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Elizabeth Cullen Dunn - Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Culture and Society after Socialism) - 9780801489297 - V9780801489297
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Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Culture and Society after Socialism)

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Description for Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Culture and Society after Socialism) Paperback. Series: Culture and Society After Socialism. Num Pages: 224 pages, 3. BIC Classification: 1DVP; KNDF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade); (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 157 x 228 x 14. Weight in Grams: 308. Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor. Series: Culture and Society After Socialism. 224 pages, 1 map, 1 table,1 halftone. Cateogry: (G) General (US: Trade); (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). BIC Classification: 1DVP; KNDF. Dimension: 157 x 228 x 14. Weight: 308.

The transition from socialism in Eastern Europe is not an isolated event, but part of a larger shift in world capitalism: the transition from Fordism to flexible (or neoliberal) capitalism. Using a blend of ethnography and economic geography, Elizabeth C. Dunn shows how management technologies like niche marketing, accounting, audit, and standardization make up flexible capitalism's unique form of labor discipline. This new form of management constitutes some workers as self-auditing, self-regulating actors who are disembedded from a social context while defining others as too entwined in social relations and unable to self-manage.Privatizing Poland examines the effects privatization has on workers' self-concepts; how changes in "personhood" relate to economic and political transitions; and how globalization and foreign capital investment affect Eastern Europe's integration into the world economy. Dunn investigates these topics through a study of workers and changing management techniques at the Alima-Gerber factory in Rzeszów, Poland, formerly a state-owned enterprise, which was privatized by the Gerber Products Company of Fremont, Michigan.Alima-Gerber instituted rigid quality control, job evaluation, and training methods, and developed sophisticated distribution techniques. The core principle underlying these goals and strategies, the author finds, is the belief that in order to produce goods for a capitalist market, workers for a capitalist enterprise must also be produced. Working side-by-side with Alima-Gerber employees, Dunn saw firsthand how the new techniques attempted to change not only the organization of production, but also the workers' identities. Her seamless, engaging narrative shows how the employees resisted, redefined, and negotiated work processes for themselves.

Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2004
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Number of pages
224
Condition
New
Series
Culture and Society After Socialism
Number of Pages
224
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801489297
SKU
V9780801489297
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Elizabeth Cullen Dunn
Elizabeth C. Dunn is Assistant Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is coeditor of Civil Society: Challenging Western Models.

Reviews for Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Culture and Society after Socialism)
Privatizing Poland is a study based on participant-observation of the takeover of Alima, a baby-food factory in the medium-sized Polish city of Rzeszów, by the Michigan-based Gerber Corporation.... Dunn succeeds admirably in presenting the clash between the frameworks of flexible accumulation and actually existing socialism.... It stands out as one of the best case studies of the process of privatization in Eastern Europe.
American Ethnologist

Goodreads reviews for Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Culture and Society after Socialism)


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