Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Production of "South-South" Capitalist Labor Relations

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

Foreign commercial and investment activities in developing countries are no longer exclusively owned and managed by traditional core countries of the Global North, such as the United States and Britain. Increasingly, countries of the Global South are leading the way. For example, China and India have been at the forefront of commercial activities in sub-Saharan Africa. These investments have generated needed jobs for poor countries but they also have produced controversies about labor practices. One question that has arisen is whether national and international labor codes are being ignored to give businesses unfair advantages while also victimizing workers. However, surprisingly little is known about how the situation plays out on the ground, at the work sites where workers and foreign supervisors actually engage. The research supported by this award will help to fill this knowledge gap. This research is in the United States' national interest because the U.S. government and investors need to know that they are playing on a level playing field. It also is essential to better understand the contexts that determine the effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid investments. This fourteen month empirical ethnographic study will be carried out by University of California, Davis, anthropology doctoral student, Justin L. Haruyama, under the supervision of Dr. James H. Smith. The research will be conducted in two Chinese-operated coal mines in southern Zambia: one operated by a Chinese state-owned enterprise and the other privately owned by five Chinese brothers. Both of these mines hire managers primarily from China while recruiting their ordinary workforces exclusively from Zambia and neighboring African countries. The research will examine how actors from different racial, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds at the mines understand and affect each other. This will illuminate the broader social consequences and capitalist transformations at work in everyday encounters around the extraction of coal. The researcher will also pay close attention to historical experience, as preliminary research has shown that the sometimes-traumatic encounters with colonialism, socialism, and neoliberalism experienced by participants from both Zambia and China continue to have profound reverberations in their actions and discourses at the mines today. Data will be collected through a mixed-methods approach, including archival research, participant observation, census and structured survey interviews, and the collection of life histories. Results from this research will improve understanding of how contemporary international capitalist investments are affecting the lives of ordinary people, and how they are reshaping business environments and capitalist culture in many African countries.