State against industry: time and labour among Dominican furniture makers

Abstract

AbstractThis essay analyses time and labour among small Dominican furniture producers. The Dominican Republic's small workshops and firms experience much waiting – not speed and political‐economic integration, but, instead, slowness, blockades, and marginalization. The national production of furniture has faced increasingly tough competition from imported commodities. In the early 1990s, the national finances were in crisis. Pressured by its international lenders, the state deregulated and opened the economy, while it has continued to spend little on the development of the country's workshops and industry. In addition, the country's electricity sector is in poor condition and long blackouts are the norm. Because of the situation, the country's small furniture makers are forced to live with contradictory and clashing social rhythms. The diversity among forms of time is navigated through concrete labour and in the everyday. Contemporary global capitalism ought to be understood as a contingent outcome of labour activity in the form of a myriad of localized, mundane efforts to ‘fix’ it. Such efforts always mirror a specific political and social history. By exploring contemporary capitalist time through a focus on particular forms of labour, we can analyse how global capitalism's discrepant rhythms help to give shape to, disrupt, and dislocate forms of labour in a given place. At the same time, we show how the involved agents seek to adapt to, and work on the effects of, the conflicts between rhythms.