Invisible bondage: Mobility and compulsion within Sri Lanka’s global assembly line production

Ethnography ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146613812199584
Author(s):  
Sandya Hewamanne
Keyword(s):  
Military Personnel ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Line Production ◽  
Free Trade Zones ◽  
Female Workers ◽  
Emotional Bonds ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
Tamil Women

Female workers who enter factory work in Sri Lanka’s Free Trade Zones (FTZs) via contractors are not forced to join or remain in contractor labor pools. This paper, however, argues that such workers nevertheless remain unfree due to cultural and emotional bonds that restrict labor mobility. By analyzing how contracted workers’ entry and mobility within work get shaped by a coalition of patriarchal agents—parents, contractors and factory management—the paper demonstrates how compulsive emotional conditions, that I term “invisible bondage,” are produced and maintained. While the degree of compulsion varies depending on the particular form of labor contracting (i.e., Tamil women from the war torn areas recruited by military personnel, or daily hired workers), I show that all labor contracting for global production represent how forms of unfreedoms are interwoven into supposedly free market relations of production. Such invisible controls, I argue, are essential for neoliberal capitalism to thrive.

The Applied-Ethical Structural Synthesis of International Development

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (197) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Astroulakis
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Free Market ◽  
National Level ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
Structural Synthesis ◽  
Policy Theory ◽  
Development Institutions ◽  
Market Relations

<p>The paper challenges the mainstream stance in the study of applied ethics<br />in international development. Applied ethics is positioned at the macro-social level<br />of global ethics while a specific codification is attempted by formulating international development based on its structural synthesis, in a threefold level: First, the structural synthesis –associated with the framework of existing international development policy–can be found in the ‘market relations’. Second, the analysis specifies the policies applied at the national level and the role of nation-state policy. Third, the paper criticizes the international development institutions’ policies. In each of the levels mentioned above, the analysis reveals the fundamental policy theory issues of neoclassical economics, as the intellectual defender of free market economics.</p>

scholarly journals IMPROVING THE RELIABILITY OF BODY ASSEMBLY LINE EQUIPMENT

1996 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 11-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAKURO AMASAKA ◽  
HIROHISA SAKAI
Keyword(s):  
Conventional Method ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
Failure Modes ◽  
Lead Times ◽  
Reliability Engineering ◽  
Production Lines ◽  
Line Production ◽  
Equipment Reliability ◽  
New Models ◽  
Short Time

It is necessary to establish higher levels of equipment reliability in a short time, the market demands ever shorter lead times for the release of new models. Also, the demand for new-model cars is very strong immediately after their introduction. The conventional method for enhancing equipment reliability is by screening alone. However, this requires screening operations on production lines and so has been an obstacle to line production and prevented shortening of lead times. We are now able to dramatically enhance equipment reliability in a very short time by detecting failure modes and forecasting the number of occurrences using a scientific technique based on reliability engineering.

Transnational Capitalism in Latina/o Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosaura Sánchez ◽  
Beatrice Pita
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Agricultural Fields ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Labor Conditions ◽  
Free Trade Zones ◽  
Female Workers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Soil And Water

Latina/o cultural production has long dealt in different ways with the impact of transnational capital, globalization, and imperialism not only on immigration from Latin America, especially since the 1970s, but also on Latina/o residents (whether citizens or immigrants) in the United States, particularly with respect to social location, positionality, and labor conditions. Of particular importance to contemporary Latina/o writers is noting that transnational capital has led not only to the restructuring of the U.S. economy but also to the creation of free trade zones in the Global South, especially on the Mexican border, where workers, especially female workers, are extremely exploited and subject to feminicide. In view of the continued participation of a number of Chicana/o workers in the agricultural fields of the Southwest and Northwest, Chicana/o writers have also been especially concerned with ecological issues and the health of all workers subject to pollution and contamination of the air, soil, and water. These are all issues reconstructed in Chicana/o—Latina/o literature, past and present.

scholarly journals Making Science Fiction Real: Neoliberalism, Real-Life and Esports in Eve Online

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Richard Johnson ◽  
Robert Mejia
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Real World ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Political Economic

In this paper, we argue that EVE Online is a fruitful site for exploring how the representational and political-economic elements of science fiction intersect to exert a sociocultural and political-economic force on the shape and nature of the future-present. EVE has been oft heralded for its economic and sociocultural complexity, and for employing a free market ethos and ethics in its game world. However, we by contrast seek not to consider how EVE reflects our contemporary world, but rather how our contemporary neoliberal milieu reflects EVE. We explore how EVE works to make its world of neoliberal markets and borderline anarcho-capitalism manifest through the political economic and sociocultural assemblages mobilized beyond the game. We explore the deep intertwining of  behaviors of players both within and outside of the game, demonstrating that EVE promotes neoliberal  activity in its players, encourages these behaviors outside the game, and that players who have found success in the real world of neoliberal capitalism are those best-positioned for success in the time-demanding and resource-demanding world of EVE. This thereby sets up a reciprocal ideological determination between the real and virtual worlds of EVE players, whereby each reinforces the other. We lastly consider the “Alliance Tournament” event, which romanticizes conflict and competition, and argue that it serves as a crucial site for deploying a further set of similar rhetorical resources. The paper therefore offers an understanding of the sociocultural and political-economic pressure exerted on the “physical” world by the intersection of EVE’s representational and material elements, and what these show us about the real-world ideological power of science fictional worlds.

Optimizing Assembly Line Production through Line Balancing: A Case Study

2015 ◽  
Vol 761 ◽  
pp. 104-108
Author(s):  
Adi Saptari ◽  
Jia Xin Leau ◽  
M. Nor Akramin
Keyword(s):  
Cycle Time ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
Line Balancing ◽  
Additional Increase ◽  
Line Production ◽  
System A ◽  
Line Setting ◽  
Assembly Operations ◽  
Current Systems

In Line Balancing principles, the total workload in the assembly process is divided as evenly as possible among the workstations, without violating the sequences and relations in the assembly operations. Line balancing is important in an assembly system as it balances the line and increases the efficiency, as well as the productivity of a system. A case study was conducted in the assembly line of an electrical accessories manufacturer in Malaysia. The cycle time for each station was recorded, and the standard cycle time was estimated. The productivity, as well as the efficiency of the current assembly line, were studied. In terms of the productivity, the performance of the current systems was 500 units/worker/day, while the expected productivity was 600 units/worker/day. An assembly line setting was proposed based on the Line Balancing Method; the productivity for the proposed line increased to 671 units/worker/day, or in rough additional increase around 34%.

scholarly journals EXTEND Project: Systematic Approach to Curricula Development

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 282-289
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Lazarou ◽  
Natalya Zerkina ◽  
Yulia Savinova
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Education ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Future Generation ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Quality Of Education ◽  
Market Relations

AbstractEXTEND project is aimed at modernizing approaches to teaching engineering disciplines in Russia and Tajikistan, increasing quality of education and possibilities of employment for young engineers, students’ motivation and making engineering education attractive. Modern universities carry out not only professional training of students, but also prepare competitively capable personnel who can survive and thrive in modern free market relations, accompanied by a variety of forms of ownership and competition. International educational projects are relevant as they supply universities with international experience and job possibilities. Therefore, foreign languages competence is of key importance for engineers of future generation, and is a means of forming professional, communicative, linguistic and cultural competences. Success of teaching foreign languages depends not only on teachers’ skills, but on carefully selected and elaborated didactic materials as well. EXTEND project team exchange ideas and experience that result in fruitful discussion of issues concerning elaborating new courses to improve engineering education. International teams, which include EXTEND project participants from European, Russian and Tajik higher educational institutions will carry out the task. Project EXTEND is an open kind of consortium, which implies that members from partner countries subordinate to its leader and share joint responsibility for commitments of the consortium.

scholarly journals The fight against corruption and social context

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Ivana Mirevska
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Zero Tolerance ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Social Climate ◽  
Illegal Activity ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
General Rules ◽  
Social Insecurity

In this paper, the author tried to present the project of combating corruption in Serbia, starting from the theoretical definition and classification of this social phenomenon. Arguments are also provided proving that, in addition to good strategy and legal solutions, the effects in the fight against corruption also requires the establishment of a social climate in which zero tolerance for corruption will develop. The difficulty, on a global scale, is the fact that neoliberal capitalism encourages illegal activity, legitimizing it by the general rules of the free market. Bearing in mind that the provisions of the Law on the Anti-Corruption Agency also point to the prevention of corruption, the author has tried to answer the question to what extent the prevention designed here can prevent corruption, especially when it comes to those aspects that citizens in everyday life deal with most commonly encountered. The conclusion of this paper is that apart from suppressing corruption mechanisms, one should also take into account the general social situation that generates corruption - namely poverty and social insecurity, that is, suppression of corruption entails a much wider set of measures than anti-corruption laws.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document