Abstract Panel


Authors Information
SequenceTypeName TitleFirst NameLast NameDepartmentInstitute / Affiliation
1 Author Prof. Sandya Hewamanne Sociology University of Essex
Abstract Information
TrackID
:
IUAES23_ABS_B6936
Abstract Theme
:
P023 - Women Envisioning Futures Beyond the Borders of Marginalization in Global Foreign Trade Zone Work
Abstract Title
:
Economic justice within global capital: Pandemic, economic crisis and struggles of women workers
Short Abstract
:
This paper focuses on how Sri Lanka’s former global assembly line workers strive for equity and justice within the global subcontracting networks. Placed at the bottom of these networks as home workers, they have recently formed a national association of village subcontractors to negotiate for better renumeration and time/target management. Within a year the pandemic happened, followed closely by the economic crisis affecting the association’s journey in interesting ways.
Long Abstract
:

Focusing on Sri Lanka’s former global assembly line workers who are now subcontracting for large Free Trade Zone factories and their interventions within and against global capitalist production networks, this paper highlights the complicated process through which a national association of village subcontractors develop into a meaningful economic justice movement.  The paper will be based on ethnographic research conducted in village subcontractor workshops, association’s meetings, and their WhatsApp group and contributions of an activist who helped start the association and two former workers who are part of the association. Following the association’s journey amidst a global pandemic and a national economic crisis, the paper questions the current definitions of grassroots economic justice and introduce a new activist methodological approach ‘measured intervention.’ By manipulating conceptual continuities and contradictions within anthropology of global assembly lines, anthropology of organizational process, and economic sociology, this paper will ignite a re-imagination of feminist approaches to political economy in a way that fully recognizes marginalized women’s economic decision-making especially in the context of devastating global and national crises.

Abstract Keywords
:
Global assembly line workers, Economic justice, Sri Lanka