Division Of Labour In Industry Research Articles

The spatial structure of labour force employment in China’s industries: Measurement and extraction

With the continuous refinement and cross-integration of China’s industrial division of labour, analysis of the dynamic change in the spatial structure of labour force employment provides important insights into the spatial development pattern and industrial layout of China’s economy. In this paper, first, the scale and direction of labour flow between industries are measured based on input–output tables for 2007–2017. Second, a labour employment space network of China’s industries is constructed using social network analysis. Finally, the characteristics of the spatial structure of China’s labour force employment are extracted based on the spatial structure dimensions of points, lines, and networks. The results show that the employment effect on the labour force varies significantly according to diverse industry characteristics. In China, labour- and technology-intensive industries have always been the main absorption sites for labour force employment. As the labour force reservoir effect increases, the attractiveness of capital-intensive industries to the labour force gradually strengthens. Regarding the industrial chain, industry agglomeration within a sector has been shown in the employment space of China’s labour force. In particular, the service sector has already been stratified, and the hierarchy in the labour force employment structure is obvious. The networking of employment space indicates that the triangular mode structure with transitivity and interaction promotes the evolution of China’s labour employment space and that the trend of a multi-direction cycle network has gradually developed. In summary, the core–periphery heterogeneity spatial structure of the overall distribution of China’s labour employment has gradually been strengthened by the properties of agglomeration, hierarchy, and networks.

Coordinating Activity Interdependencies in the Contemporary Economy: The Principle of Distributed Control

AbstractThis study addresses the lack of knowledge about inter‐organizational activity coordination in the contemporary economy. Existing understanding of economic coordination within inter‐organizational research is based on the three modes of organization, market, and cooperative relationship. We extend the framework of Richardson that analyses specialization and complementarity within the industrial division of labour in terms of these three coordination modes. We propose a novel mode of coordinating economic activity, namely multi‐actor arrangements, which is based on the coordination of very dissimilar yet complementary activities, grounded in the principle of distributed control. This fourth mode is necessary to explain contemporary phenomena such as the circular economy and blockchain because these involve interdependencies that were previously framed as too different or unrelated to coordinate. The extension is important because it changes our understanding of mixed‐mode coordination. Our proposed fourth mode enables the conceptualization of how activity interdependencies are coordinated within inter‐organizational relationships and networks undergoing transformation.

A Study of the Spatial Structure and Regional Interaction of Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity in China Based on SNA and VAR Methods

As regional interaction increases in an open economy, a region’s green total factor productivity in agriculture must be considered alongside relationships with other regions. In this study, the slack-based model (SBM) global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) index is used to measure the green total factor productivity of agriculture in each province of China, and the social network analysis (SNA) and vector autoregressive model (VAR) impulse response function (IRF) are used to examine the spatial network structure and regional interactivity. The research confirms that the absolute value and concentration of agricultural green total factor productivity are generally higher in the south than in the north of China, but the peak is lower in the south than in the north. The network density of agricultural green total factor productivity in China from 2008 to 2019 shows an increase, with the cut-off values of mean, 10, 50, and 100 treated as 4.97%, 2.57%, 3.30%, and 2.43%, respectively. From 2008 to 2019, the central potentials of network entry and network exit of green total factor productivity in China’s agriculture show a “V”-shaped and inverted “V”-shaped evolution path, respectively, with the density of cohesive subgroups growing, which demonstrates that the spatial structure of green total factor productivity in Chinese agriculture has experienced an evolutionary path from polycentric to monocentric to polycentric conditions. The spatial interaction of different cohesive subgroups is intensifying and has a certain degree of self-stability. In terms of regional interaction, the siphon effect of the east on the green development of agriculture in the central and western regions is significant, but the trickle-down effect is not obvious, and the interaction between the central and western regions has a catalytic effect on the efficiency of the green economy of agriculture in both regions. It is recommended that targeted policies be introduced to support the flow of agricultural factors and industrial division of labour between the central and western regions and the south and north, taking into account the actual situation. The novelty of this paper is that it focuses on the green total factor productivity of Chinese agriculture and combines the innovative use of the social network analysis paradigm to analyse the green development of agriculture in a country from a spatial dynamic evolutionary perspective. A limitation of the research methodology in this paper is its poor applicability to closed economy analysis.

Research on the Prediction of Port Economic Synergy Development Trend Based on Deep Neural Networks

After entering the new century, along with the further deepening of global economic and trade cooperation, the industrial division of labor has been newly developed globally, which brings the cooperation among countries in the international logistics chain more and more closely. As the core node linking domestic and foreign water transportation, ports play a very key role in the international logistics chain and have an extremely central position in the national logistics planning. The coordinated development of port economy is an important part of the economic development planning of port cities, and it is also the premise and basis for the comprehensive planning of port logistics infrastructure construction scale, logistics space layout, and port city logistics development direction and function positioning. Therefore, according to the availability of realistic data, this paper establishes a deep neural network prediction model for the collaborative development of ports and uses various port logistics indicators to predict the economic development trend, so as to realize a nonlinear mapping relationship between the level of port economic development and the side of port logistics demand. Meanwhile, the research of this paper will provide theoretical basis and corresponding practical tools for the coordinated development between regional economy and port logistics industry.

Development Trend Prediction of Chengdu Plain Economic Zone Based on Multiple Linear Regression Grey Correlation Degree

Urban agglomeration is the mainstream trend of urban development in the world. It is also the main form of new urbanization in China and an important platform to participate in international competition and cooperation. The pattern of industrial division of labor has basically taken shape in Chengdu Plain Economic Zone, and the industrial cooperation system has been gradually established. However, the phenomenon of industrial isomorphism is still prominent. In the process of promoting coordinated industrial development, there are still some problems such as disunity of understanding, imperfect mechanism, and imperfect environment. The regional economic potential is influenced by too many entities and the dynamic changes of economic structure, and the change ratio is highly nonlinear. In this paper, a MLR-GCD (Multiple Linear Regression Grey Correlation Degree) prediction model for the development trend of Chengdu Plain Economic Zone is proposed. In the decision-making process, MLR (multiple linear regression) method is introduced to construct the GCD (Grey Correlation Degree) of training economic-related data set, and then the GCD is pruned to transform it into standard decision-making data. The experimental results show that compared with other prediction models, the improved model has higher accuracy of regional economic prediction, can quickly and accurately predict the development potential trend of Chengdu Plain Economic Zone, and has important application value.

Research on the Effect of High-Speed Rail Network on the Industrial Division of Labor in Chinese Urban Agglomerations

Research on the Effect of High-Speed Rail Network on the Industrial Division of Labor in Chinese Urban Agglomerations

International Trade Strategy Evolution and Pattern Discrimination under the Value Competition Mechanism

International trade theory generally assumes that trade is carried out in the ideal state of perfect competition market and constant return on scale, but the reality is not so. Every economy will formulate some policies to restrict or encourage trade for the sake of maximizing its own trade interests. With the acceleration of globalization, the industrial division of labor, trade benefits and competitiveness of an economy in the global economy are considered from the perspective of value competition mechanism, and the change and future trend of international trade policy under the value competition mechanism are analyzed starting from the introduction of the concept of value competition mechanism. Starting from the integration of the value competition mechanism, focusing on the increase of the added value of the whole industry, combining the technological progress, industry integration and the transformation of factor input. Value through the extension of competition mechanism and integration, the mainstream trade theory deals with the main factors and system variables into a unified multi-factor panel data model framework for empirical analysis, found on the evolution of international trade strategy and pattern identify differences, including system quality and the cost difference split effectively the technological progress, economic benefit and sustainable development and full employment, to maximize the added value of the whole value competition mechanism, and finally realize the improvement of industry international competitiveness.

Market Commonality and Competition in Communities—An Empirical Study Based on Bidding Data of the Construction Market

In contrast to traditional enterprise rivalry, the construction market competition is irregular on the surface due to the randomization of client targets and the one-time competition organization, which conflicts with construction businesses’ perceptions of the nature and future trend of rivalry. Therefore, contractors urgently need to accurately understand the competitive environment in which they will operate. In construction, few empirical studies exist on competitive environments from the standpoint of enterprise-to-enterprise competitive interactions. Based on market commonality, several hypotheses concerning the competitive pattern of the construction market have been proposed. To test these, a model of competing relationship networks is created using 7402 bid-winner notices for construction projects in Chongqing, China, from 2015 to 2018, followed by quantitative analysis and discussion of the model’s characteristic features. The findings suggest that there is a “community-type” rivalry in the building market, which represents the essential characteristics of market commonality. The research shows that the competitive action of construction enterprises is affected by construction technology, industrial division of labor and regional markets, and the competitive relationship between them tends to be “strong-strong”. This study reveals that the “community” competitive relationship in the construction industry may be a unique phenomenon, expands the application and development of market commonality and enterprise clusters in the construction economy, and provides theoretical guidance for construction enterprises to accurately recognize competitive behavior and decision making.

The transfer and driving factors of industrial embodied wastewater in China's interprovincial trade

Currently, interprovincial trade and the industrial division of labor in China are rapidly developing. The end users of products are not responsible for their wastewater discharge but indirectly transfer their own wastewater discharge to production locations through trade flows. This undoubtedly exacerbates the burden of environmental governance at production locations and results in the unreasonable sharing of discharge reduction responsibility between production and consumption areas of products. Studies that focus on the embodied wastewater transfer caused by interprovincial trade and its drivers are important for the formulation of equitable emission reduction targets and environmental policies. Therefore, based on the multiregional input-output (MRIO) model and structural decomposition analysis (SDA), this paper analyzes the transfer and driving factors of industrial embodied wastewater in interprovincial trade in China at the interprovincial and industrial sector levels. The results demonstrate that the transfer volume of industrial embodied wastewater increased from 5,423,884,700 tons in 2012 to 6,343,801,700 tons in 2015 in Chinese interprovincial trade, at a growth rate of 16.96%. The regions with industrial embodied wastewater net outflows were mainly located in eastern regions with a more well-developed manufacturing industry such as Shandong and Jiangsu, the net inflow areas were mainly concentrated in central and western regions such as Chongqing, Sichuan and Yunnan. From the perspective of the industrial sector, the chemical industry, papermaking and printing and manufacturing industry of cultural items, education resources and sports goods, and food manufacturing and tobacco processing industry were the three key sectors regarding the inflow and outflow of embodied wastewater in trade. Through SDA, it was found that the growth of the economic scale was the main reason for the outflow of industrial embodied wastewater in the various provinces. The technology effect imposed a negative influence on the transfer of industrial embodied wastewater in most provinces, especially in Henan and Guangxi. In the short term, technology improvements can be employed to reduce the transfer volume of industrial embodied wastewater, but in the long term, industrial structure optimization and upgrading are required to reduce the discharge and transfer of industrial embodied wastewater. Therefore, to reduce water pollution and control industrial wastewater discharge, it is necessary to consider the transfer and main driving factors of embodied wastewater caused by interprovincial trade when assigning environmental governance responsibilities to each province.

Spatio-temporal evolution of economic polycentric pattern at county level in Shandong Province

From the perspective of economy and comprehensive development level, this study used the gravity model, spatial autocorrelation analysis and principal component analysis to quantitatively measure the spatiotemporal evolution pattern of multi-centers at county level in Shandong Province. The results show that the economic ties among counties in Shandong Province are getting closer and closer. By 2016, Jinan-Zibo-Qingdao and Jining, Zaozhuang have basically formed three strong economic ties. The amount of counties with high-high GDP and low-low GDP are decreasing, while the amount of counties with lowhigh GDP are increasing. The gap between the density of output value and the level of economic development is narrowing, showing a trend of multicenter development. In the future development, Shandong Province should strengthen the integration of resources within the province, form a reasonable industrial division of labor, strengthen the cooperation among enterprises, promote the regional integration construction, and realize the multi-center spatial development model of cooperation.

Industrial Cooperation of the EEA Member Countries in Perspective of the Digital Economy

Purpose: this paper is based on the research aimed at the assessment of capacity for industrial cooperation of countries of Eurasian Economic Union and consideration of the opportunities for industrial cooperation related to the technologies of the digital economy. Methods: the article is developed in accordance with the system approach, the system of general theoretical and economic methods: methods of positive and normative analysis, statistical methods of data processing and graphical presentation of information. Results: assessment of level and the capacity for cooperation in the industry of the EEU is presented. The role of the digital economy in industrial production is defined. The directions of strengthening the cooperation ties between the industrial enterprises of the EEA member countries using the capabilities of the digital economy are identified, as well as those factors that need to be taken into account when stimulating the relevant organizational and managerial innovations. It allows to develop the industrial policy measures within the framework of the EEA. Conclusions and Relevance: achievement of the goals of the EEA in the field of the industry is seen in the formation of a new paradigm of competition and cooperation of enterprises by deepening industrial cooperation through the introduction of the digital economy technologies. This provides a unique chance for overcoming the gap in the efficiency of industrial enterprises of the EEA member countries and enterprises of the leading countries emerged in the last quarter of a century based on competitive cooperation (coopetition). The results indicate that the EEA member countries have reached the depth of the division of labor in industry, which is expressed by a significant share of the exchange of intermediate goods, but the trend of further deepening of cooperation is not observed. Although by now the technologies of the digital economy have mostly found their application in electronic commerce and finance, the article identifies those that can and should become the foundation for innovations allowing to integrate elements of competition and cooperation of enterprises in the real sector of the economy.

Durchhalten und Überleben an der Westfront. Raum und Körper im Ersten Weltkrieg by Christoph Nübel

Reviewed by: Durchhalten und Überleben an der Westfront. Raum und Körper im Ersten Weltkrieg by Christoph Nübel Adam T. Rosenbaum Durchhalten und Überleben an der Westfront. Raum und Körper im Ersten Weltkrieg. By Christoph Nübel. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2014. Pp. ix + 484. Cloth €44.90. ISBN 978-3506780836. Over one hundred years have passed since the outbreak of World War I, a conflict that marked the beginning of “the short twentieth century” (Hobsbawm) and “the modern age” (Eksteins). Unprecedented in its scope and destructiveness, the Great War has occupied scholars for decades. Classic works have addressed a variety of topics, including the sequence of diplomatic exchanges, the motives of the protagonists, and the escalation of the arms race, while more recent scholarship has directed our attention to propaganda and public opinion, the experience of the home front, and the profound cultural impact of four years of war. New research continues to illuminate previously underappreciated dimensions of the conflict, demonstrating a lingering fascination with World War I while also telling us something about the historian’s craft. With the right sources and analytical framework, a skillful historian can still say something new about even the most well-trodden topics. Christoph Nübel demonstrates exactly that with his new book about the German experience on the western front. In this rich and extensively researched monograph (featuring a bibliography of no less than 70 pages), Nübel demonstrates how the [End Page 210] so-called spatial turn can shed new light on World War I. More specifically, he examines different manifestations and conceptions of space (Raum) along the western front in three separate essays that focus on environment, terrain, and landscape respectively. The author justifies this unique approach by emphasizing that the soldiers themselves thought in spatial terms as they dealt with a hostile environment, mapped and navigated unfamiliar terrain, and contemplated and invented landscapes. More importantly, Nübel argues that space reveals how soldiers made sense of the war, and in many cases, how they persevered and survived (25). Thus, “space” is not just a buzzword but rather the key to a better understanding of the experience of trench warfare. In order to substantiate this ambitious hypothesis, Nübel turns to a wide variety of sources, including official military documents, reports from soldiers, diaries, letters, photo albums, drawings, and maps. He also adopts an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing the insights of anthropologists, ethnologists, psychologists, philosophers, and other scholars to interpret this broad range of evidence. The organization of the book is logical and the prose is direct, with each of the major sections concluding with a concise summary of Nübel’s conclusions. In his discussion of the environment of the western front, he emphasizes the omnipresent cold and wetness that defined the lives of many soldiers, leading him to convincingly claim that the greatest burdens of trench warfare were associated with environmental factors and not necessarily combat itself (97). Moreover, the dangerous conditions of life in the trenches compelled a host of civilian and military experts to develop tactics of survival and perseverance, while some claimed that the same conditions could transform soldiers, potentially reversing the degeneration that afflicted prewar society. On the subject of the terrain, Nübel describes how the land itself inevitably shaped both the experience of combat and military tactics, which changed drastically after the soldiers “dug in.” Especially useful is the short case study of a 1916 battle involving the 15th Bavarian Infantry Regiment at Neuville-Saint-Vaast. With this example, Nübel confirms that the military leadership went to great lengths to educate their troops on the topographical goals and obstacles of the battlefield. In practice, however, the individual soldiers only came into contact with a tiny portion of the terrain, reflecting, in the author’s words, “the industrial division of labor” (206). In the section on landscape, Nübel argues that carefully constructed images of the Heimat and Kriegslandschaft could alleviate and potentially rationalize the suffering of German soldiers. This is a logical argument, and the author does provide an interesting analysis of how soldiers comprehended the scenery of the western front itself, which was described alternately as a devastated landscape...

Research on the Development of the Logistics Industry

Modern logistics industry as an emerging industry, with the industrial division of labor with the social refinement and depth, to promote China's economic development has become an important industry and new economic growth point. This paper uses econometric approach to relations of the logistics industry and economic growth in Gansu Province made an empirical analysis reveals and Reveals the relationship between logistics industry and economic development in Gansu Province And for the results of the analysis are summarized and give relevant policy recommendations, hoping to provide a reference for the development of decision-making in Gansu.

Intermediate products and the regionalization of trade

PurposeThis paper aims to exploit a new trade database to explore the extent to which trade, and the industrial division of labor which it represents, is regional in nature.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis focuses especially on intermediates trade, in three key regions – the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN+3 – which together represent 78 percent of global trade.FindingsThe results indicate that levels of regional integration in trade and changes in that integration vary by region and by direction of flow. Notably, the EU has higher levels of intra‐regional trade than the other two. These results vary by technology, with high‐tech trade less regionally biased than others.Originality/valueTrade data has been little used in the debate on the regionalization of business activity. In addition, the paper highlights trends, not just in total trade, but within intermediate products and by technology.

Class Formation and Political Change: A Trans-Tasman Dialogue

The retreat from aggregate representations of class has opened the way for a reassessment of its role in both Australia and New Zealand's history. This article focuses on two recent New Zealand research projects to review our traditional interpretations of class-based coalitions, interpretations that have often been deeply shaped by the Australian and British scholarship.1 The first and oldest of these projects has related political change nationally and locally to analyses of demographic class formation in New Zealand's oldest industrial suburbs and its most densely populated urban region, southern Dunedin; the second set out to explain the dominance of conservative parties for most of the twentieth century by investigating electoral behaviour in ten provincial towns.2 The article concludes with some comparative remarks on how this 'class work' might inform similar studies in Australia. Labour in New Zealand: The Historiographical Inheritance Just three decades ago, most scholars in New Zealand thought that the major social, cultural, and political fault-lines ran along a rural-urban axis, but that within the towns, as if in a minor key, social class generated the most significant and enduring divisions.3 As early as 1948, R.M. Chapman set out to provide a sociological taxonomy of electorates. A number of his points are relevant to this article. First, within the towns, he categorised working-class electorates - for he was mainly interested in explaining electoral behaviour - by their poverty, although he was rather vague about defining it, and separated the four largest towns from the fast-growing provincial ones. Dunedin, the smallest of the main towns by 1928, had five electorates, whereas the largest provincial town in that year straddled two electorates, each of which contained some rural ridings. He also distinguished farming from rural electorates and introduced a category for those rural seats dominated by extractive industries such as coal mining or forestry.4 It was axiomatic, of course, that New Zealand was a capitalist society and that the stratification or class structure of all towns was rooted in the industrial division of labour. This was the conventional wisdom and nobody doubted that from 1840 onwards New Zealand had been but an outpost of British capitalism with a 'normal' class structure.5 How to characterise family farmers occasionally caused a problem, but much of the best work ignored them and focused, as W.B. Sutch did in The Quest for Security (1966), on the colonists' attempts to remove the sources of insecurity and the consequences of poverty. That the colonial economy came to be dominated by the owners of the largest runs and estates, and those who financed them, remains indisputable. The origins and aspirations of this colonial bourgeoisie remains both under-researched and contentious, but we cannot ignore those arguments. The large number of relatively unskilled seasonal labourers on which this economy depended have been largely ignored. So have the semi-subsistence modes of production that were transplanted around the world. The local census, anxious to measure the extent and pace of industrial growth, ignored such aspects of the local economy just as it also ignored the Maori.6

The Industrial Division of Labor among Immigrants and Internal Migrants to the Los Angeles Economy

Between 1985–90, metropolitan Los Angeles received about 400,000 working immigrants and about 575,000 working native in-migrants. We subdivide these native- and foreign-born migrants by national origin and ethnicity to examine the processes that channel recent arrivals into different industrial sectors. Our analysis extends previous research on migrant employment and the ethnic division of labor in two ways. We compare the employment of recent arrivals to residents for several groups across a large, diverse, regional economy. We also consider the role educational qualifications play in the allocation of different migrant groups to jobs at this aggregate analytical scale. The results show that both native- and foreign-born groups channel into particular industrial sectors. The strength of group channeling, however, varies by national origin and ethnic group. Native-born in-migrants are more likely to channel into the industries where their co-ethnic residents work than immigrant newcomers. We also find some groups more likely to take jobs based on their educational qualifications (whites, blacks, Filipinos and Chinese), whereas ethnic group effects dominate the choice of industry of others (Koreans). The analysis investigates the issue of interethnic labor market competition by comparing the employment profiles of newcomers with those of resident ethnic groups. It shows that immigrants experience more interethnic labor market competition from newcomers than do native whites and blacks.

The Industrial Division of Labor among Immigrants and Internal Migrants to the Los Angeles Economy

The Industrial Division of Labor among Immigrants and Internal Migrants to the Los Angeles Economy

Race and Technology: African American Women in the Bell System, 1945–1980

Race and Technology: African American Women in the Bell System, 1945—1980 VENUS GREEN Telephone operators in America’s largest cities experienced a dra­ matic technological transformation of their work process during the mid-1960s when the Bell System (AT&T and its associated compa­ nies) replaced cord switchboards with Traffic Service Positions— computerized equipment1 (see fig. 1). Martia Goodson, a former op­ erator who worked on both types of equipment, described how astonishing the change was for her: [Cord board operators] get calls [at a] switchboard [which] is full of holes and over every hole there is a light. When the light lights up [it] shows that someone is calling. You stick the plug in that hole; but how fast you get the cord up there is up to you. . . . Every three or four positions the switchboard repeats itself . . . so you might start to go for a light and somebody else picks it up, . . . the light goes out. How fast you pick it up . . . how fast you handle the call de­ pends. ... If no one puts their hand up there to pick up the light, the call would never get answered. . . . That’s different from having [a call] come in your ear . . . and the customer is there, you see what I’m saying, that’s why TSP blew my mind so bad because all of a sudden the customer was there . . . where Dr. Green is an assistant professor appointed jointly in the Department of History and the Department of Black Studies at the City College of the City University of New York. She wishes to thank Elizabeth Blackmar, Ula Taylor, Daryl Scott, Martia Goodson , Cheryl Greenberg, Bruce Sinclair, and the Technology and Culture referees for their comments on different versions of this article. Research for this article was partly funded by a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Scholar-in-Residence Program. ’After further computerization, Traffic Service Positions (TSP) became known as Traffic Service Position Systems (TSPS). This equipment automatically measured the length of time an operator spent on a call and the number of calls handled per hour. The machines also calculated charges and determined call routing without any opera­ tor input. This equipment will be described more fully in the next section.© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3602-0007$01.00 S101 S102 Venus Green Fig. 1.—The old and the new: Traffic Service Position Systems replaced cord swithchboards (far right) in Morristown, NewJersey, 1969. (Courtesy AT&T Archives.) we used to go in, see how it sounded, if it didn’t sound right. . . we’d come out . . . [with TSP] the customer was in your ear.2 Goodson’s testimony is rich for interpretation by those who study labor, women, and technology. Scholars who examine questions of skill, deskilling, the degradation of work, and job loss or gain due to new technology would be alarmed at the elimination of the physical and mental tasks associated with TSPS.3 They would argue over 2Martia Goodson made this statement in an interview conducted with Lessie Sanders in September 1975. I am indebted to her for the tape. 3Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twenti­ eth Century (New York, 1974); and the essays in Andrew Zimbalist, ed., Case Studies on the Labor Process (New York, 1979) advanced the idea that scientific management in conjunction with the introduction of new technologies deskilled and degraded work by separating conception from execution. In effect, technology, they argued, was a means whereby managers maintained control over the workplace. This thesis was chal­ lenged and modified by writers who expanded definitions ofskill, elevated governmental /political influences on technological development, and viewed workers as more active agents who themselves may choose to accept managerial control. Among this group are Kenneth Kusterer, Know-How on theJob: The Important Working Knowledge of “Unskilled” Workers (Boulder, Colo., 1975); Charles Sabel, Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry (New York, 1982); Larry Hirschhorn, Beyond Mechanization (Cam­ bridge, Mass., 1984); and Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly...

Women in Mexico's Popular Movements

The Mexican economy, along with those of other dependent capitalist countries of Latin America, has often been described as characterized by functional dualism (Cockcroft, 1983; de Janvry, 1981; Faber, 1992 [this issue]). In many parts of Mexico, a dominant capitalist export sector acquires a cheap labor supply by perpetuating and maintaining impoverished subsistence and informal sectors. Broadening the concept of dependent development allows us to see impoverishment in environmental as well as economic terms. For example, as Faber (1992) and Millikan (1992) point out in this issue, it highlights the impact that poor semiproletarianized peasants can have on their environment in their struggles to survive without land (Faber, 1988). It also reveals the social movements focused on the ecological and communal conditions for the reproduction of labor-power as class-based opposition to the ecological conditions of capitalist production (O'Connor, 1988). Although the demands of such movements are often phrased in terms of consumption needs and access to resources and services instead of specific conditions of work (as within a factory), they are nevertheless an aspect of class conflict. The basis of this conflict is not a capital/labor split in the industrial division of labor, but an unequal distribution of the ecological and economic hardships at the level of both the household and the gendered division of labor resulting from dependent capitalist development. The economic crisis of dependent capitalist development in Mexico has exacerbated the hardships faced by women in both the urban informal sector and the rural subsistence and wage-labor sectors.' Impoverishment in the

Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry and The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism

Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry. Charles Sabel. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1982. xiii. 304 pp.The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism. Michael Burawoy. Verso Press: London, 1985. 272 pp.