Abstract
The global trade, production, and retail of textiles and garments is essentially a world-system subject, both by historical record – significant in the original expansion of the world system over the long 16th century – and for analyses grappling with the contemporary features of the capitalist world economy. By following the continuous reinvention of how garments are produced, the shifting locations of their production, and who determines apparel output and product, one can get a sense of the general transformation of the capitalist world-system. While many world-systems or globalization volumes carefully detail the macro-processes that are enveloping the globe in apparel and other industries, fewer have been able to demonstrate the nuances of how shifts in the capitalist world-system play out on a daily scale. Although not written from a PEWS perspective, We Are In This Dance Together does just this. In a carefully worked ethnography, Plankey-Videla draws readers into the everyday lives and concerns of garment workers in a high-end apparel production facility in the central state of Mexico. Through her gift of sociological storytelling we learn of the strains and pressures placed on workers, but also on factory owners and managers, and unions, as they negotiate to survive the changing landscape of global apparel production. ISSN: 1076-156X | Vol. # 21 No. 2 | http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2015.25 | jwsr.org
Highlights
It does not engage directly in world-system frames of analysis – for example, examining Mexican capital’s constraints as an outcome of its semi-peripheral location – the introduction to We Are In This Dance Together is probably the most “world-systemy” portion of the book
A great example of this is Chapter 3, “From Piecework to Teamwork,” in which PlankeyVidela details the implementation of Japanese-style Just In Time (JIT) production, or modular production, in the apparel factory
We show the steps the company took to transform from piece rate production, where each worker had opportunities to increase earnings on an individual basis by working more or faster, to modular production in which workers’ economic gains are tied to the success of one’s self-managed team
Summary
It does not engage directly in world-system frames of analysis – for example, examining Mexican capital’s constraints as an outcome of its semi-peripheral location – the introduction to We Are In This Dance Together is probably the most “world-systemy” portion of the book. Because the book is essentially about the decision-making processes of workers and factory owners, the outline Plankey-Videla provides at the start of the volume is instructive.
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