The Gender and Labor Politics of Postmodernity

Abstract

The literature on export-industrialization and the feminization of industrial work challenges theory to catch up with lived realities. Reports from the new frontiers of industrial labor reveal a widening gap between our analytical constructs and workers' actual experiences. This puzzle arises from our limited theoretical grasp of the ingenuity of capitalist operations and the creativity of workers' responses in the late 20th century. Modernization models of capitalist development (33, 85) predicted an increasing adoption of mass-assembly production (Fordism; see 35:279-318) and the gradual decline of cottage industries in the Third World. Yet, since the early 1970s, mixed systems based on free-trade zones, subcontracting firms, and sweatshops have come to typify industrialization in Asia, Central America, and elsewhere. Lapietz (55) argues that the current mix of mass production, subcontracting, and family-type firms represents a new regime of accumulation worldwide. Since the 1973 world recession, new patterns of "flexible accumulation" (55, 42) have come into play as corporations struggle in an increasingly competitive global arena. Flexible labor regimes, based