Category Archives: Ausbeutung

New paper: Empirical study on „the voluntary precariat in the value chain“ – home-based garment production in Turkey

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„This article explores the organizational characteristics and distinctive settings of the labour process of home-based garment work in the context of embedded control and consent relations in local garment productions in Turkey. Using Turkey as the case example of a garment export country in the global economy, the article explores the nature and organization of home-based piecework at the micro level within a broader global garment production chains perspective. Conducted in two Turkish cities, the study analyses the different cultural backgrounds of female workers and two distinct types of work, namely hand stitching and machine sewing of garments. The findings highlight the relationship between the cultural backgrounds of workers and the different types of work they undertake with control and consent practices as well as the patriarchal societal structure and relations in the context of local labour control regimes.“

Source: Tartanoğlu, Şafak (2017): The voluntary precariat in the value … Mehr lesen...

Wool Works – Manhattan Marxism / Exploitation / Strange Teaching / art project by Rainer Ganahl

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The artist Rainer Ganahl addresses exploitation by comparing the preindustrial way of producing woolen products with the products and processes using computer-aided knitting maschines. His aim is „to raise consciousness about the manifold complicated hidden production processes that enter the consumer products we purchase at department stores for little money“ (http://strangeteaching.info/porto_exploitation.html, see also: http://ganahl.info).

„MANHATTAN MARXISM / WOOL WORKS / EXPLOITATION
STRANGE TEACHING / WOOL WORKS / EXPLOITATION

a project developed for PANORAMA BOA VISTA, Porto, Portugal, March 2017

FROM PRESS RELEASE:

Rainer Ganahl – Manhattan Marxism / Wool Works / Exploitation / Strange Teaching / Wool Works / Exploitation – Opening Wednesday, Apr 12, 10pm

In this exhibition, Rainer Ganahl combines his projects Manhattan Marxism and Strange Teaching, emphasizing the aspect of exploitation. …

Manhattan Marxism has previously taken place at Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein (2012), White Columns, New York (2013), and De Vleshaal, Middelburg (2014). Ganahl is interested

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„Our Cotton Colonies“ – interesting article in „In These Times“

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„Our Cotton Colonies

We follow a T-shirt’s supply chain from Burkina Faso to Bangladesh to your local mall—and back again. ..

Dourtenga cotton harvest

The history of cotton is tightly braided into the history of Western capitalism. A major thread of the British Empire, the crop helped weave the efficient and ruthless structures of today’s globalized economy. The T-shirts we buy at retailers like Gap and H&M may feel far removed from the bloody past of a crop synonymous in

the 19th century with slavery and sweatshops. But when one follows the global supply chain of cotton growers, workers, traders and factory owners, it becomes increasingly apparent that capitalism has not, in fact, traveled far at all from its bloody origins.

Cotton is a flexible crop. It will grow anywhere rain is plentiful and temperatures remain above freezing for at least 200 days a year. Archaeological records show that humans have cultivated

… Mehr lesen...