regulatory challenges. As businesses rail against “red tape” and threaten to move if labor, health, and safety codes do not become more “flexible,” what are policymakers to do? When workplaces are spread around the world, what kind of new regulatory system might ensure that basic standards are met—not only to protect consumers but also workers and their communities around the world? The question is perhaps especially pressing in developing regions: in many countries, governments already find it difficult to enforce the codes that are on their books, yet international agencies and global corporations warn that strengthening enforcement will undermine future growth. A relentless chorus of voices insists that rigid labor laws and health and safety codes will frighten off investors—and in doing so, limit job creation. The threat of capital flight has long been used to stave off state regulation of working conditions: businesses have threatened to move away to avoid strict regulation since at least the end of the nineteenth century. Through the twentieth centuiy, policymakers tended to look to national policies to protect workers and consumers, assuming that a country’s government would regulate production within its borders. From health and safety codes to labor laws, consumer and labor activ ists sought to pass and enforce national legislation as the first step
Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiaparth... more Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization and civil rights struggle rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators and clandestine links between open popular groups and guerrilla networks. This article explores some of the reasons why researchers might avoid discussing armed struggle, including some discomfort around its morality. Then it considers how more systematic investigation of armed struggle might change our understanding of the anti-apartheid movement, including its legacies for post-apartheid politics. Finally, it suggests that these questions may be relevant for social movement theories.
where modesty and stylishness are definitely not automatically opposed. In the streets of Tehran,... more where modesty and stylishness are definitely not automatically opposed. In the streets of Tehran, Yogyakarta, and Istanbul, pious fashion is both pious and fashionable, and women engage in meticulous critical and aesthetic work to ensure both. Methodologically, Bucar strikes a rare and elegant balance between ethnographic description and socioeconomic, political, and cultural commentary. This reader does not tire of lengthy narratives about Turkish tesettur markets because meticulous “thick description” of vertical hijab chic varies the pace. Descriptive detail is layered with interpretive substance, demonstrating the author’s command of historical, textual, and local cultural politics, for instance, with the religious and aesthetic uses of the colors red and green in Shi’a Iranian street fashion. The notion of global Muslim pious fashion is there, as a superficial Western observer might perceive it, yet is not really there, because the cultural reality, political impact, and religious meaning cannot be summed up in a global statement or even a national description. Pious Fashion serves as a bracing contrast to the ways that sweeping attempts to sum up some truth about the “global veil” by Islamophobes and Islamophiles fall spectacularly flat. This book is a pleasurable as well as an instructive read for educated lay readers and for academic readers interested in gender, fashion, religion, politics, and modern markets.
Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre inf... more Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda Licenza d'uso L'articolo è messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb, è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati.
... those patterns fit with the visions that drive public discussion of corporate codes of ... ch... more ... those patterns fit with the visions that drive public discussion of corporate codes of ... character of racial oppression that brought South Africa under an international spotlight, not segregated ... Similarly, the problems of child workers in India's carpet industry were given prominence ...
ments in other sectors, especially manufacturing. With a focus on the local market, Gamble notes,... more ments in other sectors, especially manufacturing. With a focus on the local market, Gamble notes, there is an investment in and interaction with local culture and institutions that presents distinct challenges and forms of engagement. Gamble is also extremely adept at situating his analysis within a larger debate about organizations in a global business environment. While the detailed discussion of conceptual frameworks to explain transfer of organizational practices at the beginning of each substantive chapter felt redundant at times, given that a number of the chapters explore closely related themes, this does mean that each chapter can easily stand alone and be read individually. Most existing approaches to understanding organizational practices that Gamble discusses are discarded as inadequate, the need being for more context-attentive approaches, a conclusion to which detailed case studies seem likely to lead us. Nevertheless, the study provides ample evidence that both firm agency and countryspecific institutional and cultural features have a significant impact on the concrete organizational practices and social relations that emerge in foreign retailers in China.
This symposium-style article brings together scholars from history, sociology and political scien... more This symposium-style article brings together scholars from history, sociology and political science to explore how different disciplinary traditions can contribute to a productive dialogue on workers’ collective action and labour power around the world. Grounded in reflections on recent research in three disciplinary communities, the article encourages scholars to tap into findings from other academic traditions to refine the focus and the contextualization of their own analyses. This strategy of moving beyond disciplinary boundaries, the article argues, promises to expand inherited styles of inquiry by encouraging analyses with a wider selection of cases, a more conscious temporal anchoring and broadened geographic reach. The evolution of scholarship along these lines would honour each discipline’s particular conceptual commitments and simultaneously seek to enlist them more broadly for a deeper understanding of labour’s contemporary reorientation.
... Edited by Anne POSTHUMA and Dev NATHAN. ... This has led to a number of cognate analytical fr... more ... Edited by Anne POSTHUMA and Dev NATHAN. ... This has led to a number of cognate analytical frameworks, from global commodity chains and global value chains to global production networks (Henderson et al., 2002; Gereffi, Hum-phrey and Sturgeon, 2005; Coe, Dicken and ...
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the focus of a roundtable review on John D. French’s Lula and His Po... more Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the focus of a roundtable review on John D. French’s Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil. The reviewers offer a reading of Lula and his legacies from perspectives that range from LGBTQ+ studies to racial politics, including an analysis centered on the story of a humble man that rose from below, “a most exceptional common man,” from his humble beginnings up to his election as president; a review that underscores how the book addresses Lula’s work with regards to human rights, including race and the LGBTI+ community; a deconstruction of the use of the word “cunning” as a positive term of appreciation, comparing Brazil’s journey under Lula with the promise of post-apartheid South Africa; and a reflective commentary that seeks to understand how a figure like Lula is not born but created, in this case through class struggle. Finally, John French responds to these observations and offers additional insight on his book and the living legacy of Lula’s Brazil.
O V E R T HE PAST T H R E E D E C A D E S , GL OB AL IZAT ION HAS CR EA TED new regulatory challe... more O V E R T HE PAST T H R E E D E C A D E S , GL OB AL IZAT ION HAS CR EA TED new regulatory challenges. As businesses rail against “red tape” and threaten to move if labor, health, and safety codes do not become more “flexible,” what are policymakers to do? When workplaces are spread around the world, what kind of new regulatory system might ensure that basic standards are met—not only to protect consumers but also workers and their communities around the world? The question is perhaps especially pressing in developing regions: in many countries, governments already find it difficult to enforce the codes that are on their books, yet international agencies and global corporations warn that strengthening enforcement will undermine future growth. A relentless chorus of voices insists that rigid labor laws and health and safety codes will frighten off investors—and in doing so, limit job creation. The threat of capital flight has long been used to stave off state regulation of working conditions: businesses have threatened to move away to avoid strict regulation since at least the end of the nineteenth century. Through the twentieth centuiy, policymakers tended to look to national policies to protect workers and consumers, assuming that a country’s government would regulate production within its borders. From health and safety codes to labor laws, consumer and labor activ ists sought to pass and enforce national legislation as the first step
Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiaparth... more Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization and civil rights struggle rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators and clandestine links between open popular groups and guerrilla networks. This article explores some of the reasons why researchers might avoid discussing armed struggle, including some discomfort around its morality. Then it considers how more systematic investigation of armed struggle might change our understanding of the anti-apartheid movement, including its legacies for post-apartheid politics. Finally, it suggests that these questions may be relevant for social movement theories.
where modesty and stylishness are definitely not automatically opposed. In the streets of Tehran,... more where modesty and stylishness are definitely not automatically opposed. In the streets of Tehran, Yogyakarta, and Istanbul, pious fashion is both pious and fashionable, and women engage in meticulous critical and aesthetic work to ensure both. Methodologically, Bucar strikes a rare and elegant balance between ethnographic description and socioeconomic, political, and cultural commentary. This reader does not tire of lengthy narratives about Turkish tesettur markets because meticulous “thick description” of vertical hijab chic varies the pace. Descriptive detail is layered with interpretive substance, demonstrating the author’s command of historical, textual, and local cultural politics, for instance, with the religious and aesthetic uses of the colors red and green in Shi’a Iranian street fashion. The notion of global Muslim pious fashion is there, as a superficial Western observer might perceive it, yet is not really there, because the cultural reality, political impact, and religious meaning cannot be summed up in a global statement or even a national description. Pious Fashion serves as a bracing contrast to the ways that sweeping attempts to sum up some truth about the “global veil” by Islamophobes and Islamophiles fall spectacularly flat. This book is a pleasurable as well as an instructive read for educated lay readers and for academic readers interested in gender, fashion, religion, politics, and modern markets.
Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre inf... more Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda Licenza d'uso L'articolo è messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb, è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati.
... those patterns fit with the visions that drive public discussion of corporate codes of ... ch... more ... those patterns fit with the visions that drive public discussion of corporate codes of ... character of racial oppression that brought South Africa under an international spotlight, not segregated ... Similarly, the problems of child workers in India's carpet industry were given prominence ...
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