GLOBAL DIVISION OF LABOR

• Political-Economy• Material basis (how economy is organised) structures social,

political, cultural form (e.g.. Feudalism – de-centralized political order, hierarchical social relations

• Capitalist – exchange economy (individual, democracy, legal equality

• IPE – not only states or corporations, but people – those who work

• “where a person fits in the division of labour determines how long they will live what quality of life they will have”

• Why study global labour? • World Peace – Social Order? • Russian Revolution, WWI – concern with

worker's social conditions, created the ILO, International Labour Organisation

• Link between economic insecurity and use of ‘terror’ ?

• Social unrest recognised by IMF in Asian Financial assistance. 60% of $16 billion to poor

• CHINA: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft help Chinese government set up ‘great firewall of China’ by preventing Chinese citizens access to sites critical of Tibet, Taiwan etc.

• Disney brand - global production of goods outstrip ‘made in USA’

• USA, UK - ‘Outsourcing’ to India• India outsourcing in turn• Global Commodity chains

• Adam Smith ‘Wealth of Nations’

• Technical division of labor = greater productivity

• Pin making – artisan labour – 1 pin/day

• Mechanical labour (specialization of different elements of task) - 4,800

• Productivity : skill, repetition, speed, specialisation

• Liberal Theory (comparative advantage theory of free trade)

• Specialization – beneficial to all• ------------------• Critique:• Division of labour is not ‘natural’ but

shaped by power relations and history• Specialisation can lock countries into low

skill, low wage jobs

• Atlantic Slave trade

• Africa – ‘specialise’ in slaves?

• Americas – ‘specialise in raw materials?

• Europeans – specialise in manufacture

• Role of Force, coercion, POWER, masked in liberal conception of division of labour

• (gender, ethnicity, environment based critiques)

• Division of Labour = how people fit into production process

• Capitalists/workers• Workers – skilled/unskilled• International Division of Labour• Geographical location• Honduras – bananas• China – toys• Bangladesh -textiles

• Global Division of Labor:Link between territory and labour weakened

• Computer software industry/agricultural peasant labour

Background:2 concepts of organising production• Frederick Taylor – scientific management • Break down g=factory production into individual

tasks• Management control over worker time.• Deskilled workers, management control

• Fordism (Henry Ford) use of Taylorist techniques in factory

• Mass production, mass consumption,• Distinction between manual and mental labour• Toyotism – flexible production• Technical change, transport,

communications/capital mobility• ‘hollowing out’ of manufacturing production in

advanced capitalist economies (closing of factories)

• Knowledge economy

• Migration – 150 million (3% of world’s population) living in countries other than the one of their birth

• Remittances ; Mexicans in US send $3 billion a year back to relatives in Mexico

• Citizenship beyond states

• Municipal elections, voting rights to immigrants

• China reforms ongoing since 1978

• 150 million migrate from rural to urban areas (500 million by 2020)

• Worker unrest- peasants, state lay offs

• 60-70% of exports from China – non-Chinese corporations

• Export Processing Zones

• ‘Agrarian question’ – China and India