Putting-out System Research Articles

Women's Socio-Economic Status in The Putting-out System of Work During the Covid-19 Pandemic

AbstractThis study focuses on studying the socio-economic status of women in the putting-out system of work during the Covid-19 pandemic. This work affects women in the social status and economic conditions of the family. The women of putting-out system struggle to earn income in order to survive during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study purposes analyze the socio-economic practices carried out by women during the Covid-19 pandemic. The method used in this research is qualitative with data collection techniques through observation and in-depth interviews with informants in this study. This study produces the following prepositions: first, putting-out system work improves women's social status; second, the working of the putting-out system is an arena for fighting for family survival during the Covid-19 pandemic. The researcher concludes that the social practice of putting-out system work is interrelated with the social status of women as workers, while at the same time maintaining economic sustainability for the needs of family life during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social status as a working woman is very important to increase women's bargaining power both within the family and in the local community.Keywords: socio-economic status, women worker, putting-out system work, the Covid-19 pandemic

Marx's Ideas on Work Organization: Reinvestigating the Conceptions of Cooperation, the Division of Labor, and Machinery

Harry Braverman's “degradation thesis” is only one aspect of Marx's analysis of the labor process. A close reading of Chapters 13 to 15 of Capital Vol. 1, based on English and Japanese preceding studies, shows a dual system of work organization under the capitalist mode of production: concentrated and dispersed. Today's information and communications (ICT)-based work organization could be seen as an example of the latter, i.e., an online-controlled putting-out system. The concentrated work organization has two types: the automation-oriented model consists of mechanized processes maintained by unskilled labor. In contrast, the craft-oriented model is a set of mechanized work that requires different kinds of skilled labor. These definitions urge us to reconsider the general law of capitalist accumulation and the traditional strategy regarding class struggle.

Worker Social capital of working women "putting-out system" to rise from Covid-19 pandemic

This article focuses on social capital, a means for women working in the putting-out system sector to rise from adversity during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study explains that the pandemic has had a significant impact on the socioeconomic activities of women workers in Kalirungkut, Surabaya. This study aims to analyse working women who experience social downturns to get back up with the social capital they have. This qualitative research uses a non-positivistic paradigm but an interpretive approach through observation and in-depth interviews involving informants exposed to COVID-19. This study found four categories: helping behaviour as an act of humanitarian solidarity; reforestation and vegetable planting movement; networks for physical and social health services; and strengthening the economy. The researchers concluded that the social capital possessed by women workers in the putting-out system increased women's enthusiasm to rise from adversity during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Accounting and accountability practices in the obraje of San Ildefonso of Quito: An eighteenth century productive proto-capitalist model

The Enlightenment brought a new mercantilist discourse that stimulated new technologies of management to optimise company performance, rendering workers and production phases visible and accountable. This spread to the colonies, including Ecuador. This article uses a governmentality framework to present a case study of the Hacienda of San Ildefonso (in present-day Ecuador). Within the Hacienda, an obraje (textile workshop) was established for textile manufacturing, replacing the previous putting-out system. The obraje was based on division of labour (skilled and unskilled) involving vertical integration of the business in a proto-capitalist model. The integration of these functions within the Hacienda required the adoption of new practices of accounting to obtain more accurate control of production and workers and facilitate control at a distance. This article contributes to the literature on accounting by examining the emergence of these new practices in a unique production system developed across all Spanish America from the beginnings of its colonisation.

Chasing Funds: Start-ups from a Global Value Chains Approach

This article investigates the role of Brazilian legislation in the (re)production of subordinate forms of incorporation of peripheral countries in global value chains (GVCs) through new dynamics for the extraction of value intermediated by international systems of investment. The purpose is to show how financial deregulation contributes to “putting-out” research and development (R&D) labs of major brands, and serves as a way of exploring casual and flexible hiring schemes for skilled workers. To this end, the article explores the financing policies for the Brazilian innovation system, whose aim is to promote the inclusion of higher value-added activities in the GVCs through the connection of national innovative micro-enterprises to direct financial investments, a strategy considered fundamental to boost the country’s industrialisation. The analysis focuses on two Calls for Funds for technology-based start-ups, a category of micro-business where investments have been stimulated due to such policies. The results reveal how leading companies in global value chains have been using this rentier development model to reduce costs in R&D activities by sharing the risks of innovation and transferring labour charges to start-ups, advancing the casualisation of work for skilled workers. In this context, casual employment with no labour rights has turned countries at a low level of industrialisation, like Brazil, into an attraction to the dynamics of the CGVs. KEYWORDS: start-ups; global value chains; production funding; casualisation of work; putting-out system

REGULATION OF CIVIL LAW EMPLOYMENT OR EMPLOYMENT LAW?

Performance of work on a basis other than an employment relationship takes various forms. Predominantly, it takes place based on civil law relationships, which are characterised by the principle of freedom of contract, which results in the possibility of freely shaping the content of any such legal relationship. However, recent years are marked by a gradual increase in regulations of employment other than based on contracts of employment, i.e. based on civil law contracts. Introducing a minimum hourly wage, limiting employment in trade on Sundays and public holidays, providing temporary work under civil law contracts or the much earlier widespread granting of employment rights to contractors in the putting-out system and, above all, granting the right to safe and hygienic working conditions to everyone who performs work justifies asking questions about future developments.

Wallerstein on early modern capitalism and global inequality: a reevaluation

A critical review of Immanuel Wallerstein’s Modern World-System is far more than just an obligation sociologists and historians owe to one of the most influential social scientists of the last fifty years. Rather a reconsideration is both timely and urgent for two reasons: On the one hand, the theme he dealt with most intensively—early modern capitalism—is more topical than ever in the early twenty-first century because with the demise of industrial capitalism structural similarities between early modern forms of mercantile capitalism like the putting-out system and today’s attempts of platform or digital capitalism to monopolize market access become more and more obvious. And on the other hand, Wallerstein’s dominant concern with the asymmetrical power relations between center, semiperipheries and peripheries can still serve as a powerful reminder to seriously engage the global dimension of capitalist development today. This article although written from the perspective of a historian will try to do justice to Wallerstein’s theoretical ambitions as well will be extremely simple. It will be shown that although some critical points were well taken Wallerstein’s general approach to early modern capitalism is by no means completely outdated and superseded. Even if some of the answers he gave may seem indefensible today, there can be no doubt that he asked crucially important questions which still are in need of answers today.

BARGAINING POWER PEREMPUAN PEKERJA RUMAHAN DENGANSKEMA PUTTING-OUT SYSTEM DALAM PEMENUHAN HAK SOSIALEKONOMI (STUDI DESKRIPTIF PADA PEREMPUAN PEKERJARUMAHAN PENGELEM ALAS KAKI, KELURAHAN PENJARINGAN)

The Putting-out system is a working system in the informal sector, most of the production process is felt outside of the plant or in a home and place that is self-selected by its employees and takes place without supervision at all from the employer. Through this scheme, the employer can streamline the cost of production by providing wages that are not comparable to working hours and the absence of protection for homeworkers. The women homeworkers must complete the target job with the working time exceeding twelve hours in a day even more. Consequently, their economic and social rights as workers are not met and neglected. The waiver of rights for a worker signifies the absence of protection from the Government for workers of the informal sector, especially women homeworkers. A distinction difference between formal and informal workers in the presence of bargaining power on workers. This study seeks to answer research questions: How do the bargaining power of women homeworkers in the wage given by employers? To answer this problem is used by the qualitative method. Data is collected through observations and in-depth interviews with women homeworkers who are in the status of housewife with husband then analyzed qualitatively. The results concluded that bargaining power owned by women homeworkers was very weak even nothing. They didn't even have the opportunity to negotiate with the wages they received. The interesting thing about this study is the analysis of how this condition can occur,

Rural Industry and Its Social Foundation in the Integrated Urban-Rural Development Process: A Case Study of Processing in Remote Villages under the Jurisdiction of City L, Zhejiang Province

Rural industry provides an important basis for rural revitalization, and its development can promote urban-rural integration. Rural China has long had complex and diverse rural industries whose existence and development is founded on rural society. Complex and varied rural industries have long existed in rural China, where local society provides the social foundation for their existence and development. One example is the processing of supplied materials or putting-out system (lailiao jiagong 来 料 加 工 ) in remote rural areas under the jurisdiction of City L, Zhejiang. In recent years, industries in the developed areas of Zhejiang have expanded to remote villages through processing to order, driving the growth of rural industries in remote areas. The processing of supplied materials is a link in the global production chain. Flexible decentralized processing links surplus rural labor in remote areas to the vast global market. The industry’s production process is deeply embedded in local society; interpersonal relationships and social ethics facilitate production management, forming a social foundation for the development of rural industry. Social ethics in these areas takes the particular operational form of sensitive cultivation of personal relationships or “human feelings.” The processing of supplied materials has shaped the distinctive character of rural development and provides a route for social transformation. To implement the strategy of rural revitalization, besides provision of land, finance and industrial policy, China needs to handle the social foundation of rural areas rationally, make full use of rural social resources and stimulate endogenous motivation in rural society.

How (not) to organise Roman textile production. Some considerations on merchant-entrepreneurs in Roman Egypt and the ἱστωνάρχης

For almost the last 100 years, various ancient historians have suggested that organisations comparable to the “putting- out” system existed in the Roman Imperial period. They are most commonly believed to have occurred in textile production. As early as 1913, Theodor Reil assumed that the production of textiles in Roman Egypt was organised through the putting-out system. This idea can subsequently be traced through more than a century to recent publications. However, as this assumption is rarely based on genuine source material, it seems appropriate to get to the bottom of this hypothesis. In this context, special attention will also have to be paid to the question of large textile companies and the professional title of ἱστωνάρχης, which has been associated with the putting-out system in the past.

As relações de gênero na produção capitalista do espaço de trabalho

Resumo Este artigo discute o contexto social que originou o espaço de trabalho, ou o espaço exclusivo para o desempenho de atividades produtivistas. O objetivo é demonstrar a dependência que a esfera da produção tem do universo da reprodução e, notadamente, como essa dependência é obliterada e reforçada pelas relações patriarcais. Investigo como o processo de trabalho e a sociedade são organizados segundo as teorias de organização racional do trabalho, e quais os efeitos sobre a produção do espaço. A discussão sobre as origens dos espaços de trabalho demonstrou que elas estão vinculadas à divisão do trabalho em gênero, durante o desenvolvimento do capitalismo comercial, no período entre os séculos XII e XVIII, quando as antigas unidades domésticas – indústrias domésticas rurais – e as oficinas dos artesãos urbanos foram transformadas em empresas familiares pelo modo de produção putting-out system. Com o advento desse sistema, a divisão do trabalho em gênero permitiu liberar os indivíduos do sexo masculino para o desempenho de atividades produtivas, enquanto as tarefas domésticas ou mal pagas eram destinadas às mulheres. Essa foi a primeira condição social para posteriormente, na manufatura, possibilitar-se a existência de espaços exclusivos de produção.

BEYOND THE MONEY: A CASE STUDY ON THE BENEFIT OF HAND-DRAWING BATIK TO FEMALE BATIK WORKERS IN JARUM KLATEN REGENCY

Batik is a cultural product of Indonesia and it is produced by home industries under Putting Out System (POS). Although batik home industries are beneficial economically, their impacts on environment tend to be destroyed due to water pollution resulted from the process of POS. Moreover, batik production by POS is considered to disadvantage female homeworkers. This paper aims to explain the benefit of batik industries in Jarum Village, Klaten toward female homeworkers, even if water pollution occurs in the village. Batik industries give benefit because they provide employment for female homeworkers in Jarum Village. Unfortunately, the benefit from batik production not yet received by some female homeworkers due to low wages they get, in addition to the pollution which could contaminate the groundwater they use for domestic activities. Finally, batik benefits are not merely regarding economics context as batik provides a space for self-actualization, mainly to the elder workers.

PEASANT SOCIETY IN JAPAN'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: WITH SPECIAL FOCUS ON RURAL LABOUR AND FINANCE MARKETS

This study aims to discuss the significant role of “peasant society” in understanding the economic history of both modern and early modern Japan.Independent peasant households proliferated in Japan in the seventeenth century, and from around the turn of the eighteenth century onwards they underwent a transformation into entities calledie,which owned family properties and bore responsibility for conveying these properties to the next generation. Although the development of the market economy also contributed to maintaining and activating the peasant society, the function of the labour market was strongly influenced by the strategy of peasant households to pursue the optimal utilization of slack labour generated by the seasonally fluctuating labour demand from agriculture. Under these constraints, peasant households tended to deliver non-agricultural employment opportunities to their members, forming a kind of barrier against mobilizing family workers outside the household. These barriers were supported by region-based industrial development such as a weaving industry adopting the putting-out system most suitable to the requirements of peasant households. Rural-based capital accumulation together with the workings of the regional financial markets contributed to maintaining particular peasant household behaviours by supporting region-based industrial development, which featured in Japan's path of economic and social development from the early modern to the modern period.

A Road to the Recognition of Home-Workers: Transformation of POS Production Modes and Roles of Home-workers in Batik Industry in Central Java (Case Study in Cluster Batik in Central Java)

Home-work (HW) in the putting-out system (POS)-based industry is the real proof of global capitalism existence in domestic space. It utilizes house resources and manipulates the domestic area to keep production costs low in order to compete in the global market. POS and HW become paradoxical as they are widely employed and categorized as strategic commodity production, market their products to the global market, and involve certain skills, creativity and technology. Nevertheless, the facts are obscured from public eyes. Efforts to uncover the obscured facts have been done through POS and HW transformation strategies, which are described in this paper. The paper aims at promoting POS and HW into public areas. The data used were gathered through participatory action research on batik industry based on "putting-out" system in cluster batik in Central Java from gender perspectives. The transformation model was used to promote POS and HW and to seek recognition of the facts that were based on system advantages and capacity enhancement of home-workers while enhancing product values through “fair trade” market. The implemented model has four components, namely: 1) development of innovation and technology that focused on product development, production, and marketing on the alternative market; 2) innovation and technological transfer in product development for better value chain and value added; 3) engineering and strengthening of production institutionalization, which is based on POS clusters; 4) engineering and strengthening of marketing institutionalization of alternative market; and 5) development and strengthening of vocal points that are related to and in support of the implementation. This model gave out positive impact on supporting the implementation of POS and POS roles and promoting this reality. As a model, however, this transformation model needed to be developed that it might be disseminated to a larger scale.

Penetapan Skala Industri Batik Rumahan Menurut Kriteria Lokal: Studi di Desa Jarum, Kabupaten Klaten

Bayat Sub-district of Klaten Regency has been supplying batik to Yogyakarta and Surakarta since the 1960’s. The role of Bayat as a batik provider is inseparable from Jarum village, which was officially established as a tourism village by the Government of Klaten Regency in 2014. Considering that batik is produced under Putting Out System (POS) which employs home workers, the industrial scale criteria applied to formal industry is less appropriate if it will be applied to batik home-industry as a micro-small scaled industry. This research was conducted to describe the profile of batik industry in Jarum village as well as arrange criteria used by Jarum people to determine the scale of batik industry. This qualitative research data was collected by interview, observation, documentation, and literature study. The results showed that there were 19 industries producing batik cloth, 10 industries producing batik woodcraft, 1 industry producing batik T-shirt, and 1 industry producing batik painting. Based on local perception, 7 industries were categorized as large, 13 industries were categorized as moderate, and 11 industries were categorized as small. The criteria used to establish the industrial scale were production scale, number of employees, and marketing reach. Only 5 industries found to apply natural colorants for batik clothes production, while synthetic dyes were applied broadly for batik clothes, batik T-shirt, batik woodcraft, and paintings. Natural colorants less desirable by batik Juragans who use synthetic dyes because the application of natural dyes will prolong the production, limits the scale of production, tend to shows uncontrolled quality, and more difficult to sell.

App-centric mobile media and commoditization: Implications for the future of the open Web

This paper traces linkages between the commoditization of the Web and what we call “app-centric media.” By this we mean a media environment composed of a multitude of discrete-but-connected software applications and their associated protocols, platforms, frameworks, and institutions. The rapid growth of app-centric media, we argue, is directly dependent on the development and commercialization of the (mobile) Internet, as well as on the business models embedded in the development of key native app platforms such as iOS and Android. The emergence of app-centric media, particularly in relation to mobile media, is having a marked effect on conceptualizations of the Web. The prevailing rhetoric concerning the development of the mobile Internet and app-centric media employs imagery of autonomy, empowerment, and independence for both the users and producers of apps. We argue that the commoditization central to the commercial development of the mobile Internet evidences a fusion of neoliberal rhetoric valorizing worker autonomy, individual empowerment, and entrepreneurial independence, with a mode of production consonant with “cognitive capitalism” (Dyer-Witheford, 2014; Vercellone, 2007). Our analysis is divided into three sections. The first looks at the early development of the mobile Internet in relation to the accumulation strategies of cognitive capitalism including the structural importance of “value networks” and the “putting-out system”; the second deals with the commercialization models underpinning the two dominant app platforms, Apple’s iOS and Android; the third addresses the development of HTML as a means of production and describes how HTML5 is framed as a prospectively more “open” competitor to the existing platform duopoly. It concludes by briefly examining the development of the Firefox OS mobile platform—and whether this platform resists or incorporates the forms of commoditization associated with app-centric media generally.

SISTEM PENGUPAHAN DAN PEMBAGIAN KERJA PEREMPUAN BURUH BATIK BERBASIS PUTTING OUT SYSTEM DI KOTA PEKALONGAN (Proses dan Implikasi Marginalisasi Terhadap Perempuan Buruh Batik)

This research was motivated by the rampant of batik female workers who worked with the Putting Out System (POS) and were marginalized in Pekalongan City. This study was aimed to answer the research questions: what was the marginalization form of women workers through the wage system and division of labor in the production chain based on POS was; the actors who were involved in the process; what factors caused it; and what was implications for women workers, their family and bosses inside production process as well as outside the production process. In-depth interview and observation were used to investigate data. Triangulation of data source and investigating method were also used to validate the investigated data. In addition, Interactive model was used to analyze. The results were: (1) the actors who played a role in the process of marginalization of women workers in Pekalongan batik is the boss, makloon, religious elite (Kyai / Ustazd - ah), and the state; (2) the cause root of that marginalization was manipulated by patriarchal and capitalism ideology; and (3) the implication of that marginalization for woman workers inside production process was that they were positioned as a production machine to make a profit. While the implications outside the production process, they still lived in poverty.

Spinners and the Law: Regulating Yarn Standards in the English Worsted Industries, 1550–1800

The Worsted Acts, passed between 1777 and 1791, established semi-official industrial police forces in nearly a third of the counties of England, charged with detecting and prosecuting fraudulent reeling of worsted yarn by hand spinners. The Acts have been interpreted as the response of late eighteenth-century employers to new and growing problems of labour discipline associated with the putting-out system. But frauds by spinners in reeling yarn were not new. They had characterised the worsted industry since its rapid expansion began at the end of the sixteenth century. Over the subsequent two centuries, employers addressed the problem repeatedly. How they tackled it depended crucially on the way the different regional worsted industries were organised and on dramatic changes in the willingness and capacity of the state to regulate manufacturing. The Worsted Acts emerge as the product of a distinctive eighteenth-century approach to industrial regulation, reactive and particularistic, but bureaucratically innovative.

The Paradox of the Growing Importance of the “Putting-Out” System in the Development of the Batik Industry: A Case Study in the Sragen-Surakarta-Sukoharjo Cluster of Indonesia

The economic crisis stimulated the growing importance of the system for the development of small-scale batik industries, in which home-workers who produce goods at home are part of a decentralized chain of production and control. Such systems were already present before the crisis but are now more prominent, faster, complex, and different from the system in general. The performance of the former cannot be separated from the hidden roles of the home-workers and their families. The home-workers have played strategic roles in supporting the existence and survival of the small-scale batik industries, but despite their contributions, they remain on the margins. This paper is based on research conducted in Central Java, Indonesia, and describes three key findings, namely (a) the paradox of the growing importance of the putting-out system for the development of the batik industry, (b) The POS Transformation from a gender perspective, and (c) the implications of the system on the role of home-workers and the employment conditions in the batik industry.

Production Organizations in Japanese Economic Development: Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy

‘Comparative Institutional Analysis’ (CIA) is increasingly being used in studies on Japanese economic history. According to this book, CIA offers a framework by which the history of institutions and organizations can be analyzed, focusing on coordination and motivation as the major factors constituting the economic system. This volume is the output of an analysis of production organizations in various industries using CIA. CIA can be seen as an axis in the study of Japanese economic history in the period up to World War Two. As mentioned in the Introduction, the purpose of this volume is to examine why certain production organizations emerged in certain historical contexts, and what role those organizations played with respect to coordination and motivation. Historical studies on production organizations have developed focusing on two topics: one is the choice between the factory and the putting-out system; the other is, as Alfred Chandler stressed, the emergence of large corporations integrating multiple functions. Essentially, in historical studies the problem of production organizations is analyzed from the viewpoints of coordination and motivation. This book consists of seven chapters by seven economic historians: Hashino Tomoko, Kanbayashi Ryo, Nakamura Naofumi, Nakabayashi Masaki, Tanimoto Masayuki, Kagami Kazuaki and Okazaki Tetsuji, who is also the editor of the volume.