Table Of ContentPoverty and the Production
of World Politics
Unprotected Workers in the Global
Political Economy
Edited by
Matt Davies and Magnus Ryner
Poverty and the Production of World Politics
This page intentionally left blank
Poverty and the
Production of
World Politics
Unprotected Workers in the
Global Political Economy
Edited by
Matt Davies
Lecturer, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
and
Magnus Ryner
Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham, UK
Editorial matter,selection,introduction and Chapter 10
© Matt Davies and Magnus Ryner 2006
All remaining chapters © contributors 2006
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-9697-8
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2006 by
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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ISBN 978-1-349-54593-3 ISBN 978-0-230-80087-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230800878
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Poverty and the production of world politics :unprotected workers in
the global political economy / edited by Matt Davies and Magnus Ryner.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Labor—Social aspects.2.Poverty—Economic aspects.
3.International economic relations.4.Economic policy.I.Davies,Matt,
1960– II.Ryner,Magnus,1965–
HD4901.P68 2006
331.1—dc22 2006043212
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on the Contributors xi
List of Abbreviations xiv
Introduction 1
Matt Davies and Mangnus Ryner
Unprotected work and world politics in international studies 4
The structure of the book 7
1 Invisible Subject(s): Work and Workers in
the Global Political Economy 14
Louise Amoore
Global restructuring and invisibility 15
Making visible? Perspectives on work and globalization 17
Globalization and the everyday practices of work 22
Contradictions at work 23
Divisions at work 26
Politics at work 33
Concluding remarks 34
2 The Global Poor and Global Politics:
Neomaterialism and the Sources of
Political Action 38
Jeffrey Harrod
Neomaterialism: restoring work and production to
contemporary analysis 40
The global poor/ unprotected workers/ underclass
in world politics 53
Conclusion: connecting to world politics 59
3 Workers of the World…: The ‘Economic
Corporate Moment’ of Contemporary
World Politics 62
Magnus Ryner
v
vi Contents
Patterns of social relations of production:
a theoretical defence 64
The economic corporate moment of the
contemporary world order 70
Conclusion 83
4 The Public Spheres of Unprotected Workers 89
Matt Davies
Of ghosts and laying ghosts to rest: how
do subjects make themselves? 91
Counterpublic spheres and unprotected workers 95
The household in the global political economy 98
The movement of women between subordinate
patterns of social relations of production 103
Do household workers have public spheres? 105
Conclusions 107
5 Prostitution and Globalization: Notes on a
Feminist Debate 113
Silvia Federici
Introduction 113
Out of the shadows: from prostitute to sex worker–the
prostitutes’ rights movement of the 1970s 116
The debt crisis, structural adjustment and the
globalization of sex work 120
The feminist debate on prostitution and sex trafficking 128
Conclusion: reframing the debate 133
6 Migration and Unprotected Work in
Southern Africa: The Case of the Mining Sector 137
Michael Niemann
Social spaces and everyday life in IR 138
The spaces of social relations of production 140
Land and cattle: absolute space and the
production of historical space 141
Gold and diamonds: the emergence of
abstract space 144
The end of apartheid and the consolidation
of abstract space 148
Conclusion 152
Contents vii
7 The Working Poor: Labour Market
Reform and Unprotected Workers in the
South African Retail Sector 154
Marlea Clarke
Segmentation, power and the unprotected worker 156
The history of unprotected and non-standard
work in South Africa 160
The growth of unprotected work: casualization,
externalization and informalization 165
Unprotected work in the South African retail sector 167
Union politics and strategies 173
Conclusion 175
8 The Condition of Hegemony and
Labour Militancy: The Restructuring of
Gender and Production Patterns in Mexico 178
Teresa Healy
The condition of hegemony 181
Passive revolution and crisis in Mexico 183
Social relations of production in Mexico’s
passive revolution and crisis 188
Conclusion 202
9 Globalizing Social Justice All the Way
Down? Agents, Subjects, Objects and
Phantoms in International Labour Politics 204
Dimitris Stevis and Terry Boswell
Introduction 204
Historical structuralism and hegemony from below 205
A brief historical outline: towards less invisibility? 212
Findings and conclusions 219
10 Power, Production and World Order
Revisited: Some Preliminary Conclusions 223
Matt Davies and Magnus Ryner
Unprotected work and the
ontology of transnational relations 225
Unprotected work and subject formation 229
Subject formation and the organization
and mobilization of unprotected workers 232
viii Contents
Implications for political society
and transnational power politics 236
Suggestions for future research 238
References 244
Index 269
Acknowledgements
First and foremost the editors would like to extend their warmest thanks
to Jeff Harrod for his friendship, generosity and mentorship, without
which this book would not have been possible. There is no doubt that
Jeff is much more than a contributor to this book. He sowed the seeds of
inspiration for one of the editors through a series of seminars at the
Research Centre of International Political Economy (RECIPE), University
of Amsterdam, in 1998 and 1999. This was taken further in a long series
of discussions and correspondence between the editors and Jeff, begin-
ning at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in
Los Angeles in 2000 and culminating in a few of days of intense discus-
sions at Jeff’s home in The Hague in September 2004. We have struggled
to think of an appropriate way to acknowledge the breadth and depth of
Jeff’s contributions to our efforts. His modesty and the importance he
put on engaging critically with the approach to global politics examined
in this book rendered it impossible to make the book a Festschrift. Nor
was it appropriate to present him as coeditor, since it would have been
unfair to make him editorially responsible for discussions with which he
might not entirely agree. Thus we would like to record here our pro-
found thanks to Jeff for his commitment to the project and for teaching
us so much.
We would also like to acknowledge the institutional support we
received during the preparation of this book. We especially benefited
from the facilities of the International Studies Association, and in par-
ticular the special workshop grant for the Annual Meeting of 2002 in
New Orleans, which made it possible to bring all the contributors
together for the crucial meeting at which the first drafts were presented
and discussed. Matt Davies also received a supplementary grant from the
Office of International Programs at Pennsylvania State University to
support that workshop. Different parts of the book were presented and
discussed at a number of other meetings and forums, most notably at
the Chair’s Roundtable at the Department of Political Science, York
University, Toronto, in March 2004. We would like to thank Isabella
Bakker, who was then the Chairperson at York, for facilitating this
roundtable at one of the leading centres for the development of the type
of critical IR/IPE advocated in these pages. The roundtable allowed us to
discuss some of our ideas with leading figures in the field, including
ix
