"Mohammad Tareq Hasan's powerful and sensitive understanding of the situations of female garment workers in Bangladesh's clothing factories critically contextualizes commanding theoretical discourse grounding their insights but simultaneously demonstrating the limits to their understanding. Hasan in his masterly analysis shows how ethnography is not merely illustrative of theory but central to its construction."-Bruce Kapferer, Emeritus Professor, University of Bergen and Honorary Professorial Fellow, University College, London "Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh is a rich ethnography of the lives of garment workers in Bangladesh. Hasan argues against the orthodox view of garment workers as the pawns of capitalism; instead, he shows how workers renegotiate capitalist agendas to create emancipatory opportunities. The book adds a new dimension to the growing literature on the garment industry by focusing on the female garment kormi as the agent of social change."-Lamia Karim, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oregon This book portrays the scene where corporate international trade agreements, a new neoliberal state regime, and a growing textile market have contributed to the becoming of a new class of Muslim female workers-who labor in Bangladesh's apparel export factories under conditions of neoliberal capitalism. The garment kormi-often abstracted by the homogenizing category of the "garment worker"-remain lost in the statistics of development and empowerment or contrarily exploitation. Thereby, focusing on the everyday lives of garment kormi, i.e., workers' stories than on the collective of garment workers as a category, this book at one front highlights the neoliberal structures of difference and inequality,and on the other reflects on the potential of egalitarianism and change in terms of novel ways of comprising and expressing life-worlds. It shows that the values in life and the structures that govern life, such as contemporary Bangladesh's neoliberal order, kinship relationality, and religiosity, are co-constitutive, multi-layered, and always on the move, never fixed. Mohammad Tareq Hasan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Autorentext

Mohammad Tareq Hasan is Assistant Professor and Affiliated Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen, Norway. His research interests include minority and ethnic groups, gender relations, collective action, anthropology of work, state formation, political economy, and egalitarianism.

Klappentext

This book portrays the scene where corporate international trade agreements, a new neoliberal state regime, and a growing textile market have contributed to the becoming of a new class of Muslim female workers-who labor in Bangladesh's apparel export factories under conditions of neoliberal capitalism. The garment kormi-often abstracted by the homogenizing category of the "garment worker"-remain lost in the statistics of development and empowerment or contrarily exploitation. Thereby, focusing on the everyday lives of garment kormi, i.e., workers' stories than on the collective of garment workers as a category, this book at one front highlights the neoliberal structures of difference and inequality, and on the other reflects on the potential of egalitarianism and change in terms of novel ways of comprising and expressing life-worlds. It shows that the values in life and the structures that govern life, such as contemporary Bangladesh's neoliberal order, kinship relationality, and religiosity, are co-constitutive, multi-layered, and always on the move, never fixed.

Inhalt

Introduction.

1. Contextualizing Ready-made Garment Work in Bangladesh.

Part I.

2. The Roots of Local Capitalism: Outlining and Understanding Global Connections.

3. Tensions and Negotiations in Neoliberalism: Emergence of Garment Kormi as the Model Citizens.

Part II.

4. Becoming Garment Kormi: Life in the Garment Factory.

5. Kinship in the Factory: Garment Kormi Living a Life away from Home.

6. Negotiating the Public and the Private: Garment Kormi Becoming Joggo.

7. Dare to Dream: Remaking Everyday Realities.

Part III.

8. Paradoxes of Factory Compliance: Auditing, CSR, and 'New' Dispossession.

Conclusion.

9. The Multiple Realities of Neoliberalism and Garment Kormi.

10. Epilogue: During the Pandemic.