The workplace at the bottom of global supply chains as a site of reproduction of colonial relations: Reflections on the cashew‐processing industry in Mozambique
研究了莫桑比克腰果加工厂中工作场所如何通过日常实践和内外结构再生产殖民关系,对关注全球供应链中劳动剥削的学者有用。
Abstract In the context of global supply chains, the workplace is a site of realization of global–local interrelations and materialization of class, gender and race exploitation. This paper explores these relations in the Mozambican cashew‐processing factory, the workplace at the bottom of the cashew global supply chain. The aim is to extend the literature on labor and global production networks by addressing the underexplored dimension of the everyday practices of work organization and by centering the interdependence of economic and socio‐cultural relations. Taking a feminist social reproduction perspective and drawing on insights from Quijano's coloniality of labor, the article conceptualizes the workplace at the bottom of global supply chains as a site of reproduction of colonial relations. The workplace is both internally fragmented and embedded within the structures of the local and global economy. Through the internal fragmentation, multiple forms of oppression and exploitation are reproduced. Through the external links with the structures of the local and global economy, the complexity of working lives as well as the colonial relations between employers and workers become visible.