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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Spinning and weaving discontent: labour relations and the production of meaning at Zambia-China Mulungushi Textiles
Author:Brooks, AndrewISNI
Year:2010
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies (ISSN 1465-3893)
Volume:36
Issue:1
Pages:113-132
Language:English
Geographic terms:Zambia
China
Subjects:working conditions
foreign enterprises
textile industry
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057071003607360
Abstract:Chinese engagement in Africa is an increasingly prescient and important subject for academic discourse on globalization generally, and African political economy particularly, but local-scale impacts of new Chinese investments have not been sufficiently addressed. The Mulungushi Textile Factory in Kabwe, Zambia, has a long association with China. New Chinese capitalist investment established the 'Zambia-China Mulungushi Textiles Joint Venture Ltd.' in 1997, rehabilitating a dilapidated industrial site. Through detailed ethnographic research this article explores how this specific Chinese engagement affected the lives of the Zambians who worked at Mulungushi Textiles. Using the lived experiences of ex-workers, changes to the social pattern of work are examined, illustrating how a Zambian state model of labour organization was replaced by a neoliberal exploitative form at this globalized site. Wages were suppressed through casualization, working conditions worsened and strict discipline was imposed. Workers did not gain the modern livelihoods they anticipated and through labour struggles, meanings and understandings of racial differences were produced and anger towards the Zambian State was articulated. Labour disputes, financial difficulties and increasing competition in the globally liberalized textile and clothing markets, diminished the enterprise's viability and Chinese investment abandoned Mulungushi in 2006. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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