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Examines how small firms, like large ones, are mobilizing to compete in a global economy.
Globalization is often seen as driven by large corporations and supranational organizations. Enterprises operated by petty capitalists may be small, but there is nothing petty about their significance for the operation of economies or our understanding of contemporary societies, families, and localities. Petty Capitalism and Globalization uses ethnographic research to examine how small firms in Europe, Asia, and Latin America have been compelled to operate and compete in a fast-moving transnational economic environment. From Nepalese rug makers to German bakers to Taiwanese memory chip designers, these fascinating case studies delve into the complex situation of petty capitalists, often ambiguously situated between capital and labor, cooperation and exploitation, family and economy, tradition and modernity, friends and competitors. Understanding the position of petty capitalists in a global economy provides lessons in the potential and limitations of promoting small firms and entrepreneurship as a route to sustainable development.
List of Illustrations
1. Introduction
Alan Smart and Josephine Smart
2. Petty Production: The Enduring Alternative
Hill Gates
3. Movers and Fixers: Historical Forms of Exploitation and the Marketing of a Regional Economy in Spain
Gavin Smith and Susana Narotzky
4. Flexibility for Whom?: Small-Scale Garment Manufacturing in Rural Mexico
Frances Abrahamer Rothstein
5. Capitalism from Below?: Small Firms, Petty Capitalists, and Regional Transformations in Eastern Europe
Adrian Smith
6. Global Market and Local Concerns: Petty Capitalists in the Brianza
Simone Ghezzi
7. They Were Promised a Rosegarden: Reunification and Globalization in Small- and Medium-size Firms in Eastern Germany
Hans Buechler and Judith-Maria Buechler
8. New Firm Formation and Technical Upgrading in the Taiwanese Semiconductor Industry: Is Petty Commodity Production Still Relevant to High-Technology Development?
Jinn-yuh Hsu
9. Toward A (Proper) Postwar History of Southeast Asian Petty Capitalism: Predation, the State, and Chinese Small Business Capital in Malaysia
Donald M. Nonini
10. Labor Standard Regulation and the Modernization of Small-Scale Carpet Production in Kathmandu Nepal
Tom O'Neill
11. Fair(er) Trade for the Global Markets: Capitalizing on Work Alternatives in Crafts in the Rural Philippines
B. Lynne Milgram
12: The Moral Significance of Petty Capitalism
Michael Blim
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index