From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Sun Jun 12 2005 - 13:21:05 EDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tamar Diana Wilson" <tamardiana@yahoo.com>
Subject: My forthcoming book Subsidizing Capitalism
Wilson, Tamar Diana. 2005. Subsidizing
Capitalism: Brickmakers on the U.S./Mexican Border.
Albany: SUNY Press (Anthropology of Work series.
Series editor June Nash).
In Mexicali, as elsewhere in Mexico,brickmakers
may labor at a piece-rate on brickyardsowned or
rented-in by others, may rent-in brickyards,may become
brickyard owners, and as owners orrenters-in may use
unpaid family members and /oremployees to work for
them. There is thus a heterogeneous relation
to the"means of production" in this informal
sector activity. The labor of wives and offspring may
aid brickmakers to move from non-owner to
ownership status. The economic activities of
self-employed brickmakers may be considered
counterhegemonic in that they avoid proletarianization
in the formal sector.Their production is subsumed by
capitalism, however; their labor and the labor of
their wives and children subsidizes capitalist
enterprise by providing bricks to build tourist
hotels, factories, bank and office buildings and
shopping malls at a cost below that which would be
acceptable for a brick factory run according to
profit-making principles and hiringformalized labor.
Combining Chayanovian and neo-Marxist approaches,
Subsidizing Capitalism: Brickmakers on
theU.S./Mexican border discusses the
similaritiesbetween peasants and brickmakers, the
trajectory frompiece worker to petty commodity
producer to petty capitalist, the economic value of
women and children'swork as part of the family labor
force, and how the neo-patriarchal household is
intrinsic to petty commodity production. It also
compares the structural position of garbage pickers to
brickmakers. An appendix compares the findings of the
author withthose of Scott Cook, pioneer in the studies
of the Mexican hand-made brick industry. Interspersed
throughout the monograph are short stores and
poems either giving the brickmakers' point of view, or
presenting their lives in a format alternative to
academic prose. Twenty-three photographs are included.
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