‘Flexible’ work, precarious future: some lessons from the Canadian clothing industry*

Abstract

Cette communication est consacrée à l'analyse de la relation entre le régime de travail «souple» et la construction culturelle du travail. Selon l'auteure, on a toujours reconnue que la souplesse était une caractéristique du capitalisme, sans pour autant reconnaǐtre que le phénomène comporte une différenciation sexuelle. Le régime de travail souple existe depuis longtemps dans l'industrie du větement, où elle prend les formes de la sous‐traitance et du travail à domicile. En plus de rendre compte d'une étude de cas ethnographique de ces formes dans l'industrie du větement en Ontario qui montre comment la flexibilité est introduite et vécue empiriquement, l'auteure soulève plusieurs questions qui méritent d'ětre étudiées plus à fond. This paper explores the connection between labour ‘flexibility’ and the cultural construction of work. It argues that while flexibility has always been a feature of capitalism, the gendered nature of that flexibility has been overlooked both historically and in contemporary discourse. The clothing industry has a long history of utilizing a flexible workforce through subcontracting and homework. Using an ethnographic case study of these forms of work in the clothing industry in Ontario, this paper demonstrates how flexibility is implemented and experienced empirically, and raises some questions for further consideration.

At home on the electronic frontier: work, gender and the information highway

“…However, the notion of individual flexibility may be problematic on its own and therefore a particular use of the notion of 'precarious employment' is juxtaposed against it as a fruitful, and in particular gender-sensitive, analytical instrument. The notion of precariousness and/or the idea of precarious employment has been used by numerous authors (including Leach, 1993). However, the work built on for this research takes the notion and develops it more directly into an analytical tool.…”

Five Decades of Class Analysis in the Canadian Review of Sociology

“…A number of articles reviewed above undertake a gendered analysis of class processes, including Smith (1975), Livingstone and Luxton (1989), Leach (1993), and Creese (1996). Other articles consider class in relationship to both gender and racialization, notably Li (1992) and Sharma (2001).…”

Small Victories But Slow Progress

“…The private sphere is characterized by 'the set of discursive and institutional practices of domestic life, the realm of personal intimacy, household labor, and reproduction within families, kin relations, or friendship networks' (Ferguson 1984: 8). Attitudes towards culturally appropriate spaces for women are reinforced by perceptions that a woman's place is in the home (Pateman 1989;Leach 1993). The public sphere, on the other hand, 'refers to the outside world of paid labor, of government, and of those institutions of communication, transportation, leisure, culture, and so forth, that are rooted outside the home, in the larger world of strangers' (Ferguson 1984: 8).…”