Book Review: Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism
Book review of Chris Hann and Jonathan Parry's edited volume Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism: Precarity, Class, and the Neoliberal Subject (2022)
Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism: Precarity, Class, and the Neoliberal Subject, edited by Chris Hann and Jonathan Parry (2022). New York: Berghahn Books.
Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism is a compilation of ethnographic accounts by various authors, spanning countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. It examines shifting labor relations across industries within post-socialist, neoliberal, and capitalist contexts, highlighting their impact on workers’ lives. As Jonathan Parry notes in the introduction, the authors, by focusing on the “margins,” aim to “conjure settings geographically removed from the historical epicenter of industrial capitalism” (1).
In Chapter 1, Ching Kwan Lee explores coal mining in Zambia’s Copperbelt, concentrating on workers’ experiences in two privatized mines—Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) and Mopani Copper Mines (MCM)—and compares them to the nearby Chinese state-owned Chambishi mine operated by Nonferrous Metal China Africa (NFCA). Although all three mines rely on subcontracting to reduce costs, the shareholder-driven KCM and MCM face greater profit pressures, leading to a higher reliance on temporary, contractual workers. In contrast, NFCA offers more job security, with the trade-off of lower wages (50). Lee underscores how neither Chinese state enterprises nor global private investors have provided these Zambian miners with “a real future” (59).
In Chapter 2, Eeva Kesküla analyzes the roles of coal miners and their children in the remaking of the Soviet working class in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Coal mining stood out as an exception to the widespread post-independence outsourcing seen in other industries, offering miners stable, well-paid jobs. However, access to these positions became increasingly limited. This shift disrupted the labor dynasties that were once “a natural way of life in monoindustrial settings” (70), forcing the miners’ children into smaller companies with temporary, low-paying jobs. Kesküla contrasts the older miners’ strong class consciousness as the “middle working class” (73), shaped by stable incomes and shared experiences, with their children’s lack of said consciousness, which the author attributes to their history of precarious employment.
In Chapter 3, Tommaso Trevisani presents an ethnographic account of Temirtau, a former Soviet steel town in Kazakhstan. Labor relations during the Soviet era are compared with those of the post-Soviet period, highlighting the division between securely employed, unionized regular company workers and the poorly paid, non-organized contract workers. Trevisani also examines how these changes have affected workers’ social relationships as well as the content and meaning of their work. The Soviet-era shop floor was a crowded place of sociality, where going to work was described as “going to a feast” (100). However, this environment has since been transformed by increased workplace pressure, heightened control, and job insecurity. Trevisani illustrates how the company workers now adopt “work as resistance” as a strategy by which they endure their poor working conditions for fear of “descending” into contractual positions (106).
In Chapter 4, Dimitra Kofti examines how changing work conditions and growing inequalities at Stomana (Bulgaria) extend beyond the steel factory. The casualization of work has reinforced gender inequalities, as regularly employed family members—often men—gain greater power within households that now include both regular and casual workers. Kofti explores how these new hierarchies shape existing dynamics and disparities. Alongside this inequality, she documents the fractured solidarities in the workers’ neighborhoods, mirroring the increasing isolation and mistrust that they experience on the shop floor.
Christian Strümpell, in Chapter 5, provides insight into the segregation of work and space along ethnic lines at the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) in Odisha State, India. Strümpell identifies how the township was established by appropriating the land owned by Adivasis, “‘tribals’ of supposedly autochthonous origin” (136), to accommodate workers from various castes hailing from the coastal lowlands of Odisha and from other states. Although regular jobs were promised as compensation for the displacement, this commitment has largely remained unfulfilled. Many Adivasis continue to be employed in precarious, temporary, and low-paying jobs, within and outside RSP, as they are often deemed “uneducated” (146). Strümpell highlights how this economic disparity has strained social ties between Adivasi families residing in the township and those remaining in bastis (resettlement colonies), illustrating how class has taken precedence over ethnicity.
In Chapter 6, Daromir Rudnyckyj explores how managers at Krakatau Steel in Indonesia established “regimes of precarity” (156) by categorizing workers into two classes: buruhs (casual laborers) and karyawans (permanent employees). This division extended beyond differences in employment terms, shaping workers’ roles and their broader class identities. Buruhs perform riskier, more physically demanding tasks with inferior safety gear and lack standardized uniforms—unlike karyawans, who wear coordinated blue denim attire. Precarity became central to these workers’ identities during the 2000s (157) with the incorporation of religious piety into the workplace, via which precarity was framed as a divine challenge from Allah (172).
In a similar vein, in Chapter 7, Dina Makram-Ebeid explains how the concept of rizq (God-given means of subsistence or livelihood) shapes people’s beliefs towards work, precarity, and class consciousness in an Egyptian steel town. This is achieved by documenting the experiences of al-tabána, the natives of al-Tibbin, who were displaced when the steel plant was built on their land. Nowadays, many of them are employed in precarious and temporary jobs. Makram-Ebeid documents how al-tabána interpret rizq to navigate their precarity and existential vulnerabilities, while steel plant workers strategically invoke the concept of rizq to resist pay cuts and lay-offs, arguing that such measures would diminish their own rizq and that of their children.
In Chapter 8, Elizabeth Schober discusses how speeding up production and controlling labor routines has led to “capital accelerations” at the South Korean company Hanjin. She examines the impact of these changes on workers at the company’s shipyard in Subic Bay, Philippines. Schober highlights how capital flight to other countries also transfers specific labor relations and control techniques. In this case, the militaristic disciplinary methods dating from South Korea’s authoritarian period have been imposed on Filipino shipyard workers in the present. Through their accounts, Schober details the difficult and often hazardous conditions, which have led to frequent accidents and fatalities, earning the shipyard a reputation as a “workers’ graveyard” (199).
Andrew Sanchez, in Chapter 9, compares the experiences of workers at Lohar Enterprise, a scrap metal yard, with those at the Tata Steel Plant in Jamshedpur, India—focusing on themes of decline, hope, and the politics of work. Removed from traditional networks of kinship, caste, and collective entitlements, the scrap-yard workers view their poverty as “perennial conditions of life that are personal rather than collective experiences” (222). In contrast, Tata employees, with their rich history of collective action on the shop floor, found this history integral to raising the workforce’s political consciousness. However, since economic liberalization began in the 1990s, the Tata shop floor has experienced increasing precarity in its labor relations. Sanchez contrasts this reality with that at the Lohar Enterprise, where workers lack formal employment and security but nevertheless maintain long-term, personal relationships with bosses. However, as opposed to Tata workers who once had security and now understand precarity as a loss of status, the Lohar workers do not view precarity in the same way because they never had much security in the first place.
In Chapter 10, Jeremy Morris and Sarah Hinz continue with this analysis in the context of Russia: that precariousness is a relational category, and how it is understood “depends upon the definition of societal standards of normality” (242). Such a dynamic is explored through the lives of Slava, Petr, and Nikita—in which Slava and Petr work for a transnational corporation-owned car factory near Kaluga that offers permanent and regular employment, whereas Nikita continues to toil at a blue-collar job in the town of Izluchino. While the previous chapters have so far linked permanent work with honor, prestige, and security, the experiences of these three differ, as Slava and Petr believe that they are “tied to the foreman’s job permanently” and are “trap(ped)” in the lifestyles that their factory jobs necessitate (253).
In Chapter 11, I-Chieh Fang examines the concept of guanxi—informal exchange and a commitment to mutuality—and its role in creating networks of care and class consciousness and helping workers navigate precarious employment in contemporary China. By comparing workers and working conditions at two factories—KS1 in Kunshan and THS in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone—Fang goes on to stress how they are different; KS1 employs more middle-aged, married workers, while THS has a younger, predominantly unmarried workforce. These demographic differences influence how workers perceive precarity: older employees see it as a threat, whereas younger ones view it as a form of liberation. Regardless, both groups of workers rely on guanxi to secure their livelihoods and achieve their aspirations.
Rebecca Prentice, in Chapter 12, delves into the rise of “micro-entrepreneurs” and the entrepreneurial ethos that governments worldwide promote as a solution to unemployment. Prentice examines this trend within Trinidad’s garment sector—which, since the 1990s, has experienced a surge in home-based production. Prentice critiques the fetishization of home-based work as “flexible” via which workers can supposedly operate “in the comfort of their own homes and under their own control” (295). She further argues that this perceived “freedom” heavily subsidizes and absorbs the costs of social reproduction, via a convergence of the sites of production and reproduction—in which women, aside from balancing paid home-based work, also assume all child and elderly care, alongside other domestic responsibilities.
In Chapter 13, Grace Carswell and Geert De Neeve explore the Tiruppur Industrial Cluster in South India, examining how gender, caste, and age influence workers’ access to workplace skills, the market value of those skills, and the social meanings attached to them. These dynamics create hierarchies that extend beyond the factory floor into broader society. Carswell and De Neeve highlight how gendered norms and responsibilities govern notions of respectability, limiting women’s opportunities and confining them to jobs characterized by downward rather than upward mobility. Through the chapter, the authors raise an important question about the validity of contemporary neoliberal subjectivities in a context where the workers’ lives continue to be shaped by family relations and gendered responsibilities.
Lastly, in Chapter 14, Michael Peter Hoffman offers an insightful account of the regularization of contract workers in western Nepal’s food processing industries due to Maoist union activism over the past two decades. He examines how, unlike many other regions where neoliberalism has intensified labor exploitation, union efforts have successfully protected these workers. However, Hoffman also points to the unintended consequences of said changes, as the union has contributed to ethnic divisions in the workplace, with the benefits of regularization failing to reach all workers.
Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism makes a significant contribution to the anthropology of work, particularly by highlighting post-socialist and post-colonial contexts where labor relations are shifting under neoliberalism—what Michael Buroway refers to as the “third wave marketization” in the volume’s afterword. In summary, each chapter presents a rich ethnographic account, vividly portraying factories and shop floors while tracing the historical evolution of labor relations within broader socio-economic and political landscapes. The authors of the volume provide valuable insights into their ethnographic experiences, often incorporating local words and phrases to capture the emotions and lived realities of the people they study. Overall, this text is a must-read for those with an interest in the complexities of work, contemporary labor relations, and the socio-economic and cultural aspects—such as gender, age, caste, class, and ethnicity—that shape labor dynamics and thus, contribute to precarity.
