Labor
and Capital in the Age of GlobalizationLabor
and Capital in the Age of Globalization
The Labor Process and the Changing Nature of Work
in the Global Economy
Edited by Berch Berberoglu
This book offers a timely analysis of work and labor processes and how they are rapidly changing under globalization. The contributors explore traditional sectors of the U.S. and world economies -- from auto to steel to agriculture -- as well as work under new production arrangements, such as third world export-processing zones. Many chapters analyze changing dynamics of gender, nationality, and class. The contributors explain why more intensified forms of control by capitalist interests and the state are emerging under globalization. Yet they also emphasize new possibilities for labor, including new forms of organizing and struggle in a rapidly changing global economy.
An earlier edition of this book was originally published in the early 1990s under the title The Labor Process and Control of Labor: The Changing Nature of Work Relations in the Late Twentieth Century (New York: Praeger, 1993). This special, revised, updated, and expanded edition under the title Labor and Capital in the Age of Globalization: The Labor Process and the Changing Nature of Work in the Global Economy, includes the latest available data and analysis in the light of recent developments in each of the major areas covered in the book. Chapters 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9 have been thoroughly revised and updated with the most recent data. An earlier chapter on the computer industry by Navid Mohseni is dropped, and a new chapter on globalization and the state by Behzad Yaghmaian is added as a reprint from the journal Science & Society, where it first appeared.
Much of the arguments presented in the various chapters have been reformulated to address the relationship between labor, capital, and the state in a global context. While the ideas presented in these pages remain substantially the same, the changing nature of the global political economy at century's end has brought up new questions and concerns that are addressed here in a fresh new way. All in all, the ten chapters that comprise this book offer probing and provocative analyses on the labor process and the relationship between labor, capital, and the state in the age of global capitalism.
Reviews of the book:
"Labor and Capital in the Age of Globalization is a highly successful attempt in addressing the nature and dynamics of work in the global economy. The ten chapters that Berberoglu has edited provide the reader with a bird's eye view of the transformations that have been taking place in the labor process on a world scale. This important and timely book may well set the standard in both labor studies on the changing nature of work and relations between labor and capital in the age of globalization."—Larry T. Reynolds, Department of Sociology, Central Michigan University
"This excellent book opens the mysterious black box called "globalization" and examines how the global economy has impacted ordinary people in the workplace. The essays included in this book provide important insights on the labor process and modes of work, the impact of globalization on the labor movement, on the terms of class conflict, and on the role of women and minorities in the labor force. This book will be extremely useful not only to faculty, but also for students as a supplementary text in advanced courses in political economy and labor studies."—Howard Sherman, Professor of Economics, University of California, Riverside and Visiting Scholar in Political Science, UCLA
"Berch Berberoglu has edited a useful and intelligent text on the political
economy of the labor process in the age of the ascendancy of global capitalism.
The essays illustrate the varied forms of labor control and exploitation by
the transnational corporations of the dominant imperialist states. Both in scope
and depth, this book provides an informed and comprehensive overview of the
field of labor studies in the age of imperialism."—James Petras,
Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton
* * *
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction:
The Political Economy of the Labor Process in the Age of Globalization
Berch Berberoglu
1. Labor and Capital at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century
Jerry Lembcke
2. Labor, Capital, and the Struggle for Control at the Point
of Production
David Gartman
3. The Labor Process and the Transformation of Corporate Control
in the Global Economy
Harland Prechel
4. Working Women and the Dynamics of Power at Work
Marina A. Adler
5. Race, Nationality, and the Division of Labor in U.S. Agriculture
John Leggett
6. The Global Economy and Changes in the Nature of Contingent Work
Robert E. Parker
7. The Political Economy of Global Accumulation and Its Emerging Mode of Regulation
Behzad Yaghmaian
8. Women's Work and Resistance in the Global Economy
Julia D. Fox
9. Dynamics of Globalization: Transnational Capital and the International Labor Movement
Cyrus Bina and Chuck Davis
10. Globalization of Capital and Class Struggle
Walda Katz-Fishman, Jerome Scott, and Ife Modupe
Bibliography
About the Contributors
About the Editor
Index
To read the "Introduction" to this book, click here [pdf file]
Publication date: 2002
ISBN: 0-7425-1660-1 (cloth)
0-7425-1660-1-X (paper)
