Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh: An Ethnography of Neoliberalism (Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference) 3030999017, 9783030999018

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APPROACHES TO SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE

Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh An Ethnography of Neoliberalism Mohammad Tareq Hasan

Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference Series Editors

Synnøve Bendixsen University of Bergen Bergen, Norway Bjørn Enge Bertelsen University of Bergen Bergen, Norway

The book series contributes a wealth of new perspectives aiming to denaturalize ongoing social, economic and cultural trends such as the processes of ‘crimigration’ and racialization, fast-growing social-economic inequalities, depoliticization or technologization of policy, and simultaneously a politicization of difference. By treating naturalization simultaneously as a phenomenon in the world, and as a rudimentary analytical concept for further development and theoretical diversification, we identify a shared point of departure for all volumes in this series, in a search to analyze how difference is produced, governed and reconfigured in a rapidly changing world. By theorizing rich, globally comparative ethnographic materials on how racial/cultural/civilization differences are currently specified and naturalized, the series will throw new light on crucial links between differences, whether biologized and culturalized, and various forms of ‘social inequality’ that are produced in contemporary global social and political formations.

Mohammad Tareq Hasan

Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh An Ethnography of Neoliberalism

Mohammad Tareq Hasan Department of Anthropology University of Dhaka Dhaka, Bangladesh

Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference ISBN 978-3-030-99901-8    ISBN 978-3-030-99902-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Rowan Morgan / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my three lifelines My mother (Shamsun Nahar) Bani & Shabab

Preface

This monograph ethnographically explores an expanding neoliberal context in Bangladesh. At the frontier of neoliberal capitalism, the country has experienced rapid growth of the ready-made garment (RMG) sector during the last 30 years. Undoubtedly, the massive expansion of industrial work opportunities has transformed work and labor patterns across the country and led to the shift in the labor regime from subsistence to wages. But this monograph portrays the scene where corporate international trade agreements, a new neoliberal state regime, and a growing textile market have contributed to the becoming of a new class of Muslim female workers—who labor in Bangladesh’s apparel export factories under conditions of neoliberal capitalism. The garment kormi—often abstracted by the homogenizing category of the ‘garment worker’—remain lost in the statistics of development and empowerment or contrarily exploitation. Thereby, focusing on the everyday lives of garment kormi, that is, workers’ stories than on the collective of garment workers as a category, this monograph at one front highlights the neoliberal structures of difference and inequality, and on the other reflects on the potential of egalitarianism and change in terms novel ways of comprising and expressing life-worlds. It shows that the values in life and the structures that govern life, such as contemporary Bangladesh’s neoliberal order, kinship relationality, and religiosity, are co-constitutive, multi-layered, and always on the move, never fixed. Dhaka, Bangladesh

Mohammad Tareq Hasan

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Acknowledgments

I am very much grateful to those garment kormi who have shared their opinions, given me access to their life, and accepted me with trust to share their life stories in detail. I could not have written this monograph without their contributions. I am indebted to my host in Gazipur, Dhaka, who allowed me to stay in their home. I am grateful to Mr. Faruq Ahmed for introducing me to my host. Likewise, I am thankful to the garment factory management, who have let me stay and observe the work process at their factory. I also appreciate the Population Services and Training Center (PSTC) management and especially Mr. Ali Ashgar for their help getting approval from the garment factory. This monograph grows out of my PhD project ‘Industry, Work, and Capitalism in Bangladesh: An Ethnography of Neoliberalism in the Asian Tiger Economy’ (Hasan 2018), Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen (UiB), Norway. The PhD project was part of the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons’ (project code 340673), running from 2014 to 2019 and led by Professor Bruce Kapferer. The project also received financial support from the Meltzer Research Fund and the Fredrik Barth—Sutasoma/ University of Bergen Fellowship in Social Anthropology. I acknowledge the sincere contribution of my supervisor, Professor Knut M.  Rio, for his enthusiasm and constant support. I recall my co-­ supervisor, Professor Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, who contributed with his insightful comments on various stages of my PhD and in writing this monograph. It was a pleasure to work with Professor Bruce Kapferer, who has made me think differently from how I have done otherwise. ix

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While I was in Bergen, my colleagues Axel Rudi, Jacob Hjortsberg, Mari Hanssen Korsbrekke, and Maria Dyveke Styve have encouraged me with their own works and by commenting on my texts. In addition, at various times, I benefited from comments on some preliminary texts by Professor Annelin Eriksen, Professor Don Kalb, Professor Andrew Lattas, Professor Ørnulf Gulbrandsen, Professor Katy Gardner, Professor Sundar Sarukkai, Dr. Alessandro Zagato, Dr. Theodoros Rakopoulos, Dr. Anna Szolucha, Dr. Marina Gold, and Dr. Rolf Scott. In 2021, I could work on this project with a fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden University, the Netherlands. The library resources at Leiden University and research facilities of IIAS were instrumental in this academic output. Especially, I recall Aarti Kawlra, whose suggestions have influenced this work. Also, my co-­ fellows at IIAS, Dr. Aditya Kiran Kakati, Dr. Benjamin Linder, and Dr. Hedwig Waters, were helpful—they read and commented on some texts. Finally, thanks to Palgrave Macmillan—the publisher, for enabling this academic endeavor. I am thankful to my alma mater, the University of Dhaka, especially the Department of Anthropology, my teachers, and colleagues—Professor Shahed Hassan, Professor Shaheen Ahmed, Professor Zahidul Islam, Professor Saifur Rashid, Professor Nasima Sultana, Professor Hasan A. Shafie, Professor Farhana Begum, Professor Shaila Sharmeen, Professor Raasheed Mahmood (he passed away unexpectedly on March 31, 2021), Professor Rafiul Islam, Professor S.  M. Arif Mahmud, Assoc. Professor Ishrat Jahan, Assoc. Professor Sumaiya Habib, Asst. Professor Syed Arman Hossain, Asst. Professor Fahmid Al Zaid, and Asst. Professor Tahura Enam Navile—who have contributed immensely to my academic and intellectual journey. I am indebted to my parents (and in-laws), wife, and son, who have sacrificed the most during the last year while I was away from home, to (finally) write this monograph. Dhaka, Bangladesh 2022

Mohammad Tareq Hasan

Praise for Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh “This book breaks new ground, bringing fresh conceptual perspectives to bear on an otherwise well-trodden field of scholarship. Mohammad Tareq Hasan’s monograph on Bangladesh’s garment industry is one of the first to be based on sustained ethnographic field work. The author takes capitalism as a central organizing category in the text, without falling back on universalizing modes of analysis. Eschewing abstractions and reductive dichotomies, Hasan offers a nuanced account of world-making under structural conditions of deep inequality and contending regimes of value; of neoliberal developmental practices, state ideologies and middle class morality as they mediate – or not – the worldviews and subjectivities of the men and women who labor in garment factories. Even as he tracks openings and forms of resistance that are never far from the surface, Hasan argues against looking for singular outcomes. Theoretically sophisticated and historically grounded, this ethnography is a welcome and much-needed contribution to the literature.” —Dina M. Siddiqi, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Liberal Studies, New York University, USA

Contents

Part I    1 1 Contextualizing Ready-Made Garment Work in Bangladesh  3 Part II    49 2 The  Roots of Local Capitalism: Outlining and Understanding Global Connections 51 3 Tensions  and Negotiations in Neoliberalism: Emergence of Garment Kormi as the Model Citizens 85 Part III   111 4 Becoming Garment Kormi: Life in the Garment Factory113 5 Kinship  in the Factory: Garment Kormi Living a Life Away from Home149 6 Negotiating  the Public and the Private: Garment Kormi Becoming Joggo189

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Contents

7 Dare to Dream: Remaking Everyday Realities223 Part IV

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8 Paradoxes  of Factory Compliance: Auditing, CSR, and ‘New’ Dispossession251 Part V

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9 The  Multiple Realities of Neoliberalism and Garment Kormi277 10 Epilogue: During the Pandemic301 Index315

About the Author

Mohammad  Tareq  Hasan  is a faculty member at the Department of Anthropology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen, Norway. In addition, he has completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research interests include anthropology of work, state formation, political economy, and egalitarianism.

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Abbreviations

ATC BADC BAL BBS BDT BEPZA BGMEA BILS BKMEA BLA BMP BRAC BSCI CAP CB CPD CSR DIFE EPZs EU FDI FLA FoA GB GDP GM

Agreement on Textiles and Clothing Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation Bangladesh Awami League Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Bangladeshi Taka Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association Bangladesh Institute of Labor Studies Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association Bangladesh Labor Act Bangladesh Mahila Parishad Building Resources Across Communities Business Social Compliance Initiative Corrective Action Plans Collective Bargaining Center for Policy Dialogue Corporate Social Responsibility Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishments Export Processing Zones European Union Foreign Direct Investments Fair Labor Association Freedom of Association Grameen Bank Gross Domestic Product General Manager

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ABBREVIATIONS

GoB GPNs GRI GSP HR HYV ILO IMF IRDP ITUC LDCs MCI MD MFA MNCs MoWCA NGOs NGWF OHS PCI PKSF PM-1 PM-2 PPE PPP PSTC QC RCC RINA RMG RSC SAF SAI SAPs SEZs SID SSC SSNPs TIB UL UN

Government of Bangladesh Global Production Networks Global Reporting Initiative Generalized System of Preference Human Resource High Yielding Variety International Labor Organization International Monetary Fund Integrated Rural Development Program International Trade Union Confederation Least Developed Countries Meena Communication Initiative Managing Director Multi-Fiber Arrangement Multinational Companies Ministry of Women and Children Affairs Non-Governmental Organizations National Garment Workers Federation Occupational Health and Safety Per Capita Income Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation Production Manager Prime Minister Personal Protective Equipment Purchasing Power Parity Population Services and Training Center Quality Controller Remediation Coordination Cell Registro Italiano Navale Ready-made garment RMG Sustainability Council Structural Adjustment Facility Social Accountability International Structural Adjustment Programs Special Economic Zones Statistics and Information Division Secondary School Certificate Social Safety Net Programs Transparency International Bangladesh Underwriter Laboratories United Nations

 ABBREVIATIONS 

UNCTAD UNDP UNICEF UNRISD US USAID USD USITC WB WEF WHO WID WRAP WTO WWD

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Development Programme United Nations Children’s Fund United Nations Research Institute for Social Development United States United States Agency for International Development United States Dollar United States International Trade Commission World Bank World Economic Forum World Health Organization Women in Development Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production World Trade Organization Women’s Wear Daily

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List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Paradoxical and contextual tendencies of ideological forces operating ‘inside’ the factory Fig. 7.2 Paradoxical and contextual tendencies of ideological forces operating ‘outside’ the factory

241 243

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PART I

CHAPTER 1

Contextualizing Ready-Made Garment Work in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has gone from being one of the poorest countries in South Asia to an aspiring ‘tiger’ economy. (This statement is from an article published by the World Economic Forum. The article states that Bangladesh has gone from being one of the poorest countries in South Asia to an aspiring ‘tiger’ economy owing to social changes, starting with the empowerment of women and the success of its garment manufacturing industry [see Basu, 2018].) —Kaushik Basu, [former] Chief Economist, the World Bank

The Garment Kormi: Who, Why, and How? In this monograph, I present the ethnographic findings of 15 months of fieldwork in a garment factory and among the garment kormi, that is, workers, of Dhaka, Bangladesh—examining growing capitalism, neoliberalism, and consequent transformations. This is an ethnography of those who labor in the export-oriented ready-made garment (RMG) factories under conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Here, I use the Bangla word kormi rather than sromik to denote worker. The use of the phrase Garment Kormi refers to the professional identity of a garment worker. Another reason for choosing the word kormi—workers use it to refer to themselves. The word kormi also distinguishes garment workers from informal sector workers, commonly referred to as sromik. Finally, the use of kormi parts with the ways policy documents, industrialists, or even the labor unionists (e.g., National Garment Workers Federation) use sromik to refer © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_1

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to the workers’ collectives. I think—garment kormi—renders focus more on individual workers’ stories than on the collective of garment workers as a category. I present inequalities experienced by the garment kormi in everyday life and how they, without any revolutionary movement, are overcoming inequalities and generating egalitarian moments—in terms of comprising, transforming, and expressing life-worlds. Thereby, this monograph highlights and discusses worldviews ignored in the discussions of concepts that define and explain the world—such as capitalism, neoliberalism, and the state. I did ethnographic fieldwork in the expanding neoliberal context of Bangladesh, where the development of the garment industry has created massive employment opportunities for the population, especially for women. The garment industry employs more than 4  million of the 67.22 million people constituting the country’s working population (labor force) (see World Bank, 2021). About 5000 garment factories (national and multinational) are scattered across the country (Bhuiyan, 2012). Some of these factories work as subcontractors of the bigger ones. Government policies informed by notions of neoliberalism and globalization (shaped by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) have shaped the significant growth in export-oriented industries during the past decades. During the last 15  years, Bangladesh has consistently achieved over 6 percent growth of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). During 2011–2019 exports from Bangladesh increased by 8.6 percent every year compared to the global increase of 0.4 percent on average (see Sharma, 2021). Much of this growth came from the garment industry. Because of this economic growth, the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2017 referred to Bangladesh as the new ‘Asian Tiger’ (see Garber, 2017). In 2021, because of the country’s increasing Per Capita Income (PCI; USD 2227), Bloomberg columnist Mihir Sharma, in an opinion piece, termed Bangladesh as South Asia’s ‘Standout Star.’ Bangladesh is also being labeled as the new ‘Royal Bengal Tiger of Asia’ (Basu, 2021). In other words, I investigated a situation where corporate international trade agreements, a new neoliberal state regime, and a growing textile market have enabled the establishment of a new class of Muslim female workers, that is, garment kormi, in the city of Dhaka. In this regard, Nazli Kibria (1998) argues that women become garment workers with diverse conditions and disparate motivations. Joining the industrial workforce or becoming a garment worker is more than a response to poverty; it reflects aspirations to overcome family conflicts, divorce/destitution, sexual

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harassment, and dowry demands. Besides economic return, the chance of individual rural-urban migration has been a measure of economic and social independence for young women. For them, working in the garment industry stands out as an alternative to informal income opportunities such as domestic and agricultural wage work. While garment work provides a distinct professional identity, Dina M. Siddiqi (2003) points out the stigma associated with industrial work; as these women presumably ‘transgress gendered spatial codes and middle class constructions of respectability’ (2003, p. 50). While I agree with these assertions, in the last 30 years, we have also witnessed a discursive change reflected in the garment kormi’s becoming of the model citizen in the country (see Chap. 3). Expanding on this, the monograph explains what becoming garment kormi entailed for these women in the factories and outside, that is, in the social arena. By revealing the transformation of the taken-forgranted social structure of the country, along with its paradoxes, it is argued, in an emergent neoliberal Bangladesh, the social order and the people who inhabit it are continually transforming, thus remaining in a constant process of joint becoming. To highlight the nuances of these processes, I focus on the workers’ contextualized life stories than on collective categories. I set out to understand why people (in this system) do the things they do, imagining the industrial scene in Dhaka as a total system and analyzing how this was historically constituted, transformed, maintained, and reproduced over time. The ethnographic descriptions in this monograph provide the grounds to explore the reactions to social change caused by the transformation of economic opportunities. In order to unpack the dynamics and interplay of development and inequalities, I have investigated the making of the lives of garment workers in Bangladesh. I write about the egalitarian possibilities that the expansion of the garment industry has created and how these affect workers’ lives. Understanding the social realities of the workers highlights the forms of resistance that garment workers employ to create an alternative future in contrast to the future perceived by the state and global market. I also illuminate the social inequalities emerging in this new labor regime. I use the co-existence of possibilities and constraints (e.g., development vis-à-vis exploitation) to understand what people value in their life. Furthermore, the new and emergent categorizations of valued persons, specially joggo nari, that is, the worthy woman (see Chaps. 6 and 7), imply reconfigurations of values that govern human life in a totalizing process in everyday life.

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The Contradictions and Gaps Over the last four decades, the economy of Bangladesh has changed gradually. The agricultural sectors’ contribution steadily declined, and manufacturing sectors rose (Islam & Mukhtar, 2011). Export earnings were USD 31.57 million in 1983–1984 and increased to USD 31,456.73 million in 2020–2021, which translates to over USD 31  billion, and in 2019–2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the export earnings were around USD 27.949  billion (BGMEA, n.d.-a). Garment products are more than 80 percent of the total exported items from Bangladesh, having risen from 4 percent in 1983–1984. The rapid growth of the ready-made Garment (RMG) sector in Bangladesh has been extensive and has led to a shift in the country’s labor regime from subsistence to wages. Moreover, mass employment of women in the garment industry has been one of the more visible and prominent changes in women’s lives since the late 1970s (Hossain, 2012; Muhammad, 2011). About 70 percent of the workers in the garment industry are women, which has transformed the social relations within this Muslim patriarchal society. The incorporation of women (who were historically excluded from wage employment) in large numbers at the factories provides an important setting to understand how social relations are being rearticulated in the changing circumstances that emerged because of linkages with global capitalism and neoliberalism, which put forward different value systems. Amid numbers showing progress and prosperity—that is, the number of women workers in the factories and the export income of the state— garment workers’ (minimum) wages are as low as USD 95 a month, and commonly workers cannot afford enough food, clothing, proper housing, medicine, and education for their children (Bhuiyan, 2012, p. 38; Hasan, 2019, 2020). According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) (2008), the average monthly wage of garment workers in Bangladesh in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms was the lowest in the world (USD 69). In 2020, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the average monthly wage of garment workers in Bangladesh in (PPP) terms was the lowest in the Asia and Pacific region (USD 48) (ILO, 2020). Various studies indicate malnutrition, disease, and ill health among Bangladeshi workers caused by overwork, going hungry or inadequate food intake, and a suffocating climate (Paul-Majumder & Sen, 2000, Muhammad, 2007, Kabeer, 1991, see also, Sobhan & Khundker, 2001). Workers do not have any time or prospect for recreation, as they work six or seven days a week

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and 12-hour shifts. Health and safety conditions in the industries are also insufficient (Hossan et al., 2012). Further, the workers face abuse in the workplace, including sexual harassment, rape, and even death (Muhammad, 2011, see also Siddiqi, 2003). The situation is comparable to what Wright (2006) described as the wasting away of workers’ bodies for the accumulation of as much profit as possible. Thus, workers in these industries could be understood as being disposable, and laborers are ‘used up’ or wasted in order to secure profits (Yates, 2011, p. 1680). Kabeer and Mahmud (2004) stated that although garment industry workers are employed in what is officially classified as the formal economy, the nature of their contracts, terms, and conditions are more typical of work in the informal economy. The majority of the factories do not usually provide appointment letters/contract letters or identity cards. Kabeer and Mahmud (2004) therefore argued that the garment workers’ situation in Bangladesh illustrates that the relationship between the formal and the informal economy in much of the world, particularly in the developing world, is a continuum rather than a dichotomy (see also Beneria et al., 2012). The Bangladeshi state has more often than not taken the side of the industrialists, which has resulted in workers protesting so as to improve the labor conditions of factories. Usually, garment workers protest non-­ payment of wages, mistreatment at workplaces, curtailment of leave and holidays for being late or for approaching shipment deadlines, and the sudden closure of factories without paying workers their due wages (Alam, 2010; Hasan, 2021). The Bangladesh Institute of Labor Studies (BILS) counted 358 incidents of garment-worker unrest, injuring 2395 workers in 2008 (Muhammad, 2011). In 2009, six garment workers were killed during demonstrations over unpaid wages. From January to June 2010, more than 80 incidents of labor unrest were reported. At least 988 garment workers were injured in clashes with the police during this period (Islam & Ahmad, 2010). About half of the industrial disputes in 2017 were in the garment sector (Mridha, 2018). A look at the media reports of the first week of 2021 reveals that on 6 January, workers of A-One BD Limited—an Italian RMG factory—demonstrated demanding unpaid salaries and allowance. The factory has reportedly been closed since April 18, 2020, without paying wages and arrears of 1100 workers. The National Garment Workers’ Federation (NGWF) claimed that the workers did not receive any support from the Department of Factories and Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA) about receiving their

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compensation (Hasan, 2021). Most of these uprisings, over the years, were motivated and supported by left-leaning political parties—with the main agenda of increasing workers’ wages. Due to a large-scale protest on July 29, 2010, owners and the government agreed on a new wage structure. The minimum wage for the entry-­ level position was fixed at BDT 3000 (USD 42, arguably to keep a competitive price of the product in the global market; this was 60 percent of what the workers’ demanded at that time). Even then, some owners failed to implement it (Muhammad, 2011). Further, in 2013 the minimum wage was increased to BDT 5300 (USD 66), and in 2018 minimum was increased to 8000 (USD 95). One could argue that the main reasons for the unrest in the garment industry were legal and institutional failures to ensure labor rights (Ahmed et al., 2013). Labor unions could be workers’ collective reaction to the inequalities and exploitative conditions generated by work relations under capitalism (see Darlington, 2014). However, we should note that less than 10 percent of the garment factories in Bangladesh have labor unions (HRW, 2015, p.  18).1 Therefore, work in this garment industry dominated by women is not only intrinsically devalued but is characterized by lower levels of authority in the absence of the labor union in the factories (see Rahman, 2014, cf., Kraus & Yonay, 2000, McCall, 2001, Smith, 2002, Browne & Misra, 2005). There are contrasting images of Bangladesh’s garment industry and its workers. One can argue it has created huge employment opportunities and that industrialization in Bangladesh is bringing its poorest section of the population out of poverty. Conversely, this comes at the cost and deprivation of working-class people whose low standard of living persists. We can see this contrast in Bangladesh through the imagery of working women going in or coming out of a factory after work. Even the streets of Dhaka are flooded with thousands of garment kormi marching together toward the garment factories scattered across the city every morning. It depicts a positive aspect of capitalism, which has generated many work opportunities in Bangladesh. For a Muslim-majority country, the visibility in the national and international media of a large number of young (single) women walking in groups in urban streets is an important indicator of women’s emancipation. On the other hand, the debris of a collapsed building that killed thousands of workers in the 2013 Rana Plaza accident 1  There are different estimates about the (actual) number of labor unions in Bangladesh (see Rahim, 2020, p. 137).

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or 2012 factory fire at Tazreen Fashions represents the ultimate imagery of exploitation, injustice, and suffering. One can hear the harsh criticism of the exploitative labor conditions in the factories that culminated in this collapse. This paradox centering on RMG industries is also pointed out by Saxena (2014), Siddiqi (2009), and Kabeer (2000). Since 2012 the production regime within Bangladesh has been undergoing changes. There is an emphasis on audits of factory security, conditions of work, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. This contemporary emphasis on improving the labor conditions of the factories through audits and CSR creates a context to identify the impact of these technocratic solutions on workers’ lives. On this premise, in Chap. 8, I demonstrate that the policy changes, provisions of auditing, and CSR in the factories have created new conditions for deprivation while admittedly having the promises of change. Whereas changes are pursued by policies, audits, and CSR to improve the working conditions in the factories, workers seek and pursue changes not only in the working conditions but also in their social position in life outside the factories. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the pursuit of prosperity implied by change as the pursuit of many goals at once, from meeting material needs to finding symbolic satisfaction in relationality. Inequality, Difference, and the Garment Kormi As the paradoxes around RMG industries and garment kormi indicate, one may argue, the experience of inequalities results from conflicting principles of valuation. For instance, in the social sphere—values and ideologies position certain groups in different social-grids; in the political sphere— values centering on equality and development bring out dimensions of inequality; and in the economic sphere—production and distribution of resources indicate inequality. But, of course, these spheres overlap, and an analysis of inequalities reveals how the values across these spheres interact. It hence also relates to the anthropological concerns with the ‘difference’—not only as a function of the representation but also how the world is subjectively appropriated (See Hage, 2012; Bertelsen & Bendixen, 2016, p. 11)—as such, finding, tracing, and reflecting distinct ‘wholes’— values in society—that remain constantly entangled in processes of cotransformation. These processes, for example, are traceable in the everyday lives of the garment kormi as well as in the nation-building project in Bangladesh. Its journey toward becoming a middle-income country is

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linked with global reformatting of relations between neoliberalism, capitalism, and state—a process that is irreducible to a purely economic argument (see Kapferer & Bertelsen, 2009). Then, what does capitalism’s valorization process, neoliberalism’s emphasis on individualism, or the state’s subordination to the market or vice versa entail? How can we approach the resultant inequalities and concurrent egalitarian possibilities? Let us consider any difference as a singularity against hegemony or domination (see Deleuze, 2004 [1968]). In a way, facing inequality, humans generate differences—our ideas and practices surpass confining socio-political-economic structures and points of view that we experience in our everyday lives. So, I present how the lives of the garment kormi produce openings within the value-driven ideological structures that are conventionally treated as a bounded system. The emergent socio-cultural changes—for example, the elimination of the extreme segregation of men and women in monetary and non-­ monetary tasks—that occurred as the garment industry developed in Bangladesh make it pertinent to raise the question of reconfigurations of the values in society. I outline the flexibility of Bangladesh’s hierarchical value system, which is built upon Islam, kinship relationality, and patriarchy, in addition to explaining ideas of labor and work in relation to the discussion of capital accumulation and social differentiation. I explore the state’s role in creating an enabling environment within which these industries found necessary social elements, such as abundant labor and specific labor processes, for use in the factories. Further, in contrast to the large-­ scale movements that happen, I write about the subversive practices and collective protests in the confines of a particular factory. I believe my approach sheds light on the ways workers relate to the process of resistance and reveals the values that hinder or help workers protest in the factories. This coheres with my approach in understanding the larger processes of the social systems by viewing it from the ground up through the lived realities of the people involved. Analyzing the everyday lives of the garment kormi, we can find, firstly, inequalities inherent within industrialization, state reform, work opportunities, auditing, CSR activities, legal apparatuses, etc. And secondly, the forces that diminish or rework institutional/organizational orders. Under the rubric of capitalism and neoliberalism, the processes do not necessarily institute a singular and unequivocal outcome (see Rio et al., forthcoming; Escober, 2008; Prakash, 2008; Chakrabarty, 2000). Hence, the everyday

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life of the garment workers frames a whole new (ontologically grounded) avenue for understanding inequality and equality—conventionally understood in a narrow (often economic) sense promoted by the industrialists and the state (of Bangladesh). Garment Kormi and the Parameters of Analysis Historically, the state, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and global capital have all been playing vital roles in facilitating the making of working citizens through policy changes and different development programs. I use the nexus and linkages of people with existing social value(s), state programs for the country’s development, and profit-seeking global capital as an investigative tool to excavate the landscape and everyday lives of the garment kormi. The economic reconfigurations of the country and specific development of the garment industry have created conditions for migration, new notions of work and gender, and new aspirations and expectations that drive the workers into the garment industry. The newly becoming industrial workers have coped with labor reality as part of trans-­ local social and economic relationships, influencing the joint becoming of the system that I describe in the subsequent chapters. Diverse processes are co-occurring in Bangladesh. It has taken up neoliberal policies to support capitalism, industrialization, and the generation of wage labor, thus providing a potent ground to explore neoliberalism ethnographically. The neoliberal state theoretically favors ‘individual private property rights, the rule of law, and the institutions of freely functioning markets and free trade’ (Harvey, 2005, p.  64). These are the institutional arrangements that a state sets up using its monopoly power of violence to guarantee individual freedoms and create a ‘good business or investment climate’ for capitalistic endeavors. Considering the state’s role, I regard neoliberalism as a governing technique with calculative choices by the state (cf., Ong, 2006). The emergent neoliberal state of Bangladesh implies, firstly, that ideas of work and capital are to be approached through global–local connections. Secondly, the underlying structures and labor relations are results of historical becoming, that capitalism as a set of social arrangements for the accumulation of capital is concretized in relation with the existing values of a society. Therefore, an extreme universalistic approach (such as the universal logic that propels capital and capitalism [Harvey, 2004, 2014], explaining every social relation in light of class [Kasmir, 2015], and understanding objective structures for expanded

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wealth accumulation [Friedman, 2000]) or a vernacular approach (evading global processes [Graeber, 2006, 2014; Gibson-Graham, 2006 [1996]; Herod, 2001]) leads to only a partial understanding, for one cannot separate these processes, as the case of Bangladesh suggests. In a way, I bring viewpoints from both universalistic and vernacular approaches into dialogue in order to illustrate the inner workings of the current state of industry, workers, and capitalism in Bangladesh. I strived to understand what the garment kormi thought about their work and its prospect for their lives. I complement the views of the local lives with a discussion about Bangladesh in connection with the rest of the world through the structures of capitalism and neoliberalism. My research analyzes the emergence of industrial capitalism in Bangladesh and the expansion of neoliberal ideas so as to illustrate the structural forces that made the Bangladeshi state subject its people to a particular value regime in the industries and in the social spaces. The monograph pinpoints the lacuna of understanding in the transformation of ideology through the lived realities of the workers who inhabit a dense web of social relationality and new forms of governance. I hold that the structural social realities, such as religious and social ethics, social norms, and even economic structuring of the society, are produced and reproduced in a dynamic of social interactions of and with the people who live within. Thereby, differences appear on the basis of what constitutes something—it allows us to rethink our conceptions and categorizations.

Situating ‘Everyday Life’ This monograph is centered around the everyday life of the garment kormi—mostly ordinary women of Bangladesh—generally lost in the statistics representing development/empowerment or contrarily exploitation. In the policy documents, we find the abstracted workers who are either benefited or exploited by global capital. We hear about millions of garment workers running an industry earning billions of dollars each year (BGMEA, n.d.-b). But we hardly get to know who these garment workers are? Like many others worldwide, these workers have been subjected to the emancipation/development project of the global capital and states’ experimentation toward economic inclusion and socio-economic development. In usual explanations, the success of Bangladesh’s economic growth is owed to the availability of a young population and/or international and national policy changes, but we rarely clear out the mystery and obscurity

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of its workings and refer as something that is a miracle. We tend to overlook the ‘life-enhancing power’ (Lefebvre, 1991), the ways garment workers have developed their manifold capacities for altering the country’s taken-for-granted social structure, along with its paradoxes. For Henri Lefebvre (1991), the concept of everyday life constitutes the crucial vantage point for criticizing the formalized and alienated social practices that characterize the contemporary neoliberal societies or any sort of limitations of life and thought. Everyday life is not merely a homogenous set of attitudes, practices, or cognitive attitudes; instead, it has a particular process of becoming that this monograph traces for the garment workers. Everyday life hence can be defined as the myriad activities and conditions that support relations of production to sustain but do not fit into the existing institutional codes or social structures—as such create avenues for analyzing inequalities and egalitarian processes leading to differences as moments of rupture against hegemony or domination. Garment workers are always abstracted in discourses and statistics. Therefore, depicting workers’ everyday lives is especially a critique of the abstraction dominating the globalized discourses of developments and also exploitations. We may think afresh about the daily practices and negotiations that have contributed to the becoming of the garment industries, the ‘Asian Tiger Economy,’ and the workers. This monograph thus investigates, loosed from the social connections, how the workers transform themselves and recreate the social spectrum. The new workforce has disrupted the social grid of identities and positions, and factories act as instruments to discipline and program the newly emerging social group. As also Michel de Certeau (1986) has proposed, the possibilities of social transformation—the limits and potentialities for change—emerge from direct experience of particular moments not only in celebratory ruptures but in subtle moments of creativity and mundane activities within the skein of everyday life lived in the margins by the anonymous masses. Hence, this monograph contributes to how people transgress social structures (i.e., inequality) through everyday practices. But in no way is the process without paradoxes—and new forms of constraints are being developed. As such, the monograph outlines egalitarian practices and their paradoxes. This approach within anthropology relates with certain post-structural developments in the philosophy of the social sciences and humanities. For example, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (2005 [1987], 1994) argue in favor of a philosophical direction that is of ontological, rather than epistemological, orientation (see also Kapferer, 2007). The Deleuzian turn is

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part of a general approach that strives to break away from over-privileging the individual subject or the idea of society as a coherent totalized order. In many respects, Deleuze and Guattari aim for an ontological shift away from the assumptions that lie at the heart of western modernist social and psychological theories. Rather than the notion of society as sui generis in the Durkheimian sense, Deleuze and Guattari stress the concept of assemblage whereby particular chains of relation and process are actualized or brought into existence or lived practice. Everyday life in the Deleuzian orientation becomes the critical site of emergence within the tensional space of multiple forces—an opening toward new horizons of potential. In Deleuze’s sense, everyday life is present-future oriented and not to be reduced to terms of orders, structures, and relations that can be understood only through a connection to a past or a reality rather that can only be wholly grasped in its own terms. In this, Deleuze and Guattari break out of any essentialism or determinism of a historicist, structuralist, or psychological kind. As we will see, certain events and situations of everyday life do not only merely reflect or illustrate the existing world instead indicate unrealized potentials (cf. Deleuze, 2004 [1968]). In such an orientation, the importance of the detailed consideration of the practices of everyday life— ethnographies, so to speak, is not to show the logic of a relatively closed (and therefore repetitive) system—instead, to demonstrate that there is always novel potentiality of a becoming that has not been there yet or which is not already known. Everyday Life and Capitalism We need to understand capitalism as an analytical category, not by focusing on wage labor or growth of capital and continual expansion or by seeking to find situations in everyday life that evade/circumvent larger processes of accumulation and inequalities, but as one aspect in a larger process that ultimately aims at the production of people and the social. With this proposition, I argue that we should explore the value(s) that make a difference in the world we live in—evident in the situated everyday life conditions. Here, I elaborate on why extreme positions of universal concepts for understanding capitalism or negating capitalism’s impact on social relations can lead to only a partial understanding. To start with, a universalistic approach generally treats capitalism as a category all on its own. For

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instance, David Harvey (2014, p.  7) has argued that capitalism is ‘any social formation in which processes of capital circulation and accumulation are hegemonic and dominant in providing and shaping the material, social and intellectual bases for social life.’ From this universalistic point of view in understanding the capitalistic process, one could start with the labor theory of value and surplus accumulation. According to the labor theory of value, the value of a commodity is proportional to the quantity of labor required on average for its production. Further, Karl Marx’s focus on the value of labor power (which itself becomes a commodity) revealed that in the process of capitalist production, workers are not paid the equivalent of the value they produce. Holding this exploitative nature of the process as true, we face one of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production: that surpluses of capital and of labor power increase side by side without there being sufficient means to bring them together to accomplish socially useful tasks and produce more surplus (Harvey, 2004, p. 63f). Because of this inherent problem in the capitalist mode of production, capitalism has to continue through spatio-temporal fixes. Harvey (2004, p. 65f) has argued, The spatio-temporal ‘fix’ […] is a metaphor for solutions to capitalist crises through temporal deferment and geographical expansion. The production of space, the organization of wholly new territorial divisions of labor, the opening up of new and cheaper resource complexes, of new dynamic spaces of capital accumulation, and the penetration of pre-existing social formations by capitalist social relations and institutional arrangements (such as rules of contract and private property arrangements) provide multiple ways to absorb existing capital and labor surpluses.

Expansion of capitalism to new production sites and to new markets for products solves an inner contradiction of capital: the need for endless compound growth of profit while at the same time maintaining a supply of sufficient labor to accomplish the tasks of production. Capitalism is prone to using the cheapest methods of production, which deprive the workers. The principal contradiction in this process is that consumers (i.e., workers) do not get enough means of consumption for their social reproduction. The capitalist mode of production exploits the workers to the point of its own extinction. In the ever more globalized world, the inner contradictions of capital lead to a form of capitalism that establishes relations between the state, supra-state, and corporate financial powers.

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Harvey (2004) has argued that several features are pivotal to the expansion of the capitalist system. While free trade in commodities is often represented as heralding free and open competition to the world, it fails at this when confronted with monopolies and oligopolies of power. Oligopolies on the production side are mainly based in the core capitalist region; thus, the creation of new markets does not open up competition. However, it creates opportunities for powerful classes to proliferate monopoly powers, bringing with it social, ecological, economic, and political consequences. In this way, capitalism is inclined to spread to the furthest corner of the world, bringing with it the exploitation of workers in the system. Understanding the social formations of people who have different values could be limited if we take an approach of a value-neutral economic process that does not intersect with existing value configurations in explaining the spread of capitalism. Harvey (2014) argued that capitalism as a social formation confronts innumerable contradictions, many of which have no links with direct capital accumulation. For example, racial distinctions are based on a claim of biological superiority of some subgroup vis-à-vis the rest of the population. These contradictions, such as race, gender, nationalism, ethnicity, and religion, transcend the specificities of capitalist social formations based on surplus accumulation. Although contradictions of social formations are omnipresent within capitalism, they are not specific to capitalism. Therefore, Harvey argued that such intersections and interactions, for example, between racialization and capital accumulation, do not reveal how the economic engine of capital works, even if it identifies sources from where it draws its energy. Harvey proposed isolating the capital circulation and accumulation from everything else that is going on and treating it as a closed system. In understanding capitalism, he has aimed to focus on and analyze the engine of capital rather than the contradictions of social formations as a whole. This approach could lead us to a position of finding capitalism or non-capitalism in social formations, which I think could offer only a partial picture and be therefore misleading. Anna L. Tsing (2015) has identified this problem, showing that capitalism could be a generative process where non-capitalist processes are translated into capitalist value.2 Tsing (2015) termed this process ‘salvage accumulation.’ 2  This can be argued as formal subsumption of labor under capital, where labor practices and relations created outside of capitalist production are imported under capitalism. This

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Tsing (2015) stated that instead of a political economy ornamented by inequalities of gender or race, a system might emerge from histories of difference, including gender and race. In such emergence, capitalism appears as both spectacular creativity and the mundanely repetitive reorganization of wealth. Being caught up in sketching strict boundaries between capitalism and non-capitalism, or private and public, is merely a diversion of attention from how different power structures, that is, social relations, are reinforced and reproduced. Following Tsing, I also stress that we need to understand the significant institutions of differences and categories of people that the classes in power strive to reproduce in order to maintain their worth and wealth (see also Narotzky & Besnier, 2014). This is a crucial aspect to focus on, as since the late twentieth century, the center of gravity of capitalist production moved outside the factory walls. Therefore, to understand the emerging industrial capitalistic process, we need to broaden the scope to consider the larger reconfigurations of the economy and analytically come off the factory floors to consider the totality of the everyday life of workers (see also Kalb, 2018). In this context, the labor theory of value cannot function, as factory production does not represent economic production as a whole. Therefore, I propose to consider how capitalism as a process of surplus accumulation intersects with the localized value configurations that categorize people in terms of religion, gender, kinship, social relations, race, and other groupings. The second trait of a universalistic approach to capitalism uses contradictions of capitalism, for example, the dynamic of the classes, to be determinant of all other social relations. For example, with a universalistic approach, Don Kalb (2015a, 2015b) has argued, actual life-worlds develop within and against the pressures and limits set by capitalist relations, and capitalism molds every social relation in its favor. He also posited that communities mold themselves to capitalism’s conditions as they are inserted into the world of capitalism over long and complex histories. Communities are compelled to do so because their very social reproduction depends on their capacity to adjust to capitalism. Kalb acknowledged that while capitalism is a totality, it is not of one piece. Capitalism is highly form of labor could be treated as both inside and outside of capital. This subsumption would become real when capital created a new labor process and would remain no longer tied to the previous non-capitalist mode. However, Hardt and Negri (2009, p. 245) have claimed there are always indications of the creation of new lines of division and hierarchy that invert the movement from formal to real subsumption. This force that would lead a return to old hierarchies is not a regression but a historical innovation.

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structured, socially and spatially differentiated, globally uneven, and locally embedded, similar to the complexities of human habitats and life-worlds. In a way, Kalb argued for a one-way process where capitalism modifies everything according to the logic of capitalism while keeping its form intact. He advanced that human lives in the neoliberal capitalistic society are being shaped to produce capitalist profit, both within and outside of wage labor (cf., bio-capitalism3), and this has always been the same (cf., Wolf, 1997 [1982]). Eric Wolf (1997 [1982]) proposed looking at how internal relationships and modes of social reproduction changed everywhere because of European expansion. He recommended analyzing how the formal incorporation of peripheral people under colonial and merchant capitalism around the world subjected people to the social environments, relationships, forms of labor, hierarchy, extraction, and violence emanating from capitalism. Don Kalb and Eric Wolf (as well as David Harvey) have attempted to understand reactions to these diverse processes and incorporations within the circuits of global capital through the ideas of class, labor, and capitalist modes of production. I believe the problem with this universalistic approach to capitalism arises with its attempt to define, analyze, and evaluate social relations from the categorizations of people emerging within capital’s operations. Capitalism, we can say in this universalistic perspective, refers to the set of social, spatial, and institutional arrangements that serve to guarantee the endless accumulation of capital. This approach of capitalism does not propose a homogenizing effect but instead acknowledges unevenness, heterogeneity, and pluralism (Ahmad, 2015; Anderson, 2015; Mathur, 2015). Sharryn Kasmir (2015, p. 56) argued that looking at all the relationships through the lens of labor as it is understood to be an exchange between the capitalist and wage laborer—the ‘power-laden processes of categorizing, differentiating, or unifying the manifold ways of working or seeking livelihood’—might reveal the less egalitarian and more 3  ‘In the biopolitical context capital might be said to subsume not just labor but society as a whole or, really, social life itself, since life is both what is put to work in biopolitical production and what is produced. This relationship between capital and productive social life, however, is no longer organic in the sense that Marx understood that term because capital is increasingly external and has an ever less functional role in the productive process. Rather than an organ functioning within the capitalist body, biopolitical labor power is becoming more and more autonomous, with capital simply hovering over it parasitically with its disciplinary regimes, apparatuses of capture, mechanisms of expropriation, financial networks, and the like’ (Hardt & Negri, 2009, p. 142).

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exploitative aspects of prevailing social relations. Thus, Kasmir proposed analytically comparing and identifying the process of surplus accumulation that is akin to capitalism. She stressed that questions of global processes and their alignment with local and regional histories have always been critical for understanding the people whom anthropologists study, but a search for cultural differences too often obscures the understanding of the global setup (see Carbonella & Kasmir, 2014; Kasmir, 2009). In a more universalistic approach, one treats the rigid sexual division of labor, male dominance, and centralized authority—diverse forms of inequalities, as well as resistance to these changes and the communalism that emerged through local histories, as only historical variations of the global configurations of labor and capital accumulation. David Graeber (2006) criticized the universalistic approach for finding capitalism everywhere, viewing it as the only process of social, political, and institutional arrangement that fosters an accumulation of capital. Graeber regarded capitalism or the modes of production as processes not simply about making and struggling over some kind of material surplus but equally about the mutual fashioning of human beings, that is, social reproduction. Graeber (2014) has emphasized the moral principles and logics of community, exchange, and hierarchy that govern economic transactions. In favor of the universalistic approach, Kalb (2014, 2015b) has criticized Graeber (2011), arguing that, when discussing whole societies and their systematic social relationships, such as those of class, patriarchy, empire, and moral discourses, there is the possibility that the dominant social mythologies hide more than they reveal about social reality. Modes of morality serve as the ideologies of modes of production, thus obscuring and expressing ruling-class interests by making them seem universal and self-evident. Graeber’s (2011) moral principles of exchange are mytho-­ practices that obscure the systematic social divisions of property and class power, as Kalb (2015b) has argued. I also think if we ignore and do not consider the intersection of contradictions emanating from social categorizations and capitalism, we arrive at a static social condition—hence, the everyday lives of garment kormi become ever more important to analyze. The way Harvey (2004, 2014), Kalb (2015a, 2015b, 2018), Carbonella and Kasmir (2014), and Kasmir (2015), as well as others, have proposed to understand capitalism portrays human life as the logic of exchanging labor power within class relations. What I find useful in these approaches is that there remain intersections and interactions between different categories of social formations, which are useful in understanding human

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relationalities. However, it becomes problematic when all the contradictions are treated as inherent contradictions of capitalism. Suppose we are to understand the specific contradictions of current capitalistic processes in particular contexts. In that case, we need to understand the local histories regarding the development of capitalism as well as localized discourses, ideologies, and tendencies of localization that emerged in tandem with the rapidly accelerating flows of people, goods, and capital (cf., Harvey & Krohn-Hansen, 2018, p. 12). In people’s everyday life/life-world, things and humans, nature and society, and state deities and economy flow together. However, these are supposed to remain apart in capitalism (Bear, 2015). We can identify the diverse representations of the relations between persons, things, nature, and society and trace these heterogeneous categorizations within capitalism. Thus, Laura Bear (2015) argued, we need to explore how people use and experience various rhythms, disciplines, technologies, and representations of time in acts of governance and labor. We need to locate and map diverse ethics of productivity that are consequently being generated. In different situations, social relations are changing through their associations with colonialism, imperialism, and globalization, culminating in forming larger economic structures of the world we live in today. These indicate a constantly shifting balance between structurally related state and market institutions. Combinations of such heterogeneous projects enable different forms of class inequality and accumulation to emerge (see also Gibson-Graham, 2014). I think both of these perspectives, that is, the universalistic approach against the approach that seeks social formations that disrupted or evaded capitalism or vice versa, provide a partial understanding of the condition of human existence, as human beings are oriented to other human beings and act in relation to each other within a system which is open rather than closed or static. It is not only the ahistorical moral order outside of capitalism that governs human transactions. Moral principles and everyday communism4 intersect, shade into one another, and shift back and forth but do 4  David Graeber (2011) suggests that economic life originally related to routine non-­ market interactions within a community. ‘Everyday communism’ is based on mutual expectations and responsibilities among individuals, Graeber (2011, p. 326) defines the essence of it in his analysis of peasant lives as follows: ‘The peasants’ visions of communistic brotherhood did not come out of nowhere. They were rooted in real daily experience: of the maintenance of common fields and forests, of everyday cooperation and neighborly solidarity. It is out of such homely experience of everyday communism that grand mythic visions are always built.’ According to Graeber (2011, p. 96) ‘[in fact,] communism is the foundation of all human

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not address the intricate joint transformations of humans and value configurations that structure life. Contrarily, a structure of social relations established by operations of capital is one aspect of social relations and not always the dominant structure that governs human conduct. Therefore, we should look at capitalist processes as open and encompassing of all sorts of life processes. Capitalism cannot be seen as a closed system. Instead, it builds on and feeds on pre-existing hierarchies and modes of accumulation (see Chaps. 2 and 3). I propose to avoid capitalocentrism,5 but we must also be aware of not producing only descriptions of economic practices to identify new forms of community economy6 or ethnic economy7 and destabilizing capitalist hegemony in determining the nature of economy and meaning and access to work. It is because capitalist relations or relations within capitalism can form a lot of variations when people live them (see also Comaroff & Comaroff, 2001; Geschiere & Nyamnjoh, 2001; Mezzadri, 2017). In describing India’s garment industry, Alessandra Mezzadri (2017) argued that capitalism could manifest in multiple forms of exploitation through combinations of free and unfree labor as well as complex interplays between production and circulation (Mezzadri, 2017, p. 6). She also considered capitalism not as a homogenizing force but as a dividing one (as Kalb, 2015a, 2015b, 2018; Carbonella & Kasmir, 2014 have sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not actually an enemy can be expected to act on the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities’, at least to an extent.’ 5  Capitalocentrism refers to the positioning of all economic identities with reference to capitalism as ‘[…] fundamentally the same as (or modelled upon) capitalism, or as being deficient or substandard imitations; as being opposite to capitalism; as being the complement of capitalism; as existing in capitalism’s space or orbit’ (Gibson-Graham, 2006 [1996], p. 6). 6  ‘those economic practices that sustain lives and maintain well-being directly (without resort to the circuitous mechanisms of capitalist industrialization and income trickle-down), that distribute surplus to the material and cultural maintenance of community and that actively make and share a commons’ (Gibson-Graham, 2005, p. 16). 7  In explaining the labor market decisions of Bangladeshi migrants in London, who established home-based work for garment production, were accused of evading tax payment, and did not unionize, Kabeer (2000, p. 193ff) argued that it is not only cultural restrictions that explain the phenomena. Rather, ethnic disadvantage in the wider labor market and the constraints it placed on the choices of members of ethnic minorities forced them into particular modes of market choices. It was a response to the opportunities and constraints of the labor market inequalities. Brodkin (2014) forwarded similar arguments about the migrant communities of color and the labor market bifurcation with a racialized civil society that created conditions of chronic economic crisis for the minorities in the US.

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proposed), but what she adduces is not approaching capitalism with the usual universal analytical categories of labor and class. Capitalism is driven by multiple forms of inequality. In turn, capitalism reconstitutes the inequalities. Similarly, embodied aspects of capitalism—producing affliction8 (O’Laughlin, 2013), embodied labor (Federici, 2004), and the social factory9 (Federici, 2012)—problematize the benign visions of industrial modernization as an inherently positive process that produces free labor, the sanctity of contracts, and the individual right to freedom of action, expression, and choice (see Harvey, 2005, p. 64). Mezzadri (2017) also argued that different forms of ‘unfreedom’ do not simply survive under capitalism. Social relations characterized by unfreedom do not only remain at the margins; instead, they are always central to capitalist development (see also Banaji, 2003, 2010). The stories of working lives remain generally obscured under the grand narratives of development, economic growth, or exploitation. This monograph focuses on a particular place in Bangladesh and reflects its distinct linkages with the global process. By interweaving theory and evidence throughout the narratives, I re-evaluate conceptualizations of neoliberalization, and capitalism in general, as abstract dis-embedded realities (cf., Mezzadri, 2017, see also Narotzky, 2018). I agree with the idea of capitalism as an extractive machine, which develops differently in different socio-­ cultural contexts, constituting multiple forms of inequalities. However, I argue that capitalism, through its diverse forms of relations, not only 8  ‘In the case of Southern Africa, the spider at the center of an enduring web of affliction has been a particular gender and racially inflected way of structuring capitalist relations of class […]. The endemic struggle between capital and labor over how the real costs of capitalist production are paid and by whom extended far beyond the workplace and the sphere of formal state regulation, to confrontations in markets over the prices of commodities and to conflicts within communities and households over work, subsistence, money, mobility and sexuality. […] The varieties and forms of affliction in Southern Africa can thus not just be read off the exigencies of capital […]. Contemporary forms of affliction cannot be understood without locating them within characteristic, enduring and historically specific ways of organizing capitalist production in Southern Africa’ (O’Laughlin, 2013, p. 193f). 9  Silvia Federici (2012, p. 7f) argued: ‘at a certain stage of capitalist development capitalist relations become so hegemonic that every social relation is subsumed under capital and the distinction between society and factory collapses, so that society becomes a factory and social relations directly become relations of production. […] But to us, it was immediately clear that the circuit of capitalist production, and the “social factory” it produced, began and was centered above all in the kitchen, the bedroom, the home—insofar as these were the centers for the production of labor-power—and from there it moved on to the factory, passing through the school, the office, the lab.’

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produces commodities but also becomes incorporated into the social order; it transforms and remakes the social order. If we take into consideration the ways that the existing social order is subsumed in capitalism and a new social order emerges, we could move away from the universalizing visions of capitalism or industrial modernization. It points toward the particular future that is constantly being realized in specific contexts. The social order keeps changing in a continuous totalizing process within which we can trace the future of labor and workers. Therefore, in Chap. 2, I elucidate the historical transition of the economy of Bangladesh that created an enormous (partially) dispossessed population to be incorporated into the garment industry. However, they were not ‘free’ labor in any sense that required specific social projects to ensure the reproduction of the conditions of production, which I discuss in Chap. 3. Everyday Life and Work In order to escape universalism and abstract generality with regard to the concept of capitalism, it is crucial for my analysis to look at ‘work’ itself as a specifically Bangladeshi concept. In addition, the concept of work is essential to this monograph for two reasons: firstly, there has been a shift from subsistence work to wage labor in Bangladesh; secondly, the introduction of wage labor has transformed the gendered division of labor within the country. Amid these transformations, it is important to understand both—work as value and the value(s) produced by work. The human capacity to perform work, which Karl Marx (2010 [1887], p. 31) called labor power, is the essential aspect of any production process. Capitalist production requires the purchase and sale of labor power and commodities. Money mediates these exchanges. Therefore, the labor process begins with a contract or agreement that governs, on the one hand, the sale of labor power by the worker, and on the other hand, its purchase by the employer—the emergence of wage labor. In this process, the importantly under-communicated preconditions are the social conditions that leave the worker no other way to gain a livelihood. The employer is the possessor of a unit of capital who converts part of it into workers’ wages in an endeavor to extract surplus, thereby enlarging the capital. Thus, a labor process is set in motion—a process for creating commodity values. Because of the nature of surplus extraction, the labor process also becomes a way for the expansion of capital and the creation of profit (Braverman, 1998 [1974]). Having been forced to sell their labor power, workers surrender

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their interest in the labor process and become gradually alienated. With an increasing division of labor, both the productive power of labor and the wealth increases; however, it impoverishes the workers and reduces them to a machine (Marx, 2009 [1844], p. 6). While the historical outcome of these processes is outlined by Marx, in the modern capitalistic economy, the idea of work has become purely individualistic. The worker enters the market and exchanges work for money because the only way a person can meet basic needs is as a consumer. The person, whose identity is that of a worker and a consumer in a market-­ dominated society, acquires a certain identity and relationship with the work. However, once inside the system, these individual workers, according to E. P. Thompson (1963), go through an experience in common— that is, as a class experience determined largely by productive relations. However, I assert that capitalism does not always produce a relative uniformity of class experience across cultures (cf., Chakrabarty, 2013) as the workers go through a process of becoming; becoming workers is a process and not a fixed state. This process of becoming is a relative understanding, appropriate to a specific cultural or historical period (cf., Sahlins, 1976). I illustrate this point in three parts: how the social values of society influence ideas of work; how capitalism does not necessarily produce complete proletarianization; and how labor not only produces commodity but is associated with satisfaction, self-esteem, and a cultural understanding of one’s own worth. I want to contend, firstly, that work should not be conceptualized as limited to the labor process alone. We should look into the social value(s) prevailing within the larger society that affects how people understand and value work. I argue that to understand garment industry workers and their life at large, we must not look through the lens of European concepts of work, labor, capital, and equality. Instead, the situations at hand in Bangladesh as part of a particular history require an investigation of the possible imaginations of the life that influence this historical phenomenon. In a country like Bangladesh, the interplay of cultures and economic forces determines people’s attitudes toward their work. Following an expectation that the modern economy would bring about a mindset of competition, individualism, and a drive toward ever-expanding consumerism, one could argue (see Carrier, 1995) that the advent of western economic and political systems would weaken social institutions such as the caste system in India or the marginalization and inequality found in the religious and social hierarchy. In fact, the opposite has happened, as we can see in the

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writings of Mukherjee (1957), Bertocci (1972), Chakrabarty (1989), and Arens (2011). Democratic political systems and capitalist penetration have encouraged greater social solidarity based on historical social values and institutions. This has revealed that the social order and its values conversely mediate the way work is conceptualized. I delineate the problems of the universal categorization of work or labor from different directions. Just as capitalism is thought of as coming into being in all sorts of contexts, it is also imagined that the individualized and Europeanized category of work or labor is emerging in all kinds of histories (Chakrabarty, 2000, p. 76). If we look into the history of work in South Asia, it becomes evident that labor—the activity of producing— was seldom an utterly secular activity. Work is associated with different rituals and the invocation of divine or superhuman presences. Secular histories of work ignore the signs of these presences (Chakrabarty, 2000). The work that people do is often associated with the presence and agency of gods or spirits. For example, Hathiyar puja, or the worship of tools, is a typical festival in many North Indian factories (Chakrabarty, 2000). We also can find different categorizations of people which were formed with religious sanctions, as by caste among the Hindus. Among the Muslims, work has been associated with socio-religious positions of particular groups in rural Bangladesh. Thus, Chakrabarty (1989, p. 90) argued that human-machine relationships always involve culture that techno-­economic arguments overlook. Moreover, the opportunity for females to work in the factories of the garment industry got them out of the home where they usually were relegated, but it also allowed them to portray their worthiness (enforced by religion), as they could now contribute to the family’s welfare as well as perform the duties of the wife and homemaker. This indicates the possibility of alternative subject positions breaking out of or at least interrupting the usual social structures of inequalities. (I discuss this further in Chaps. 5 and 6.) Moreover, the division of labor is associated with gender relations in society. In understanding the hierarchy of tasks performed by men and women, land relations, and work segregation in present-day Bangladesh, Jenneke Arens (2011, p.  33) has argued that in rural areas, women do have the right to inherit and own properties, but many women do not get their rightful share. This is partly because women do not work on the land. Women’s roles are perceived mainly as related to and performed for the household within the homestead. A woman’s husband and/or her kinship determine their socio-economic status. Women’s role in the production

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process is not recognized, although women have essential, productive tasks. Men are considered as producers who earn and provide for the family. Contrarily, women are seen as caretakers of the household, responsible for reproductive tasks. Women are subordinate to men: first to their father, then to their husband, and finally to their sons. This mirrors the strict gender divisions of labor. Men are the cultivators; nonetheless, most post-­ harvest operations, such as parboiling and drying the paddy, as well as maintaining the household, are women’s tasks. As one woman in Jhagrapur (a village) remarked: Amar kaj khali peter kaj (literally: My work is nothing but stomach work—only to fill the stomach) (Arens, 2011, p. 45). When Bangladesh went through a transformation from predominantly subsistence farming to commercialization and mechanization of agriculture, peasants had to buy most of the agricultural inputs from the market and invest in irrigation facilities and machines. This increased cost of cultivation has led to growing indebtedness and dependency on companies for the necessary inputs. Further, with the increased production of the high-yielding varieties of paddy, rice mills were introduced. Consequently, machinery took over the tasks of husking and grinding the paddies. Since the men work outside of the house and are considered more technically skilled, men became the operators of rice mills and irrigation pumps. Men were also given training on how to use the technology and get loans. Thus, the idea of men’s role as producers and women’s role as caretakers of the family was strengthened. Men, machines, and the market have replaced women in productive tasks and have further strengthened the patriarchal belief that women have no role in the production process. We can see that work, labor, and productive relations are mediated by local values and norms in the industrial context as well by looking specifically at the jute industry of West Bengal during the early twentieth century. In his book Rethinking Working Class History (1989), Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that the laborer in Marx’s assumption belongs to a situation of formal equality and with formal freedom of the contract, for example, the agreement of wage. Chakrabarty (1989, p. 69) posited that the jute-mill workers of Calcutta were mostly migrant peasants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They did not possess a culture characterized by any ingrained notion of human equality and were thus very unlike the workers of Marx’s assumption. Their culture was largely precapitalist and inegalitarian, marked by strong primordial loyalties of community, language, religion, caste, and kinship. These features are integral parts of current social

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realities within capitalist economic organizations but are not ‘primitive’ features that persist within/against capitalist orders (see also Ali, 2018). Here I present the second problem of the universal category of work that assumes a grand scheme of progressive replacement of unfree labor by free labor or the progressive proletarianization under capitalism. The idea of free labor has a double meaning: free to dispose of labor power as a commodity, and dispossessed from all other means (i.e., no other commodity for sale) (see Marx, 2010 [1887], p. 118). However, Sugata Bose (2008), in commenting about the social relations of property and production in India during 1770–1890, mentioned that the historical experience of colonial and early post-colonial Bengal reveals the logical relationship between capitalist development and non-capitalist relations of production. The important strand of continuity in the social organization of production rested on a labor process utilizing the unpaid and underpaid work of family labor. Expanded commodity production for the capitalist world market was achieved efficiently and cheaply without resorting to the formal commodification of labor (I discuss different features of this process in Chap. 2). Similarly, in Bangladesh, like in other garment-exporting countries, the rise and expansion of an industrial proletariat coincided with the rise of neoliberalism. The neoliberal structural adjustment accelerated the processes of dispossession of the rural workers, making it hard for them to survive outside the imperatives of the market. This process has led to the migration of agricultural laborers to the cities so as to work at the garment factories. In addition, the labor force in Bangladesh did not entirely divorce from the land yet became a reserve army of labor for the garment factories. Having ties with rural origins, garment workers and their families often engage in diversified livelihoods, combining their sources of income from the factory, informal work in rural areas, and seasonal agriculture. Additionally, I have found that these families with rural roots also provide support in raising children and in any kind of investment the workers make. Notably, this lack of complete dispossession is useful for both western brands and the local garment industry, as complete dispossession would require employers to co-opt the costs of social reproduction of the labor force (cf., Mezzadri, 2015). If the workers become entirely dependent on selling their labor for a living, the monthly wage would have to allow them to survive. However, a higher salary would decrease the competitiveness of the garment factories.

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Thirdly, I refer to the ideas of value(s) that are associated with the concept of work. In general, value in familial relations is in contrast to individual freedom and self-interest, which are core values in the European understanding of work. Individual freedom is associated with status, self-­ esteem, and the necessity for income to purchase goods and services offered in the marketplace. However, as I have variously demonstrated, individuals in Bangladesh are never out of the broader scope of social relations, even when work is at issue (see Chaps. 4 and 5). Thus, we ought to understand social relations beyond the relations of production as such. As we will see in this monograph, the encompassing character of the social is dynamic and dialectical, as it is continuously transforming (cf., Harris, 2007). Therefore, it is important to understand the lived experiences of the workers and the ways they give value and meaning to their activities. Workers experience satisfaction, self-esteem, and a cultural understanding of their own worth. I illustrate in this monograph how the capitalist work ethic and existing ideologies create a synergy that sustains capitalist appropriation in Bangladesh. Everyday Life and Neoliberalism Neoliberalism is conceptually vital for this monograph, as Bangladesh has been continually part of global processes while moving in its own direction. Neoliberal processes that started in the 1970s with the dismantling of the welfare state and the removal of trade barriers have initiated a form of globalization resulting in the de-nationalization of powers that used to be embedded in the nation-state and have been relocated to global corporations, the market, and NGOs (Sassen, 1996). Neoliberalism, as David Harvey (2005, p.  64) has argued, is propelled by the idea that human interest is best served through the withdrawal of the state from welfare policies. The neoliberal state favors private property rights, the rule of law, freely functioning markets, and free trade. It also encourages private enterprise and entrepreneurial initiatives as the keys to wealth creation. In this way, all human actions are to be brought under the domain of the market through increased market transactions in time and space. Therefore, I believe neoliberal policies enhance the capitalist form of wealth accumulation and transform the labor process. The Bangladeshi state has been going through the neoliberalization process since the mid-1970s (I explain the modality of this process in subsequent chapters, particularly in Chap. 3). In the neoliberalism—and capitalism—propelled Bangladeshi state, the

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women of the country represented untapped capabilities that could be incorporated in capitalist expansion. The process took place not only at the level of improvements being made according to some development indicators, such as nutrition, health, and literacy, but also at the level of ideology through different projects that generated new social meaning and identities. In Bangladesh, NGO leaders were the transnational actors who created this new route of circulation (Karim, 2011). Therefore, neoliberalism can be seen as a form of governmentality and as a technology of governing that relies on calculative choices and techniques in the domains of citizenship and of governing (Ong, 2006). The way David Harvey (2005) saw neoliberalism as a retreat of the state and the taking over of state services by corporations in the name of efficiency and rational economic decisions is contrary to Aihwa Ong’s (2000, 2006) view of neoliberalism as a technique of governing with calculative choices by the state. Both Harvey and Ong regarded the state as a facilitator working toward the freedom of markets. However, Harvey insisted on the retreat of the state while Ong focused on the state’s role. Ong also considered the neoliberal state’s influence on social configurations, while Harvey identified powerful groups that act as gatekeepers of neoliberalism in local contexts. Ong described a process of the social re-­ engineering of citizens in the neoliberal state of Malaysia by population-­ control policies and regulating education programs. These regulatory policies enable particular groups of people to improve their human capital (graduated sovereignty), and they, in turn, help establish neoliberal domination and expansion. Thus, if we contrast Harvey and Ong, we see that Harvey referred the goal of neoliberalism to redistribution of wealth rather than production, which restores the power of the dominant class, while Ong argued that this is an over-generalized picture; neoliberalism as governmentality deploys locally specific regulatory norms (neoliberal exceptions and exceptions to neoliberalism). The capitalist expansion by means of spreading neoliberalism relies heavily on an underlying political process and governmental operations. However, I find that the views of both Ong and Harvey ignore the neoliberal subjects, who did not just rise out of the blue. They were present at the advent of neoliberalism. Human subjects arguably come under subjection long before being adopted into a new form of governing. For example, the neoliberal model citizens that the Bangladeshi state aims to create with its specific social projects, which Ong would term ‘graduated sovereignty,’ are not just created anew but are transformed from their

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earlier conditions. In this transforming process, humans are subjected to new forms of regulation and gradually adapt to the governance system, thus becoming new and transformed subjects. The neoliberal project in Bangladesh that relied on the creation of entrepreneurial as well as industrial workers and working women used NGO-led development programs and public campaigns of independent women free from patriarchal domination, thereby re-engineered citizenship. People at the grassroots level— in their diverse capacities—engaged with the process of neoliberalism, and this had consequences for the shape neoliberalism took in Bangladesh.

Field Locations The area of my fieldwork lies on the outskirts of the capital city, Dhaka. This area is distinct, featuring the village-like characteristics of small tea stalls and open agricultural lands between factory buildings. Still, one also finds signboards declaring that one or the other group of companies owns the land. In general, there is no gas pipeline for the households. Thus, many use either firewood or gas cylinders for cooking. The area recently came under the jurisdiction of the Gazipur City Corporation. However, the site is quite different from the hustling main highway that is a gateway to Dhaka. Two or three kilometers on a muddy brick-built road lead to the heart of the industrial complexes. At the entrance off the main road, a number of small billboards list the industries that can be reached by this road. The road is overall very damaged because of heavy trucks that carry materials to the various construction sites. Any person traveling this road would see different notices on trees, walls, and at the gates of the factories. These advertise openings at the factories, such as ‘experienced knitting operator needed,’ ‘sewing operator needed,’ or ‘ironman needed,’ which reflect the scale of work that goes on as well as the cyclical dynamic of recruiting workers in the factories.

Methodology: Access to the Factory and Initial Encounters My ethnographic fieldwork, which involved immersion in one particular garment factory as well as getting to know many garment kormi who worked in other garment factories, began in October 2015 and ended in December 2016. I made additional visits in July 2017 and January 2018.

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During the fieldwork, I was located on the outskirts of Dhaka, just north of the city in the Gazipur District. I spent my time inside the garment factory and in the locality where the garment workers lived. In the field, I tried to meet garment workers both inside and outside the factory. I talked to people working in different factories. I spoke to people randomly on the streets. And I spoke to people in the markets, at tea stalls, and at the tempo/bus stops—anywhere I could meet and talk to people. In addition, I participated in informal gatherings of different groups of people, particularly with people involved in the garment industry, to gather information about local networks, both their interaction with others and among themselves (cf., Barth, 1983). Throughout my time there, I talked to and discussed the issues I am writing about here with managers, supervisors, workers, helpers, and others involved in the production process. It helped me to understand the connections between the production of workers and that of the products. I also had extensive discussions with people who lived in the area but did not work in the garment factories. So as to capture the continuous nature of life, I identified places to stop and investigate that would reflect this continuum: the production floor, tea stalls near the factories, marketplaces within the wider locality, and the workers’ houses. During this fieldwork—that is, both my stay in the locality and time spent on the production floors of the factory—I was a participant-observer. In fact, sitting, asking, listening, and participating in people’s daily activities is to conduct participant observation, which entails recording the systematic, detailed, non-judgmental, and concrete descriptions of events, behaviors, and artifacts in the social setting chosen for study (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). The ethnographic method’s great strength resides in its receptivity to people’s own lives and thoughts, expressed in their own terms—their discursive modes, social contexts, and temporal frames (see Neiburg & Guyer, 2017, p. 272). I have walked my interlocutors’ habitual landscapes with them, tracing the journeys of their everyday life. I tried to understand people’s own words, sayings, proverbs, and their shared religious and philosophical interpretations in their own languages using ethnographic methods. I immersed myself in the usual routines of the workers on the production floors and outside of the factories. I rented a room to stay in, which was about a 20-minute walk from the factory. I found the place through my wife’s colleague, whose distant relative (father’s paternal cousin) was a store officer of a big composite garment factory. He was a local person who had recently built two rooms on his land. In one of the rooms, he lived with his wife and two children, and

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I rented the other room. I used to eat with them. Many local people, or those living there for 15–20 years, built similar rooms to rent out in the surrounding areas. These rooms were small and were rented out to people who worked in the nearby factories. Some had an attached bathroom; others had a shared bathroom and kitchen. Oftentimes, for 6 to 8 households, there was one bathroom and two burners in the kitchen. While I was living there, the house owner took me to adjacent houses to introduce me to the people, some of whom were his relatives. As a result, I had the chance to meet many different people, and as I spent more time there, I got a sense of the lived realities in the locality. One morning I was discussing this locality with the homeowner. He said that big industrialists had bought much of the land in the area through legal and illegal means. He mentioned a case in which a factory wanted to buy some land, but the landowner refused to sell it. Subsequently, rods, cement, and other materials were placed on the land, and a criminal case was filed at the local police office. The landowner was arrested and charged with possessing the missing materials. Afterward, the company grabbed the land without paying for it. He also mentioned that sometimes different groups competed for the same land. Cases like this happened because a piece of land would have many inheritance claims, so different companies would end up buying the same land from different owners. He said that despite these problems, the big industries were doing well in creating jobs. At this point, his wife said, ‘If all the land has been grabbed by one or the other, how can they be good men?!’ She cursed the factory owners for taking away the land from people. This revealed to me the pattern and the extent of changing land ownership. Factory owners had been buying land, and prices of land had increased. The homeowner and his wife also said that the economy of the area had changed because of industrialization. Local people had previously cultivated lentils and nuts, but they changed professions. They sold land and mostly lived on the income derived from small businesses and house rentals in recent times. Industrialization had transformed the population composition of the area as well. According to their understanding, only 20 percent of the people in the area were local, while the rest were migrated workers. During the Eid holidays, the difference was noticeable, as the workers went back to their villages and the whole area emptied out. In the clusters of accommodations in the area, small shops could be found, and on the roads were temporary and permanent marketplaces. I could spend time in the tea stalls in the evening and listen to people’s

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concerns about diverse political and local issues or watch games of cricket relayed on the television. I could meet people from the local area who were not working in the garment factories and see garment workers on their way back home or sometimes shopping. During my stay, when I roamed around the factories almost every morning, I could see a gathering of potential workers in front of one factory or another. In the tea stalls near the factories, I could talk to the factory officials or workers who sometimes bought cigarettes, betel leaf, or snacks on their way to and from work. I used to go and sit at the small tea stalls in the afternoon when I could meet workers and officials from almost all levels and take part in whatever issue people were discussing—for example, the political turmoil over the general election or cricket or the weather. Sometimes I overheard people talking about matters related to the factory, a delay in salary payment, and people being evicted from their home for not paying rent. However, during discussions, factory officials and/or workers were sometimes reluctant to talk about issues regarding the government and/or factory policies. Instead, they were interested in talking about my background, how I felt about living in the area, or even how my fieldwork and data collection was going. Whenever I met those willing to talk, I would discuss the day-to-day problems they faced in the factory. I asked about their life, what they thought of their children’s education facilities in the area, what programs the factories arranged for the workers, how they found work in that particular factory, how living arrangements were made when they migrated, or even what they did for recreation. I engaged in informal discussions to elicit individual experiences, opinions, feelings, and the connections and relationships each person saw between particular events, phenomena, and beliefs. During these discussions, I tried to comprehend how workers perceived both government policies and garment owners’ policies and how they understood or evaluated their living conditions. I participated in informal gatherings of male garment workers during lunch breaks and at the nearby tea stalls. I saw how they interacted with one another and how different work issues were discussed. This revealed which issues were a priority for the workers and gave me cues for further exploration. To get access inside of a factory, I initially contacted a garment owner to obtain permission to observe the workers at their workplaces. To have access to the factory floor, my initial contact point was an NGO that ran a program to improve the sexual and reproductive health and rights of the workers in partnership with the factory. I knew the NGO manager through

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my wife, who was on good terms with the factory management. So, one day, along with the project manager of the NGO, I went to meet the factory’s general manager (GM). When we arrived, it was almost noon, and the workers had left the factory building for lunch; therefore, I saw a few workers in the building. Next, we met up with the social and labor welfare officer who contacted the human resource (HR) manager, and, with him, we went to meet the GM. During this initial meeting with the general manager, human resource manager, and admin manager, we discussed my plan to stay on the production floors and to talk with the workers whenever possible. The management was very wary about the issues I would explore. They asked me what I would talk about with the workers. I assured them that I would try to understand the nature of the changes that industrial work had brought to the workers’ lives. It seemed they did not want me to look into the compliance issues (which they are bound to follow by law and claim to comply to get production contracts). The GM specifically asked me whether I would look into the audit and compliance aspects of the factory, and I had to confirm that I would not talk about the audits with the workers. I told them that I was more interested in gender issues and changes that factory employment made in the workers’ lives. The GM then asked me to write an application addressing the factory managing director (MD) and to phone him after two days. When we got out of the meeting, the NGO manager said, ‘The factory owner is the brother-in-law of the general manager, so he alone makes the decision, and you will be able to work here.’ I emailed an application to the GM, addressing the MD as directed. When I called the former two days later, he said that the MD had agreed to carry out my research. After that, I communicated with the social and labor welfare officer, who was my contact person in the factory. Eventually, I did come across discussions about the factory audits and learned more about them from the factory workers. A chapter in this monograph is devoted to what I learned during my fieldwork. I did not share the second-­ hand stories that I heard in the factory. I was aware of the possibilities of creating distrust among the workers. This also minimized suspicion about me among the workers so that I could keep a neutral position in the factory. However, it created the dilemma that I appeared ethically gray sometimes. For this reason, I am using pseudonyms in this monograph to ensure anonymity. When I met the social and labor welfare officer the next day, she briefed me that the management could not allow me to take photographs. Also,

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they wanted me to talk to the workers not in the production line/area but in a separate room where the factory runs a medical facility. I let her know that I intended not to talk much with people while they worked but to converse with them during their breaks. In reply, she said, ‘Do not worry, workers take many breaks and usually say they do not get enough salary. But if a husband and wife both works, they can earn 16 to 20 thousand taka [BDT] a month.’ This represented how the management perceived workers’ demands for an increased salary and how garment work brought prosperity to poor workers’ lives. I just listened to her and did not ask anything more, as I did not want her to think of me as a potential threat who would agitate workers, asking them about low salaries and harsh labor conditions in the factories. Later, she took me on a tour of the factory and introduced me to different persons involved in the production process. Afterward, I was asked to sit in the factory’s medical center, which was also the paramedics’ office. Over the following days, this is where I sat, and the social and labor welfare officer would call a few workers at a time to talk with me. She would inform floor managers and ask them to send over a few workers. Thus, I could meet 15–20 people throughout the day. As I talked to them in the medical room, I could also observe workers coming in with different health problems and, during their discussions, listen to their concerns and opinions about various matters in the factory. For the first few days, this was my situation. However, it was seemingly difficult for the social and labor welfare officer to call the workers from the production floors, which were distant from the paramedics’ office. After two weeks, she said I should go to the production floors instead. I guess it took her too much time to coordinate the whole process, and the workers were reluctant to come down and talk. Thus, she took me to the production floor and introduced me to the production manager there. Once on the floor, I observed the interactions between workers, supervisors, and production managers; I got to see the negotiations and struggles of the workers. During the initial days, I tried to visit as many places in the factory as I could and meet as many people as possible so that I could later meet up with and talk to them. At these meetings, I would introduce myself as a researcher who was writing about the life of garment workers. Then I would ask them about their work pattern, how they arrived at the factory, what they did on the weekends, what future plans they had, and so on. Initially, some of the workers perceived me as a member of an auditing team (see Chap. 8) and/or an employee of the factory.

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On one occasion, I was walking around on the production floor when I saw two workers adjusting thread in a machine. I asked what they were doing, introducing myself as someone who was there to understand how garment factories were run and what problems and prospects workers might face. One of the workers asked whether the factory employed me. I replied that I was not part of the factory management, at which point they asked whether I got any salary from the factory. I explained that I was not involved with the factory in any way and was only doing research. Then one of them said, ‘We have noticed you over the last few days, walking around and talking with people, and we were wondering how our factory is employing someone who has no specific task.’ I understood from this incident that they perceived work and salary to be intertwined. They believed that even though the factory did not provide their salary on time, they had enough earnings; thus, they were aware of being exploited (see Chaps. 4, 5, and 8). In the factory, supervisors and management strictly evaluated the workers on their work performance and discipline. I talked with workers who had lesser work than usual. I also walked through the production lines and saw their work and their interactions with one another. During such interactions, some would talk spontaneously, and some would not. I spoke with workers who seemed interested in talking, which may have proved to be only a partial representation of the workers. However, as the management became accustomed to my presence, I visited different parts of the factory and observed the workers in their regular working conditions. Based on those contacts, I would visit people outside the factory and have written this monograph based on such interactions. Additionally, I joined workers during their lunch breaks. Being a participant-observer, I gathered information about the economic activities of their households. I came to understand how garment workers employed values and norms—that is, how they produced and reproduced those values in everyday life both inside and outside the factory—and I learned their underlying and unuttered networks, knowledge, and meanings. My observations and views in this monograph aimed to be what Donna Haraway (1988) termed ‘situated knowledge’—knowledge created from a self-conscious and explicitly political and theoretical perspective. The text I have written here, rife with descriptions, stories, and interpretations, is filtered through my personal experiences as well as my theoretical commitments. I aim to give the reader an understanding of the social world of the factories and the social life of the garment kormi, which came into

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existence through the global production order. During my fieldwork, I was a keen observer of the locality’s practices and participated in the life process, but it was not a one-way process. My interactions with the compliance officers and production managers created ambiguity concerning my identity. There were times when active agents were observing me in return, and later I was told about the observations and these workers’ explanations of their thinking. When I was writing field notes about my impressions, I was the evaluator. I was, in a way, creating a portrait whose parameters were not controlled by my interlocutors. My field notes were often written through the ‘lens’ which my interlocutors may not have shared. Only through shifting perspectives from the local to the global and from the theoretical to the empirical level, I could tell the stories the way I have done in this monograph.

Propositions First, capitalism as part of the contextual social whole: Capitalism in Bangladesh emerged through the historical process of pauperization and (partial) dispossession. In the case of this country in particular, contextual policies of surplus extraction in the Mughal era, in colonial times, and in modern-day, independent Bangladesh have taken the forms of revenue collection, land distribution, commercialization, imports, and exports, which have contributed to the larger (imperial) capitalistic project of the world. Thus, in understanding capitalism in Bangladesh, we should avoid isolating capital circulation and accumulation from everything that is going on and treating it as a closed system (at least analytically) apart from the social. Instead, we must consider what humans try to achieve in life through the things they do in social settings. Capitalism alone does not reproduce the social that regulates the social conduct of people. For instance, people (in Bangladesh) work to become higher-valued persons by the measure of the social values reinforced by Islam, kinship relationality, and patriarchy. These values regulate the relations between family and the larger community as well as help structure the labor process in the factory—aspects of inequality. Therefore, in Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7, I describe and explain how the human subject, that is, the worker in the factory, lived in the given place and time (inside and outside the factory) that has been incorporated into the cycle of the global capital accumulation process. This contributes to our understanding of humans that exist

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under conditions of relational order, which humans may transform through their lived experiences. Second, negotiated structure, freedom, and future: I argue that involvement in income-generating activities and having some control over their income do not necessarily lead to women’s autonomy as long as societal, economic, ideological, and religious values do not reinforce and validate this autonomy. Values at the societal level and practices at the family or community level dynamically create the ideologies. Within the worthless conditions of exploitation and inequality that capitalism creates, workers possess the capacity to imagine and achieve certain worth. Within the structural limitations, workers’ individual and diverse hopes lead their actions in pursuit of near and distant futures. Third, global governance, auditing, CSR, and dispossession: Since the 2000s, auditing and CSR have become tools for the neoliberal process to approve different services socially. However, I argue that the implementation of auditing and CSR in the garment factories has become a mechanism to dispossess the workers from means of resisting the exploitative system. Fourth, capitalism, neoliberalism, and the state: Even under conditions of growing poverty and declining subsistence, labor cannot be incorporated into the market in a straightforward and direct way. Laborers are to be disciplined and technically trained for meeting the requirements of any emerging labor market. In configuring neoliberal Bangladesh, several social re-engineering projects such as the entrepreneurial woman using microcredit, the idea of the citizen as the (industrial) worker, and the reinterpretation of norms and values—for example, purdah (seclusion) and gender roles—have facilitated the transformation of labor. Therefore, we should not ignore the state’s role in selecting and implementing neoliberal programs, even though corporations take over some of the state services. Furthermore, people at the grassroots level engage with the policy changes that lead to the concretization of these processes.

Chapter Overview The monograph is comprised of five parts: After the first (introductory) part, in the second part, through a historical analysis of the development of capitalistic forms of surplus extraction, I contend that there was no major cut-off point marking the change toward capitalism; instead, it developed with reconfigured local values as it continuously interacted with

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emerging social formations. In this part, I have two chapters. In Chap. 2, I analyze the period starting from the Mughal era until the independence of Bangladesh and trace the milestones that have eventually transformed Bangladesh into a hub of ready-made garment products. Then, in Chap. 3, I explain the manufacturing of neoliberal model citizens in Bangladesh. Since independence, the Bangladeshi state, along with microcredit institutions and NGOs, has been implementing rural development programs, human resource development programs, and women’s empowerment initiatives that aim to install a neoliberal ethos within the citizens—which we can frame as a ‘social engineering’ of the population. I, with this, present a historical analysis of the production of ‘neoliberal’ citizens that came about through the imagery of the entrepreneurial woman and the imagery of the independent industrial worker (e.g., the garment kormi). In the third part, I have four chapters to present the state of affairs in the garment industry. In Chap. 4, I argue that, if we look at the factory structure, we find that the changing relations of production and its correlate of workers as a commodity came about differently in Bangladeshi factories compared to the emergence of ‘free labor’ in European contexts. The categories of persons that ‘working’ at the factories produce, such as the notion of the ‘good operator’ that is intricately related with being ‘loyal to the work responsibilities,’ generate new subjectivities among the workers—corresponding, also, to the possibility of establishing certain rules of conduct. The ethnographic descriptions explain how garment work and wage labor was realized and various forms of power and practices of discipline that complement the capitalistic production regime. Thus, understanding the processes of ‘becoming’ of garment workers gives an opportunity to comprehend the possible configurations of the dynamic social processes. In Chap. 5, I explain that the practices of power in the factory center around a ‘fictitious kinship structure’ based on broader religious and kinship ideologies. The social relations enforced by hierarchical kinship relationality (father–child-like relations of authority), patron–client relations, and religious ethics (nemok harami, i.e., ideas of treacherousness) make collective forms of resistance at the factory unlikely—even though horizontal kinship relationality (brotherhood and sisterhood) and religious ethics of duty toward ‘family members’ (which develops between the workers in the factories) help workers cope with the strict factory regulations. I argue the ideological world of the factory produces a system of its own, and workers stay integrated into it and thereby maintains the production process. In Chap. 6, I broaden the view and

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consider workers’ life as ‘whole’ (not only as a worker inside the factory) and explain workers’ everyday lives and ruptures in the established orders of life. I focus on the emergent cultural forms—the persistent but unpredictable effects of the global connection. In Bangladesh, the availability of garment work has broken the gender segregation of work, that is, the division of labor, which is supported by religious ethics and patriarchy. Specifically, women could now take up the position of the ‘breadwinner’ alongside their traditional role as the ‘homemaker,’ that is, the former predominant ‘ideal’ of a woman. This shift implies that they are, in some sense, performing the duties of the ‘son,’ that is, the provider of the family, which has previously been exclusive for males and deemed ‘worthy’ in the social realm. In Chap. 7, I build on the previous chapter and argue that the cultural shifts also imply novel egalitarian possibilities. Through exploring life outside of the factory world, I have shown that within the apparent ‘worthless’ conditions of exploitation, inequalities, and uncertainties, the workers possess the capacity to imagine and achieve certain ‘worth,’ which they value and strive toward. Based on the findings, I argue that individuals varyingly seek their capacity to aspire and achieve fragmented futures of temporal scales and horizons. An understanding of the social realities of workers highlights that there are different forms of hope and aspiration (as well as various kinds of resistance), which garment workers employ to create an alternative future in contrast to the future perceived by the state and global market. In making sense of how the workers reach different possibilities or changes that they desire, we need to comprehend the idea of the future—which relates to the present and constantly makes people aspire to live and endure the present. In the fourth part, in Chap. 8, I argue that state policies are crucial in establishing and promoting exploitative business processes. Primarily, in this chapter, I contend that the implementations of audit regimes and CSR components in the garment factories have become mechanisms for creating dispossessed workers. From a worker’s perspective, audits and CSR should result in an eight-hour shift, typically from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a one-hour lunch break. However, in practice, extended overtime is a regular feature of employment, as is not receiving one’s salary on time. Moreover, the factories seem to benefit from the CSR practices—for example, medical services are used to regulate workers’ demands of sick leave from work. The use of audits, CSR, and the business practices of international buyers deviates attention toward specific ‘date events’: dates of shipment and audits have specific milestones marked by happiness or

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despair, depending on whether the shipment is on time or not, or whether the factories pass audit inspections. Anticipation surrounds these events, inspire ‘good behavior,’ discipline or stress, and opportunities or dilemmas for the workers. In the fifth (concluding) part, in Chap. 9, I argue that in an emergent neoliberal Bangladesh, the social order and the people who inhabit it are constantly transforming, thus remaining in a constant process of joint becoming. Newly configured social relations enforced by religious and relational (kinship) ideologies, along with customs and norms, enable the multiple exchanges and transactions of the expanding neoliberal state of Bangladesh. The configuration of the social—a distinct ideological whole is to be historically understood for a particular population—as, in this monograph, I have addressed the social reconfigurations of the Bangladeshi (Muslim) population. The case of Bangladesh, I argue, makes it evident that we cannot define and analyze capitalism, neoliberalism, or economic reconfigurations in isolation from the rest of the social process. The resultant value configurations are situational, transform constantly, and emerge in the midst of these differences. Thus, the future lies in the social. In Chap. 10—an epilogue—I write about the significant events that unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic and the garment kormi’s (and industrial workers’) vulnerabilities in encountering the global capital and the neoliberal–capitalist order in Bangladesh.

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PART II

CHAPTER 2

The Roots of Local Capitalism: Outlining and Understanding Global Connections

Introduction This chapter deals with the nature of capital accumulation in the region and Bangladesh that has been taking place historically. I believe that capitalism, as a bundle of social relationships of inequalities, is contextual, having its specificities and dynamism. Therefore, we should look to the local history of capital accumulation beyond the grand scheme of the progressive replacement of unfree labor by free labor or the progressive proletarianization. Bangladesh (as the Bengal region) was part of a larger economic structure within the Mughal Empire as of the sixteenth century. Further, British colonialism structurally linked it with the global economy starting in 1757. Later, in the neoliberal world that emerged in the 1970s, Bangladesh, owing to the policy changes regulating the export/import market, emerged as one of the world’s largest exporters of garment products. Historically, Bangladesh has remained subject to foreign rules and policies that have had different consequences in distinct periods, from fostering industrialization and capitalism to the emergence of widespread inequalities and exploitation. Here I explain the nature of the appropriation of capital during the Mughal Empire, the colonial period, and the contemporary independent and developmentalist Bangladeshi state. These historical descriptions are essential, as the capitalist mode of production, that is, the separation of the population from the means of production that created a ‘free’ labor force, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_2

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did not come to dominance all at once. Instead, older arrangements of surplus accumulation nurtured features and possibilities for the capitalist mode to become the dominant mode of its economic regulator and gradually occupy its wider social terrains historically (Wolf, 1997 [1982], p. 308). This process of emerging economic practice is still ongoing, and in the following sections, I explore the historical context through which current predicaments of the garment industry in Bangladesh came about.

Understanding Capitalism in Bangladesh: An Outline of the Connections The Mughals and the Extraction of Wealth from the Villages The Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent was founded in 1526. The Empire was established and ruled by a Muslim dynasty with Turco-­ Mongol Chagatai origins from Central Asia (Richards, 1995). The Mughals also had Indian Rajput and Persian ancestry (Mohammada, 2007). In the late sixteenth century, the Mughals annexed Bengal to their vast Indian Empire, thereby ending the delta’s long isolation from North India (Eaton, 1993 [1978]). The Mughals did not try to intervene in the local communities during most of its existence but somewhat balanced and pacified them through administrative practices (Asher & Talbot, 2006, p.  115). Diverse and inclusive ruling elites (Metcalf & Metcalf, 2006, p. 17) led to a systematic, centralized, and uniform rule (Asher & Talbot, 2006, p. 152). As just 1 among 12 provinces of the Mughal Empire, a class of imperial officials administered Bengal. These administrative officials were regularly rotated throughout the Empire. Economically, the Mughal rule in Bengal stimulated the production of manufactured goods. Luxury goods such as fine cotton textiles (muslin), yarns, thread, silk, and jute products were manufactured especially for export to the imperial court in North India. However, the conquest also furthered population settlements and exploitation into Bengal’s forested hinterlands. All these forces have enduring significance for the evolution of Islam and Muslim settlement in Bengal. This widened the difference between Ashraf Muslims (higher-class beings related by lineage to the Prophet) and non-Ashraf/Atraf Muslims (converted from lower Hindu caste groups), identified as Bengali Muslims. This Ashraf Muslim category also included outsiders who swept into the

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region after the conquest by the Mughals and who had Arab and Afghan descent. Unlike the previous rulers, the new ruling class of the Mughals lacked attachments to Bengal and its culture. This led to the extensive effort on the part of the Mughals to establish a socio-political order that was different from previous rulers. Whereas the earlier emperors based in Delhi were inclined to rule as foreigners over an Indian population subjugated to their authority, the Mughals, beginning with Emperor Akbar (1556–1605), sought to bring together North India’s many religious and ethnic communities into a single political system. This policy crystallized around 1580 with the emperor’s experiment of not appearing only as ‘King of Islam’ but also as Indian traditional kings had (Khan, 1968, see also Bandyopadhyay, 2002, p. 241). Thereby, the Mughal emperor’s court presented an extraordinarily accommodative style of politics.1 The Mughal court’s imperial authority model drew on both Indian and Perso-Islamic notions of kingship. There are indications that the Mughals also drew on a Sasanian Persian model of imperial authority, according to which political and social virtues and order radiated outward and downward from an all-benevolent and semi-divine emperor toward his people (Eaton, 1993 [1978]; Streusand, 1989). The emperor ruled politically and ideologically via a hierarchically ordered outfit of soldier-administrators. While the Mughal emperor Akbar patronized Islamic institutions, he also presented himself to the people like the Indian maharajas2 did previously. He would appear before a public audience (darbar) seated on a raised platform (jharokha) like traditional Indian kings or the way images of Hindu deities were presented for public viewing (darsan). This created a specific double vision when Indian courtiers gazed upon the seated emperor. They could find similarities and identify themselves with both a devout Muslim sultan and a traditional maharaja marked with divine power, and the emperor could be treated as both at once (Eaton, 1993 [1978]). Further, as a stage for enacting political rituals, the jharokha expressed themes central to Mughal political culture, for example, the subordination of all imperial 1  Emperor Akbar banned activities offensive to Hindus, such as cow-slaughter. He also abolished discriminatory taxes (such as those levied on Hindu pilgrims), admitted Hindu sages into his private audience and Rajput chieftains into his ruling class, ordered the translation of Hindu sacred texts into Persian, and celebrated Hindu festivals (see Raychaudhuri, 1982). 2  Traditional Kings.

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servants (imperial appointees and Bengali zamindars3 assimilated as imperial jaigirdars4) to the emperor. This created the corporate solidarity of the ruling class, and all members of the graded order were precisely positioned relative to others in the hierarchy of services for the Empire. All the Mughal provinces followed this model of political authority. The ritual of incorporation into the Mughal Empire and into the body of the emperor also served as an alternative Mughal theory of imperial sovereignty, which was different from the Indian political tradition. The Mughal emperor did not pursue annihilation of their rivals but aimed to get recognition from the existing political authorities (kings) as the single, overarching sovereign, the victorious monarch—initiated building an overarching structure. Therefore, any non-Mughal king who stopped dissenting and resisting the emperor was invited to participate in a formal ‘banquet of reconciliation’ (Eaton, 1993 [1978], p. 143). This political ritual of incorporation was a symbolic rite. The formality took place in a ceremonial tent, where the Mughal general would greet the defeated king with affection. The dethroned king would ungird his sword and receive a Mughal sword, an embroidered belt, and a cloak. By wearing the cloak, the defeated king became ritually incorporated into the body of the Mughal emperor. This ritual ended the kingdom’s independence and marked its incorporation into the Mughal Empire. It reflects the Mughals’ extensive pan-Indian political mission (Eaton, 1993 [1978]). With this socio-political order as background, in this chapter, I discuss the nature of the appropriation of surplus production. In this political context and a predominantly agrarian economy, resources were extracted primarily from the agricultural sector in terms of land revenue assessed as a fixed share of the produce (Raychaudhuri, 1982, p. 173). Regarding the nature of capital appropriation in the Mughal Empire, Irfan Habib (1969, p. 36) has argued that it was the mode of its appropriation and its ultimate distribution, which could foster or inhibit a ‘mode of production’ similar to the capitalist system, given the minimum size of 3  There were two phases of zamindars. During the Mughal period, zamindars were the revenue collectors of the allotted land, not landowners themselves. A zamindar could be stripped of office if a governor/emperor so wished. During the British period, through the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793, zamindars became landowners subject to payment of revenue on time. Zamindari was sold in auction if a zamindar failed to pay the dues. 4  During the Mughal era, land was broadly classified as khalisa or jaigirs. From khalisa the emperor received revenue directly. On the other hand, jaigirdars were given rights over the revenue of the allotted jaigirs (land).

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the agricultural surplus during this time. Agricultural surpluses could be appropriated either through rent imposed on the producer or as a gain for the producer (Habib, 1969, p. 36). During the Mughal era, farming was organized on an individual household basis. As the land was accessible in abundance, peasant property and the measure of stratification included seed and cattle. At the same time, the villages of the Mughal era presented the appearance of closed, custom-based social and economic units (Habib, 1969, p. 37). In the village communities, hereditary artisans and village servants produced and provided the peasants with the goods and services they needed. Peasants paid the artisans as a body collectively and as individuals. As per customary rates, the payments were made usually in kind but not in cash. These provided a village with economic stability, and the village was thereby self-sufficient in respect to its own consumption needs. Appropriation of the surplus did not bring any change, as appropriation was in kind and was consumed either directly or distributed among other service providers. This was also true of the appropriations by the zamindars (hereditary possessors of a right to receive a share in the peasants’ produce). Richard M. Eaton (1993 [1978], p. 102) has argued that most of the zamindars of Bengal were Kayasthas (a functional group who traditionally acted as keepers of the public records and the accounts of the state administrations; they served both Brahmans [priests] and Kshatriyas [warriors or kings], according to the Hindu caste system). This aristocratic group was Bengal’s ruling class since as early as the Pala Dynasty, founded in the eighth century, or even earlier with religious sanctions (see Chakrabarty, 2016, p. 182ff). These traditional kings were incorporated into the revenue collection structure during the Mughal advancement into Bengal. They were appointed as zamindars or jaigirdars as long as they recognized the Mughal sovereignty—that is, they were ritually incorporated into the system. Thus, the shift of sovereign power to the Mughal emperor created minimal social or political disruption. In the rural areas, the previous revenue collection structure persisted among those who worked with the Mughal officers. The revenue was sent up to Dhaka, then to the emperor in Delhi. Because of the ruling practices of the Mughals, we find mediations through the sale of grains and indications of a money economy. Imperial outfits during the Mughal era assessed revenue separately from each peasant, but the whole village body, as a single measure, was required to pay the revenue collectively. Although it was a share of the produce, land revenue was realized most often in cash. As early as the fourteenth

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century, even when the revenue was collected in kind, it was not for purposes of direct consumption or storage but sale (Habib, 1969, p. 39). The pattern of land revenue collection in the Mughal Empire was responsible for the emergence of a widespread ruling class. The collection and distribution of land revenue were done in two ways: firstly, direct revenue collected from the peasants, and secondly, through jaigirs, whose revenue was assigned by the emperor to his mansabdars (officers or nobles) in lieu of their salary as well as to be used for the maintenance of the military. These collectors of revenue formed the ruling class of the Mughal Empire. The system of jaigir was not inheritable (Wolf, 1997 [1982], p. 243). On average, any assignee could hold an area in jaigir for less than three years. Due to frequent transfers, the ruling class could not stabilize their power on a jaigir. This also inhibited jaigirdars’ tendency to live off the land directly. This administration structure had thereby created conditions for an enormous drain of wealth away from the rural areas. The revenue of land was determined by production. The amount of rent depended on the amount of production for that specific year, which resulted in steeper rent with more production. Hence, though prices of agricultural products rose during the seventeenth century, the revenue also increased in real terms—extreme pressure to extract rent from the peasants eventually initiated moneylending. As a result, peasant indebtedness in the Mughal Empire became widespread (Habib, 1969). The local zamindars’ role within the political entity was to collect land revenue or the claim upon the surplus and its payment to the authorities, that is, the Empire. This form of rule transformed the zamindars into mere intermediaries. As a result, when the revenue demand increased, the zamindars could either lose their income or compensate themselves at the expense of the peasantry. To eliminate the possible delays in rent payment—as they had to first collect from the peasants and then forward to the Empire—zamindars started to organize production themselves. It created the potential of appropriation by organizing the productive forces. This came about in two forms: horticulture (orchards) and direct self-cultivation of agricultural land by the superior classes themselves (Khud-kasht). Members of all the higher ranks within the Mughal Empire were involved in cultivation in the form of horticulture. From the emperor to the village headman, all the people connected to the structure of revenue collection were engaged in horticulture. Despite being extensive in nature, this form of cultivation did not appear as an alternative to peasant agriculture during the Mughal

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era. However, it indicated a growth of market relations and commodity production, because the produce, such as mangoes and oranges, was sold at markets (Habib, 1969, p. 46f). In addition to the horticulture that primarily indicated growing market exchanges, self-cultivation by the zamindars, village headmen, and other revenue officials was characterized by the extensive use of hired labor. Landless menial classes provided the initial supply of labor, maintained entirely through non-economic compulsions of caste. The extent of hired labor increased with the continuous addition of caste peasants who could not pay their rent, were dispossessed from land access, and eventually had to abandon cultivation on their own. The landless population who worked as hired labor could have provided an alternative to peasant cultivation. However, considering this landless population as a novel phenomenon of the Mughal period would be an exaggeration as occupational caste groupings preexisted. Nonetheless, Irfan Habib (1969, p. 48) argued that self-­ cultivation by the intermediary ruling classes indicated a group of the dispossessed population supplied wage labor for a form of commodity production. Because of this, wealthy substantial merchants also started to farm the commodities they traded. However, a merchant involved in the cultivation was an exception to the usual production system. Besides, self-­ cultivation did not flourish, as it became less and less effective with the expansion of the cultivated area. Large-scale production needed greater investment and access to credit and the market, which inhibited the development of large-scale farming. Furthermore, the entire sum of capital required for investment in cultivation had to be collected from the rural classes, and this did not lead to much improvement in production equipment. Eventually, the Mughals banned the conversion of peasant-­cultivated lands into self-cultivated lands by the revenue collectors and officials. Self-­ cultivation by zamindars or village headmen also did not flourish, and the decrease of peasant agriculture did not give way to an entrepreneurial form of agriculture. Instead, the economic crisis gave rise to agrarian uprisings against the leadership of zamindars and, ultimately, brought the end of the Mughal Empire (Habib, 1969). Nevertheless, rich peasants, that is, a group of people who had more land than they could cultivate with the help of only family labor, existed during precolonial times. The zamindars arguably created this group to conveniently manage their estates (Islam, 2012, p. 143f). Much of the income of the ruling class that was appropriated in the form of revenue went into maintaining their vast establishments. The

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elites spent significant sums on extravagant displays of elephants, horses, and servants. They also hoarded huge sums of treasure in coins, expensive jewels, and metal (Wolf, 1997 [1982], p.  242). The entire commercial structure of the Mughal economy depended upon a system of direct agrarian exploitation by a small ruling class (Habib, 1969). Practically no rural market existed for urban crafts, and rural monetization resulted from the need to transfer the agricultural surplus to the towns. The capital was essentially confined to the sphere of commerce, having failed to develop on an independent basis. When the colonial ruling class came into power, they and subsequent rulers inherited the methods and institutions of the Mughals. The British and the Drain of Wealth from the Colony In 1757 (formally, 1765), the British claimed sovereign power by acquiring Diwani5 in Bengal and jaigirs elsewhere. These legal forms provided the right and power to levy and collect land revenues and other taxes. By wresting the Diwani from native hands, the British company hoped to consolidate their rule and discourage civil unrest by further weakening local leaders (Brown, 2010, p.  25). Under this system, the Englishmen were responsible for the military affairs of Bengal in addition to their new duty of revenue collection. However, civil matters remained mainly in the hands of the local ruling class. With each passing year, the British Empire in India became progressively rooted locally as the East India Company adopted the practices of the political traditions that permitted the easiest methods of procuring wealth (Brown, 2010, p. 26). The British achieved power over revenue collection but did not change the agrarian structure. As discussed in the previous section, the structure of the old agrarian society had been far from egalitarian; the considerable redistribution of landed property rights brought about by the British revenue laws only marginally affected the old structure and system of land control at the village level. The pre-British agrarian society was not characterized by self-possessing, self-working, and self-sufficient producers. Instead, it included a sizable group of agricultural laborers and sharecroppers. The number of agricultural laborers did not drastically increase during British rule. Furthermore, the rural credit system that allegedly 5  The right to collect revenue and to administer civil justice under the company rule of the East India Company.

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increased rural inequalities and the landlessness of peasants, which is commonly attributed to the British, was not a new development during their rule (Chaudhuri, 1983, p. 87, see also Islam, 2012). The first vital contact between British rule and the rural society occurred mainly through the drive of the East India Company to maximize the state’s share—that is, the ruling class’s share—of the produce (in the form of land revenue). Part of the resources collected as revenue was diverted to fulfill other needs, such as for financing wars and to bolster the Company’s two other presidencies (Bombay and Madras) and the Company’s treasury at Canton. Such diverse needs called for a larger share of the produce than those required of the old Mughal Empire. These expanding needs eventually led the Company to demand a much larger share of the produce as revenue. For instance, between 1765–1766 and 1793, the demand for revenue nearly doubled (Chaudhuri, 1983, p. 88). Maximizing land revenue necessitated certain institutional innovations that considerably affected the agrarian society’s composition. One of the crucial problems of establishing a new structure was related to the choice of the social groups to which the responsibility of collecting the increased revenue could be trusted. Initially, the British ruling class arranged an auction so as to assign the rights of revenue collection to the populace. This led to unrelenting pressure upon the zamindars in Bengal, and farms were auctioned off to the highest bidders (see also Islam, 2012, p.  132ff). Hence, the Company created a situation that superseded many old zamindars. The highest bidders at the public auction who received their estates included a considerable number of ‘new men.’ The task of revenue collection was thus given to people who made fortunes through their association with the new administration and the new economy. However, quite a few were only intermediary bidders, whereas the men paying for the ventures were European officials. Continuation of the experiment in Bengal and Bihar would probably have fundamentally altered the composition of the landed society. However, it seemed self-defeating for the East India Company, and they soon abandoned it. The immediate gains of the governing class were limited, as the agriculture was in decline, resulting partly from the countless exactions from the peasantry, through which the ‘new men’ sought to avert their personal ruin as long as possible. This tended to undermine the stability of the entire revenue system. The old zamindars were, therefore, reinstated almost everywhere after 1780. Despite their recent impoverishment, they regained the dominant position in the rural power structure. The social foundation of the new structure for land

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revenue collection in 1793 was the old landed aristocracy, with only a sprinkling of the ‘new men’ (Chaudhuri, 1983, p.  90f, see also Ghosh, 2015 [1968], p. 18ff). In fact, the usual description of the landed gentry of Bengal as having been a group artificially formed by the British out of the administrative personnel of the Mughals is a superficial claim. In Orissa, also, the British, from the beginning, had relied on a traditional group. However, a number of the zamindars were holders of only administrative offices during the Maratha rule (1674–1818) in the Indian subcontinent. In Assam alone, the search for a system that would ensure maximum, secure revenue necessitated a complete supersession of the traditional set-up, which had evolved during the long Ahom rule (1228–1818) (Chaudhuri, 1983, p. 92). Maximization of land revenue was necessary for the maximization of profits. In pursuit of maximizing these profits, the British introduced the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793 based on the Mughal revenue collection system (cf. Ali, 2018). The permanent settlement of the land and the system of revenue collection with the zamindars of Bengal, to some extent, ensured the security and stability of the colony’s primary source of income (Bose, 2008, p. 112). The zamindars’ share was fixed at only an eleventh part of the land revenue expected to be assessed on the peasants (van Schendel, 2006). This fixed rate of the revenue to be kept by the zamindars turned them into intermediaries, more like revenue farmers (Habib, 1975). In addition, the consecutive 15-year price decrease of coarse rice starting in 1795 meant that zamindars could only extract 65 percent of the revenue they could collect before 1793. Yet, the rate of revenue was not adjusted (Habib, 1975, p. 27). Thus, many zamindars failed to provide the fixed rate of revenue to the Company and consequently lost their right to revenue collection. At the end of the eighteenth century, the official doctrine of the colony seemed to limit revenue demand in order to create a private property of the land. In turn, the British company expected to achieve an extension of cultivation and the growth of commerce. However, the measures for scaling down land revenue were accompanied by other policies with the opposite effect, leading to the polarization of land access to the smaller number of elites (Habib, 1975, p. 30ff). The land revenue under the preceding Mughal regime had been fixed as a share of the crop and was varied according to the crop cultivated. In contrast, the British directly imposed

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revenue on the ryots6 or assessed the zamindars based on what and how much the land ought to produce, not on the amount that a crop actually raised. Further, more rigorous land surveys made it impossible for any piece of land to escape assessment, a feature quite common under earlier administrations. Revenue demand and collection per acre of land thus increased. In 1799, Regulation 7 (or Haftam) was put into place. Popularly known as the Law of Distrain, it permitted landlords to distrain crops for rent arrears. It also allowed the landlord to force the attendance of tenants at their courts. Then, in 1812, Regulation 5 (or Panjam)—the Law of Eviction—was passed, and it stripped away the safeguards for ryots written into the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793. These new Acts empowered zamindars to make whatever terms they wished with their tenants and enabled them to evict old tenants (Bose, 2008, p.  115). The coercive powers granted by the Haftam and Panjam Regulations of 1799 and 1812 were initially used in pockets of high population density. Given the overall context of deficit labor, peasants could desert the lands of oppressive landlords. With the building up of population and the exhaustion of extensive margins in much of West Bengal by the 1820s, the landlords could use a threat of eviction to coerce increased rent and other charges. The rent offensive—the increasing pressure on the producers—gathered further momentum between 1830 and 1860, driven mainly by extra-­ economic coercion. Landlords were not the only stick-wielders in the countryside of Bengal; the indigo planters were extreme in their coercion of the peasantry. Indigo was considered an unremunerated crop from the 1820s; thus, the planters sought special legal dispensations from the state to enforce contracts on peasants (Bose, 2008, p. 118; Roy, 2011, p. 63ff). Regulation 6 of 1823 handed the planters a ‘lien or interest’ in the indigo plants from the peasants who had accepted advance loans. Regulation 5 of 1830 recommended imprisonment for peasants unable or unwilling to uphold the indigo contracts. This measure was considered outrageous and revoked after five years, but it was in place again for six months at the height of the anti-indigo agitation in 1860 (Bose, 2008, p. 118). Further, the Charter Act of 1833 removed the restriction on the holding of land by Europeans. They could thus buy landed rights, most commonly as intermediaries between zamindars and ryots, and but take full advantage of the 6  While zamindars were landlords, ryots were tenants and cultivators. A ryot had a right to hold land for cultivation.

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institutions and instruments of intimidation embedded in the zamindari system. They were even prepared to take losses on rent so long as they could make profits on indigo. However, between 1800 and 1850, the colonial objective changed from seizing Indian commodities to seizing the Indian market (Habib, 1975, p. 37). The revised goal not only ensured the East India Company’s monopoly over Indian internal and overseas commerce but also made trade obsolete. It also required free trade between the colony and British companies. The Charter Acts of 1813 and 1833 largely accomplished this change (Bose, 2008, p. 43). The English export of manufactures practically wiped out the Indian export of cotton goods. Further, the products entering India challenged Indian manufacturers in the home market. The system, in different ways, yielded ‘the drain of wealth’ to England. With the progress of industrialization in England, the dual pressure of the tribute and the conquest of the local market by British products hit the colony’s economy (Dirks, 2006, p. 133ff). From this brief outline, we can see that continuing from the Mughal period, the British raj intensified the process of capital accumulation. The difference between the two eras was how the accumulated capital was being included in the cycle of creating and accumulating more wealth: through industrialization in England, coercive revenue collection in the colony, and unequal transactions between the colony and the colonizers. We find continuities of these features in the postcolonial period and even after the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. In these historical processes, we see the emergence of the garment industry in Bangladesh, facilitated by state and international policies. Land Distribution in the Postcolonial Era, Structural Adjustments, and Pauperization After the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, which also formally marked the end of the colony, the Government of Pakistan initiated policy reformulations. With changes in the Tenancy Act, the new government abolished the zamindari system and imposed a land ceiling of 100 bigha (33.3 acres) for individual ownership. However, with an ever-­ growing population, fragmentation, scarcity of land, land alienation, and conflicts over land became rampant. Poor peasants continuously lost their land because of tricks and extortion by rich peasants and moneylenders. Agricultural policies that were most advantageous for the rich and, to a

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lesser extent, middle-class peasants contributed to this process of land polarization (Arens, 2011, p. 40). After Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, successive governments set land ceilings for individual ownership and vowed that land would be distributed to the landless or near-landless population. In 1972, Presidential Orders were passed in this regard, and, in 1984, the Land Reform Ordinance was issued for the distribution of land to the landless population. A ceiling of 60  bigha (20  acres) was set for an individual owner, reducing from 100  bigha (33.3 acres). Since independence, there were no official figures on how many people received government-owned (khas) land. Despite Presidential Orders and Ordinances, implementation was very slow. Most of the (khas) land, even land allocated on paper to the landless, remained illegally occupied by influential persons (Ahmed, 1990, p. 120f). During this postcolonial, post-independence period, the country was being increasingly incorporated into the global market and economy, mainly by interventions of the state and NGOs financed by foreign aid. In the 1970s and 1980s, the most significant and visible economic transformations in rural Bangladesh took place in agriculture. With financial loans and technical assistance from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and international donors, the government of Bangladesh introduced the Green Revolution in the early 1970s through the Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP). This involved importing western technology and machinery, high-yielding varieties (HYV) of paddy seeds, and fertilizers and pesticides to increase production. The changes made it possible to grow an additional rice crop in the winter season (boro rice), and paddy production doubled. Bangladesh went from predominantly subsistence farming to commercialized and mechanized agriculture (Arens, 2011, p. 47). Bangladesh signed on to structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in the 1980s, aiming toward agrarian reforms and promoting industrialization, having a vision for economic growth, and reducing dependence on agriculture. Consequently, agriculture’s contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was significantly reduced (Misra, 2017). In 1986–1987, when Bangladesh received the first installment of a Structural Adjustment Facility (SAF) loan from the IMF, agriculture’s contribution to the GDP was 41.77 percent (GoB, 1998) which dropped to 12.6 percent in 2020 (World Bank, n.d.). In the pre-structural adjustment years, the Bangladeshi state, through Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC), used to

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supply agricultural machinery and other necessary inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers, to the farmers at subsidized prices. In addition, the government issued licenses to private dealers for selling inputs at fixed rates in specified areas (Renfro, 1992). In the 1980s, the task of importing and distributing machinery and other inputs (including seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation and farming equipment) was transferred from BADC to the private sector. Governments downsized subsidies on these products, and prices increased correspondingly. However, rice prices at the producer level did not increase. Thus, restructuring the agricultural input supply resulted in increased production costs. To overcome these increasing production costs, smallholder peasants became market-­ dependent and indebted (Misra, 2017, p. 602). Two simultaneous tendencies emerged. Firstly, peasants had to buy most of the agricultural inputs from the market and invest in irrigation facilities and machines. Secondly, the state had to import these supplies. Therefore, apart from the increasing cultivation costs, there was growing indebtedness among the peasantries. Furthermore, it enlarged the state’s dependency on transnational companies for the necessary inputs. In turn, this process led to a further concentration of the means of production in the hands of the rich and pauperization of poor peasants due to loss of land ownership (Shiva, 1991). As a result, poor peasants had to turn to wage labor to earn a living. Moreover, for women from poor households, especially widows and divorced women, the agricultural transformation had been particularly disadvantageous (Sobha, 2007; cf. Stoler, 1977). Earlier, they could make a living by husking rice and grinding wheat for wealthy and middle-class peasant families or for the market. However, with the introduction of mechanical rice mills, work and income opportunities dried up. While poor peasant men sought out alternative sources of income, leaving behind their lives as small cultivators and becoming wage laborers (to either survive or to complement their income), most women lost their sole means of income. The process created a situation in which many people did not have access to income. The changes were reflected in the increased rural wage dependency in the 1980s. The 2019 agriculture census data (BBS, 2019) indicated that the number of agricultural labor-dependent households rose from 5.49 million in 1983–1984 to 6.40 million in 1996, to 8.84 million in 2008, and then to 8.97 million in 2019. Moreover, landlessness among the rural population also increased during the same period, from 8.67

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percent in 1983–1984 to 10.18 percent in 1996, 12.84 percent in 2008, and then to 7.84 percent in 2019 (as per the preliminary report) (Misra, 2017, p. 602; BBS, 2019, p. 34). This dispossessed population, in turn, would supply the required cheap labor for the garment industry. However, Manoj Misra (2017) also identified an increased proliferation of peasant smallholdings that outnumbered the growth of dispossessed labor and landless households in the same period. During 1983–1984, 1996, and 2008, the number of small farm holdings that cultivated less than a hectare of land increased from 7.6  million (70.34 percent of all rural farm households) to 9.4 million (79.87 percent) in 1996 and to 12.53 million (84.27 percent) in 2008. Consequently, the proportion of both middle and large farm holdings declined sharply. It is mentionable that the absolute number of farm holdings also increased, although its proportion to non-farm holdings declined. These higher incidences of small farms indicate a temporary postponement of outright dispossession of smallholder peasants from their land (Misra, 2017). At the same time, a higher concentration of land ownership among big landowners in rural areas of Bangladesh emerged, indicating a trend of land polarization (Jannuzi & Peach, 1979; Rahman, 1986, 1988; World Bank, 2007). In addition, Amit Bhaduri et  al. (1986, 1988) and Misra (2017) have argued that smallholder peasants did diversify their income sources by also working as agricultural laborers. Considering the polarization of landholding, further reforms aimed to reduce the size of the agricultural-dependent population by creating employment opportunities and absorbing them into the formal and non-agricultural sectors. This partial dispossession of the workers relates to the idea of the dislocation of labor, as Harvey and Krohn-Hansen (2018, p. 1) argued that dislocation refers to ‘the unevenness of transnational capitalism’s unfolding and how both places and persons are reconfigured by the movements of capital.’ It entails the physical movement of the population and the reconfigured values that prevailed in the social context within which the workers lived and sustained life (cf. Harvey & Krohn-Hansen, 2018, p. 12).7 Misra’s (2017) explanation of the persistence of small peasantry emphasized the importance of the state reforms. Contrary to this, Bhaduri et al. 7  In relation to this idea, I will expand on the reconfiguration of values in Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7 that, respectively, deal with the subjectivities of the workers; the work process in the factories, blurring between discourse and practices; correspondent changes in the macro and micro aspects of the society; and aspirations for change toward anticipated futures.

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(1986, 1988) stressed that the persistence of the smallholding peasantry reflected a slow dynamic of differentiation among the peasantry in some areas of Bangladesh owing to the possibilities of off-farm earning external to the peasant units; their persistence was not only due to self-exploitation within peasant households. However, Misra argued that the effects of neoliberal economic reforms had pauperized smallholder peasants; through various direct and indirect ways, the state-subsidized agricultural production and extended welfare support that had prevented outright dispossession of smallholder peasants. Even though there was land polarization in rural areas, and significant numbers were dispossessed from livelihood options and became market-dependent, there were indications of non-­ market access to a means of subsistence. As Misra (2017) has claimed, the situation is contrary to Araghi’s (2009, p. 134) argument that postulates the loss of such access by peasants of the Global South due to the retreat of the developmental state. Misra (2017) argued that the state remained reluctant to do away with peasant agriculture, continuing to retain ways and means (even though limited in nature) to intervene in the market in favor of the rural poor population. The subsequent growth of urban slums, due to an ever-­ increasing flow of rural migrants into the cities, forced the state to initiate a range of measures for poverty reduction and rural development and institute social safety net programs (SSNPs) to support the subsistence needs of the poor segments of the population. The state’s continued programs played a crucial role in distributing subsidized food grains among the rural poor and setting the benchmark for grain prices to keep domestic producers interested. Misra (2017, p.  595) demonstrated that the state actively took the side of the capitalist classes in advancing and implementing market principles in Bangladesh. However, because of the predominantly agrarian landscape replete with peasants, it also took measures to save the peasant population from mass dispossession, showing that the Bangladeshi state maintained some protectionist strategies. Another factor that compelled the state to protect the subsistence sector was the inability of the formal sector (industrial and service) to absorb the surplus labor forces that were continuously being dispossessed from livelihood options. Despite considerable GDP growth over the past two decades, the formal sector employed only 22 percent of the total labor force, of which 11 percent were in manufacturing, and the rest were in organized services (see Misra, 2017). Most of the manufacturing jobs were concentrated in the export-oriented, ready-made garment industry, which predominantly

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employed young women, leaving other members of these households to continue farming.

Development of the Garment Industry and the Continuation of the Process of Accumulation In appropriating Bangladesh’s available surplus labor force—in an ever-­ expanding capitalist circuit—policies and regulations at the state and global level played crucial roles. As we will see below, these structural policies gave the owners of capital opportunities to establish industries and made it possible to accumulate more capital at the cost of the workers. Global Capital and the State: Emerging Inequalities After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, domestic industries were protected by selectively high tariffs—a key source of state revenue (CPD, 1997). The trade and industrial policy reform program during the early 1990s, supported by the World Bank, simplified tariffs and phased out quantitative restrictions on imports (Rahman et  al., 2008). Apart from this, foreign investment played a central role in establishing the garment industry in Bangladesh, with multinational companies (MNCs) contracting out production to locally owned firms. The growth was also an outcome of global brands moving from country to country for the cheapest labor costs, and Bangladesh became a destination, especially as wages rose in China. The growth of the garment industry in Bangladesh initiated and increased inequalities through the relationships among the state policies, the MNCs, local industries, and the labor force—characterizing the new labor regime. The state has facilitated the inequalities faced by the garment industry workers in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s active policy for greater foreign direct investments (FDI) has led to differential labor standard regimes in the country. While most industrial labor is under the purview of the Bangladesh Labor Act (BLA), 2006 (amended in 2013), coverage has not been extended to the workers in export-processing zones (EPZs). In EPZs, common incentives provided to these firms include: (a) duty-free imports of raw materials, (b) ‘one-stop’ service for work permits, and (c) long-term tax concessions (Anner & Hossain, 2014, p. 13). The flexibility

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of labor laws is one facet of the incentives given to foreign investors in EPZs. Even though the labor law was amended in 2013, it continues to deny workers’ rights in EPZs by denying ILO Conventions on freedom of association (FoA) and collective bargaining (CB), to which Bangladesh is a signatory (see ILO, 2021). The situation of Bangladesh exemplifies that even though the country’s policies are promoted by globalization and that international financial organizations advocate rights and equality for all in the long term, it actually generates inequality and exploitation, restoring class power (see Munck, 2005; Harvey, 2007, see also Chap. 8). Global Policies and Uneven Market Relations During the past decades, Bangladesh has experienced significant growth in export-oriented Ready-made garment (RMG) industries. For example, export earnings from the garments sector increased from USD 116.2 million in 1984–1985 to USD 31,456.73  million in 2020–2021 (in 2019–2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the export earnings were USD 27,949.19 million, and in the pre-COVID 2018–2019, the amount stood at USD 34,133.27  million) (BGMEA, n.d.-a). Alternatively, the sheer growth of the RMG sector is reflected by its contribution to the country’s total export income. This sector earned 12.44 percent of the total export income in 1984–1985. The share of RMG increased up to 64.17 percent in 1994–1995, 74.15 percent in 2004–2005, and 81.68 percent in 2014–2015. Further, in 2018–2019, RMG’s share of the export income reached its peak at 84.21 percent. In 2020–2021, 81.16 percent of the export income came from the RMG sector. Bangladesh achieved this success by implementing government policies shaped by the World Bank and the IMF.  In addition, the Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA) and Generalized System of Preference (EU-GSP) facilitated the boom of the ready-made garment industry. These provided Bangladesh with zero-tariff access to EU markets and ensured demand for Bangladeshi garment products in the world market. However, after the phasing out of the MFA in 2005, Bangladesh was thrown into an open market with acute competition among the exporting countries for global market share (Paul-­ Majumder & Begum, 2006). The end of the quota regime under the MFA on January 1, 2005, changed how the global trade of garments would occur. Since 1974, under the MFA, garment trading had been restricted by a fixed volume of quotas imposed on certain suppliers by major importers such as the United

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States (US), Canada, and the European Union (EU). The quotas were fixed on garment products. The objectives were three-fold: (1) to protect domestic garment products, (2) to limit dependence on particular suppliers, and (3) to broaden the sourcing base of garment products. Stakeholders from both quota-imposing and exporting countries opposed the quota regime on several grounds. Importer countries and consumer groups believed that quotas led to premiums on the pricing of garment products (quota-premiums), which undermined consumers’ interests by increasing the retail sale price. On the other hand, exporting countries identified quotas as constraining to realize comparative advantages and were penalized unduly to protect inefficient producers in developed countries. In 1995, after prolonged negotiations, global importers of garment products agreed in the Uruguay Round. All quota-imposing members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) had committed to phasing out the quota regime over ten years. As per the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), the quota was eliminated in four phases, starting on January 1, 1995, and finally phased out on December 31, 2004. The years of protectionism under the MFA quota regime mainly benefited the garment producers in developed countries. It shielded producers in industrialized nations from the competitive threat posed by low-cost products from developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs), which constituted the bulk of the restricted (quota-imposed) suppliers list (Rahman et al., 2008). MFA policies also ensured that no single exporting country or group of countries would dominate the textile market. Thus, the MFA provided opportunities to different countries. While the quotas did not offer a guaranteed market for emerging industrial countries, restricting imports from existing suppliers, it induced the search for new production bases from which business corporations could export by using new quotas. These quota-seeking producers helped newcomers such as Bangladesh establish a customer base in the global market of garment products. With a certain degree of predictability and security ensured by MFA policies, Bangladesh and other least developed countries could access developed countries’ textile and clothing markets. Gradually, Bangladesh, Macau, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Honduras, and others achieved market share through export and gained a strong foothold in the quota-driven global garment market (Rahman et al., 2008). The situation exemplifies Harvey’s (2003, p. 88) argument that ‘capital’ in search of profitable opportunities goes toward geographical expansion and spatial reorganization. Since geographical

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expansion often entails investment in long-term physical and social infrastructures, the production and reconfigurations of space relations provide one potent way to minimize crisis formation under capitalism. The consequences of the phasing out of quotas were manifold. It was expected that consumers in developed countries would enjoy lower prices, as increased low-cost supply would bring down domestic prices. Further, imported low-cost goods would become cheaper, as with the elimination of the MFA agreement, there would be no quota premium on goods; thus, production costs would be reduced. Producers from developed countries faced intense competition from low-cost producers, while there was downward pressure on the wages of garment industry workers. Countries enjoying a comparative advantage in labor-intensive garment items such as China and India enjoyed a competitive edge, driving down global apparel prices and forcing the closure of a large number of lower-­ end clothing and textile units in developed countries. It was also predicted that countries such as Bangladesh, which had a low competitive advantage but could have a foothold in the global garment market with the predictability and security of the quotas under the MFA regime, would suffer. Distortions in the global apparels market in the form of entry restrictions and quota premiums were to be replaced by competition and competitive prices. Many experts predicted that quota elimination would benefit the consumers in importing nations since prices would come down at the retail market under competitive pressure. The immediate losers would be the workers in the garment-producing countries, where competitive pressure would force a race to the bottom. As the post-MFA regime would make sourcing flexible, and hence jobs in the garment sectors would become insecure, it was expected that most of the developing world, other than India, China, and the like, would suffer at least in the short run. Eventually, the countries in which more than three-­ quarters of all garment exports were in highly constrained quota categories were expected to face the most loss when such constraints were eliminated (see UNCTAD, 2005, p.  20). These countries included Lesotho and Haiti among the LDCs, and Jamaica, Honduras, El Salvador, Kenya, and Nicaragua within the developing world. China and India were identified as the countries that would get the significant benefits of the post-MFA period (WWD, 2003). Pakistan, Vietnam, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and some countries with preferential access to US and EU markets could also benefit (Moore, 2003; Jones, 2003). Moreover, it was expected that major suppliers that had developed strong commercial ties

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with the US would continue to get advantages even after the quotas were eliminated (Jones, 2003). Because of the elimination of quota restrictions, a flexible supply chain would be established, and there would be no quantitative constraints governing exports and imports. Thus, big multinational corporations and global retail chains would enjoy substantial gains. From data available on the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) website,8 one could find out that in Bangladesh, the RMG sector has continued to grow in terms of the number of factories and workers since 1984–1985 (see BGMEA, n.d.-b). The elimination of the MFA by the end of 2004 did not adversely affect the sector as the number of factories, workers, and export earnings continued to grow. However, we can see that since 2012–2013 the number of factories decreased after GSP facilities were restricted in the US, and several policies regarding socio-physical infrastructures, including security, safety, work hours, salary, and so on, were put into action to improve labor conditions in Bangladeshi factories (the practices and impacts of the compliance policies are discussed in Chap. 8). Because of harsh labor conditions, Bangladesh was denied its Generalized System of Preference (GSP) facility in the US. The GSP was created in 1976 to help economic development in the world’s poorest countries and to reduce import costs for US companies. Bangladesh was among more than 125 countries that received a tax-free export facility in the US under a World Trade Organization (WTO) program intended to promote economic growth around the globe. Losing the GSP facility would cost Bangladesh millions of dollars in taxes. Suspension from the GSP program would increase US duties on a list of products exported to the US, such as tobacco, sporting equipment, porcelain, plastic products, and a small number of textile products (Palmer, 2013). The US sanction did not directly affect Bangladesh’s main export item, garment products, to the US since garment products were not eligible for duty cuts under the GSP program in the US. Thus, while in 2012, Bangladesh was benefiting from duty exemptions of about USD 2 million on about USD 35 million worth of goods under the GSP program, about USD 732 million was paid as duties on USD 4.9 billion worth of clothing exports (not covered by the program). However, this decision to decline the GSP facility by the US could influence the European Union to take similar action in the future, 8  The BGMEA has recently introduced the version 2.0 of their website. In the current version, factory information is not publicly available.

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which would have a much bigger impact on Bangladesh and its garment sector. The European Union buys more than three times the worth of Bangladeshi garment products each year than the US, roughly three-fifths of the country’s production and export income (BGMEA, n.d.-a).

Structural Power and Bangladesh’s Transition Toward Industrial Capitalism British colonialism is at the center of the debates concerning the historical development of capitalism in the region. One of the popular arguments regarding the British impact on the Indian subcontinent has been breaking the crust of tradition and subjecting it to capitalism. Colonial administrations had to deal with the inherent influence of weakening circumstances, the heritage of ‘oriental despotism,’9 and recurring cycles of anarchy. These features had inhibited the possibilities of accumulation and capital investment in the pre-British era, and they continued in the colony. Other features included primitive techniques and ignorance, the rigidities of the caste system, and the prevailing spirit of resignation rather than enterprise. These features imposed on the Indian subcontinent created conditions in which nothing but a subsistence economy could function. The British appeared to be the executors of the predetermined course of world history. Considering the transition from the Mughal Empire to the British Empire, I argue that in the process of economic change, Bangladesh as part of the Indian subcontinent was structurally linked with the global economy. Bangladesh had been subjected to foreign rules and policies continuously, and these linkages in different periods had different consequences starting with the establishment of the Mughal Empire in 1526. The process had fostered industrialization, capitalism, as well as inequalities and exploitation. The pattern of land revenue collection in the Mughal Empire had been responsible for the emergence of a ruling class. This ruling class did not directly live off the land; instead, it initiated the drain of wealth from the rural areas by incorporating the existing kings as zamindars to collect 9  Wittfogel (1975 [1967]) came up with the term ‘Oriental despotism’ that emphasized the role of irrigation works, associated bureaucratic structures, and the consequent impacts of these on society. In his view, many societies in Asia relied on building extensive irrigation works, which enabled a system of bureaucratic despotism and eliminated any possibility of developing civil society. Thereby, the state would become despotic.

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revenue. When Bengal became part of the British colony, the revenue collection structure was not overturned, even though the rate of extortion increased. The difference in these structures was that the elites spent significant sums on an extravagant establishment for servants, slaves, elephants, and horses during the Mughal era. They also hoarded huge sums of treasure. On the other hand, during the colonial period, the surplus collected from the peasantry could be used in the British industries, which flourished partly because this opened up the colony’s market. Thus, British imperialism and industrialization in Britain fed on the accumulation of capital from its colonies. The process of capital accumulation included locally adapted mechanisms of extracting surplus from the peasantry in the subcontinent. Against this backdrop, I argue that capitalism acted as a system of extraction and accumulation that appropriated existing social settings which had proximity to capitalistic relationships. The colonial connection did not introduce the nature of surplus collection but instead used the previous structure, as had the Mughals. Moreover, in these postcolonial days, I argue a similar process has been going on, even while the Bangladeshi state has taken the central role, formulating policies simultaneously as it is subjected to foreign policy guidelines. The capitalist project became dominant as locally extracted surplus could be linked to or appropriated by a more extensive capitalist process of accumulation. I refer to two years and two decades which were crucial in this process: firstly, 1526 and the establishment of the Mughal Empire; secondly, 1757, when the British colony was established; thirdly, the 1850s, when the British looked toward capturing the local market; and finally, the 1980s, when Bangladesh received a World Bank loan and gradually liberalized its economic strategies. Focusing on these could help understand the process that temporarily solved world capitalism’s internal contradiction of overaccumulation and the requirements of expanded production through spatio-temporal fixes (cf. Harvey, 2004). The idea of ‘free’ labor as a precondition for the capitalist system to emerge is relevant here, as, according to Marxist ideas, the emergence of free labor required the complete dispossession of petty producers so that they could become ‘free’ to sell their labor power as a commodity. The differing conditions of the peasantry in Bangladesh suggest that free labor, as a conceptual category, cannot be a discrete, autonomous category (cf. Prakash, 1996, p. 23). Instead, there are possibilities of a mix of existing social relations that might otherwise indicate non-capitalism. The process and outcome would not be historically identical for different cultural and

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geographical contexts. In understanding the contemporary globalization of capital, Sharad Chari (2004, p. 32) criticized what he called ‘metropolitan Marxism,’ which draws on the specific geographic imagination of the transition to capitalism in England through the processes of primitive accumulation, the displacement of capital, and the dispossession of labor. These processes had created full proletarianization, and the predatory processes had emancipatory possibilities for the working classes of Europe as well as European colonial subjects as they produced ‘free’ labor. However, Chari (2004) argued, these accounts cannot adequately explain capitalist transitions that have not been premised on widespread dispossession. Explanations of capitalist transformations in East Asian regions, such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and post-Mao China, hinge on the intersecting politics of inter-imperial rivalries, nation-states, and a range of social institutions existing in-between states and households (Chari, 2004, p.  33). Furthermore, Chari argued that the transition to capitalism in India–Tiruppur’s case did not follow conventional paths. It did not occur through widespread dispossession, proactive state intervention, the agency of landed elites, or the national bourgeoisie. The unlikely agents of Tiruppur’s transformation toward capitalism were the peasants. Although firmly rooted in the place and politics of their provincial town, the peasants had forged a capitalist path and links to the global economy. Chari argued that rather than stubbornly clinging to Eurocentric or metropolitan Marxist explanations of capitalist development and globalization, it is necessary to adopt a decentered approach that allows a better understanding of the different pathways through which capitalist transitions occur in various regions of the world. I agree with Chari (2004) that the histories of capitalism and developing ‘free labor’ are contextual. Similarly, there was no complete proletarianization in the transition toward capitalism in Bangladesh. Even there were no initiatives of the landed elites that had driven the capitalist accumulation process. Instead, processes of dispossession and hired labor existed during the Mughal Empire. The colonial experience did not initiate dispossession among the peasants, for landless, menial classes had provided the initial labor supply in the Mughal zamindars’ self-cultivated lands. The numbers of those in the dispossessed population increased as caste peasants could not pay the revenue, were dispossessed from land access, and eventually abandoned cultivation on their own fields. The pressure of paying the revenue created dispossession and facilitated the emergence of hired labor. While the colonial extortions did aggravate

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these processes, I think the localized extraction process of surplus production and labor developed despite limited dispossession and limited proletarianization. In the postcolonial-post-independent period, agricultural policies and the increased production cost furthered the partially dispossessed labor force that supplied industrial labor—but the proletarianization was not complete. In this regard, Misra (2017) has written that a particular role of the state is central in understanding the dialectic between proletarianization and the persistence of smallholder peasants during a massive transformation toward forming a capitalist market economy. Misra (2017) argued that the fractional nature of agrarian transformation in Bangladesh might not result in a complete proletarianization of smallholder peasants. The situation does not comply with the prediction of the demise of the peasantry (Rahman, 1986, 1988, see also Hobsbawm, 1994, 2016). On the contrary, a large section of the population in Bangladesh and the Global South has remained as peasants (McMichael, 2006; Desmarais, 2007; van der Ploeg, 2008; Bhaduri et al., 1986, 1988; Brass, 2017; Misra, 2017). However, according to an agriculture survey in Bangladesh, rural households dependent primarily on income from work as agricultural labor has decreased from 34.90 percent in 2008 to 30.29 percent in 2019 (BBS, 2019). Overall, it can be argued that non-agricultural industries and the peasantry support each other. The Bangladeshi state took the initiative through social safety net projects, and the peasantry did not give up smallholdings, as was evident by an increase in the number of smallholder peasants during industrialization in Bangladesh. The specific nature of partial dispossession in Bangladesh and the labor of the garment industry with multiple relationalities with employers and managers reveal how divergent labor relations could become under capitalism (see Chaps. 4 and 5). In terms of different development programs, state interventions in Bangladesh have served a dual purpose of keeping smallholder peasants engaged in agriculture and reducing the possibility of any rupture in capital accumulation. Misra (2017) has, in fact, argued that development initiatives in Bangladesh are deliberate ploys by the state apparatus to ensure the propelling of the capitalist system as well as keeping its sovereign power. This tendency attests that although globalization has largely eroded the economic and political sovereignty in the Global South, the state apparatus still has some decision-making powers that allowed it to negotiate the conflicting demands placed on it by the national and international bourgeoisie and its other constituent subjects (Misra, 2017, see also Yates,

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2011, Ong, 2000, 2006; Chap. 1). While the ruling classes in the newly independent postcolonial states keep the cycle of accumulation moving, the specific form of the accumulation process and its outcome depends on how the state resolves the contradictory demands of capital accumulation and in keeping the conditions for the survival of the dispossessed population. By looking at the current contexts of capitalist appropriation through the garment factories in Bangladesh, we can try to understand the historical conditions that had created the forms of capital accumulation in relation to global capitalism. In this process, we can also discern the role of the state (such as the industrial policy reforms, part of the social safety net programs to support the labor reserve) and international policies (like the Multi-Fiber Agreement and the Generalized System of Preference that facilitated the establishment of the production site in Bangladesh, even though it was meant for capitalist profit) in creating the conditions for accumulation by dispossession (cf. Harvey, 2004, 2007). However, this dispossession did not create ‘free’ labor as described under the global category but is contextual to the historical conditions of Bangladesh. Thus, historically, production relations and exchange relations both support the system of capitalism (cf. Dobb, 1946; Wolf, 1997 [1982]). Capital accumulation in the capitalistic mode of production requires continuous and persistent existence of the predatory practices of ‘primitive’ or ‘original accumulation.’ Following David Harvey’s (2003) emphasis on the process of capital accumulation and the making of the working class, I argue that, historically, in the case of Bangladesh, the nature of appropriation has been similar in structure. In addition, the experiences of the peasantry of being partially dispossessed from the means of their livelihood were identical. Still, the outcome of producing ‘free’ labor that was absorbed into industries as part of the capitalist formation mainly depended on how the local context was integrated with the world’s capitalist circuits. The colony served the purpose of providing the capital and the market, while in the contemporary time, Bangladesh is providing the production site as well as direct labor, which turns into commodity production for the western market. In this way, local business people in Bangladesh also are accumulating capital, and thus capitalist relations are becoming more predominant and obvious. This short history of the development of the garment industry in Bangladesh reflects how structural powers created conditions for capital accumulation, as well as the partial dispossession of workers from means of a livelihood, following the creation of markets under flourishing industrial

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capitalism during colonial times. The mode of power that structured this political economy operated not only within settings or domains but also organized and orchestrated the settings themselves and specified the distribution and direction of energy flows (Wolf, 2001, p. 384). Further, capital accumulation, in the absence of a strong current of labor-saving technological change, requires an increase in the labor force (Harvey, 2003, p. 141). Harvey suggested that this could come about in several ways, but the rise in population was important. Capital could raid ‘latent reserves’ from people surviving through peasantry or mobilize cheap labor from colonies and other external settings (Harvey, 2003, p. 141). Similarly, my field findings suggest that in search of cheap labor, Bangladeshi garment factories brought the women (who usually do not participate in the non-farm activities) out of their homesteads. Moreover, in the case of Bangladesh, the labor power was sustained through a continuous inclusion of new workers into the system as the garment industry continued to grow and the requirement of workers kept increasing. Based on the above discussion, I support the idea that capitalism encounters inner dialectics that force it to seek out solutions by creating an exterior to itself. The capitalist system excludes a certain section of the population from the benefit of the system, but it must increase the numbers which operate within it. However, in this process, we see that similar incorporation of the exterior was prevalent during the Mughal time, even though it was not directly capitalist because the surplus was not invested in order to expand capital. The relations of appropriating surplus were also prevalent before the Mughal Empire, which they used in their favor. However, in a way, this exterior, or the ‘outside’ of capitalism, completes the totalization, similar to any other process. During the Mughal period, local kings and kingdoms outside the administrative structure were gradually appropriated. Eventually, they supported the Mughal Empire as it established its revenue collection structure. Similarly, as we understand it today, a capitalistic process started to penetrate the British colony’s establishment. Both structures accumulated wealth, but the difference was in how the accumulated wealth was used. It was used to create more wealth through market exchanges at a larger scale during the British colonial period. Gradually, there were changes in the role of Bengal (later Bangladesh) within this larger structure. It was the place that supplied wealth, then later became a market for industrial products, and later again became a site of capitalist production—for instance, the garment industry. Something outside the structure was appropriated to establish a more extensive network at every

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stage. The system continually grew and created a dynamic balance. It has been a difference in the degrees and intensity of the process. Therefore, I argue that every entity is determined by something else with which it is in a relationship of power. The unequal relationship keeps the system in balance in a dynamic process.

Concluding Remarks Based on the discussion in this chapter, I support the idea that capitalism must perpetually have something ‘outside of itself in order to stabilize itself’ (Luxemburg, 1968 [1913]; Harvey, 2003, p. 141), which I believe is an ‘inclusive outside.’ From the sixteenth century onward, various attempts were in place to appropriate surplus from production by creating a class of landlords and introducing a range of commercial crops. Surplus extraction was also achieved through other means (notably credit, crop sharing, and land mortgage). Controls over the means of production and labor were frequently obtained by force and regulatory policies. Therefore, a focus on the capitalist nation-state as an isolated phenomenon is not enough; instead, the relationship between a capitalist center and the dominated periphery needs to be discerned, for this is what historically created conditions for spreading capitalism (Wolf, 1997 [1982], p. 302). Processes have been interlinked, including the workings of capitalism, pauperization, the (partial) dispossession of producers, and the dislocation of labor. After the Mughals, the British colony created a structure where the appropriated surplus could be used in the capitalist system, and this was perpetuated during the structural adjustment years in Bangladesh. It created an even greater surplus population who could be appropriated to labor in the garment industry. Policies of extraction in the form of laws regarding revenue collection, land distribution, commercialization, imports, and exports all had their parts to play in the larger capitalistic project. There was no major cut-off point marking the change toward capitalism, for it had been developing within and encompassing the local values. In the next chapter, I write about the social projects aimed at creating working citizens who unfolded into the expanding neoliberal state of Bangladesh. In response to a dispersed sovereign power, the state and people at the grassroots level responded to concretize the process in relation to the industrialization and capitalism of the globalized world.

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Hobsbawm, E. J. (2016). Viva la revolucion: Eric Hobsbawm on Latin America. Little, Brown. ILO (International Labor Organization). (2021). Eleventh item on the agenda of 341 session of the governing body. Retrieved December 17, 2021, from https:// www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/%2D%2D-­e d_norm/%2D%2D-­ relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_771787.pdf Islam, M. M. (2012). An economic history of Bengal 1757–1947. Adorn Publication. Jannuzi, F. T., & Peach, J. T. (1979). Note on land reform in Bangladesh: The efficacy of ceilings. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 6(3), 342–347. https://doi. org/10.1080/03066157908438078 Jones, L. E. (2003). Statement by the executive director of the United States association of importers of textiles and apparel to the United States international trade commission. Textiles and Apparel: Assessment of the Competitiveness of Certain Foreign Suppliers to the U.S.  Market—Vol. 1. Washington. Retrieved December 10, 2021, from https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/ pub3671.pdf Khan, I. A. (1968). The nobility under Akbar and the development of his religious policy, 1560–80. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1(2), 29–36. Luxemburg, R. (1968 [1913]). The accumulation of capital. Monthly Review Press. McMichael, P. (2006). Reframing development: Global peasant movements and the new agrarian question. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 27(4), 471–484. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2006.9669169 Metcalf, B.  D., & Metcalf, T.  R. (2006). A concise history of modern India. Cambridge University Press. Misra, M. (2017). Is peasantry dead? Neoliberal reforms, the state and agrarian change in Bangladesh. Journal of Agrarian Change, 17(3), 594–611. https:// doi.org/10.1111/joac.12172 Mohammada, M. (2007). The foundations of the composite culture in India. Aakar Books. Moore, C. (2003). Statement of the American textile manufacturers institute to the United States international trade commission. Textile and Apparel: Assessment of the Competitiveness of Certain Foreign Suppliers to the U.S Market—Vol. 1. United States International Trade Commission (USITC). Retrieved December 10, 2021, from https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/ pub3671.pdf Munck, R. (2005). Social exclusion: New inequality paradigm for the era of globalization? In M. Romero & E. Margolis (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social inequalities (1st ed., pp. 31–49). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Ong, A. (2000). Graduated sovereignty in South-East Asia. Theory, Culture & Society, 17(4), 55–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632760022051310

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Ong, A. (2006). Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. Duke University Press. Palmer, D. (2013, June 27). U.S. suspends trade benefits for Bangladesh over safety. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/ us-­obama-­trade-­bangladesh/u-­s-­suspends-­trade-­benefits-­for-­bangladesh-­over-­ safety-­idUSBRE95Q15720130627 Paul-Majumder, P., & Begum, A. (2006). Engendering garment industry: The Bangladesh context. The University Press Limited. Prakash, G. (1996). Colonialism, capitalism and the discourse of freedom. International Review of Social History, 41(S4), 9–25. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0020859000114257 Rahman, A. (1986). Peasants and classes: A study in differentiation in Bangladesh. Oxford University Press. Rahman, A. (1988). Small farmers are being proletarianized—A note on persistence and polarization by Bhaduri et al. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 15(2), 283–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066158808438362 Rahman, M., Anwar, A., Tasfia, F., & Kreiter, Z. (2008). Global trade in T&C after the MFA phase-out: Emerging trends and challenges for low income developing countries. Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD). Retrieved August 10, 2016, from https://www.cpd.org.bd/pub_attach/op70A.pdf Raychaudhuri, T. (1982). State and the economy: The Mughal Empire. In T. Raychaudhuri & I. Habib (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of India, Volume 1: 1200–1750 (1st ed., pp. 172–192). Cambridge University Press. Renfro, R. Z. H. (1992). Fertilizer price and subsidy policies in Bangladesh. World Development, 20(3), 437–455. https://doi. org/10.1016/0305-­750X(92)90034-­S Richards, J. (1995). The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press. Roy, T. (2011). Indigo and law in colonial India. The Economic History Review, 64(S1), 60–75. Shiva, V. (1991). The violence of the green revolution: Third world agriculture, ecology and politics. Third World Network. Sobha, I. (2007). Green revolution: Impact on gender. Journal of Human Ecology, 22(2), 107–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/09709274.2007.11906008 Stoler, A. (1977). Changing modes of production: Class structure and female autonomy in rural Java. Signs, 3(1), 74–89. Streusand, D.  E. (1989). The formation of the Mughal Empire. Oxford University Press. UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). (2005). TNCs and the removal of textiles and clothing quotas. Retrieved December 10, 2021, from https://unctad.org/system/files/official-­document/ iteiia20051_en.pdf

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van der Ploeg, J. D. (2008). The new peasantries: Struggles for autonomy and sustainability in an era of empire and globalization. Earthscan. van Schendel, W. (2006). Stretching labor historiography: Pointers from South Asia. International Review of Social History, 51(S14), 229–261. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0020859006002677 Wittfogel, K. A. (1975 [1967]). Oriental despotism: A comparative study of total power. Yale University Press. Wolf, E. R. (1997 [1982]). Europe and the peoples without history. University of California Press Ltd. Wolf, E.  R. (2001). Pathways of power: Building an anthropology of the modern world. University of California Press. World Bank. (2007). World development report 2008: Agriculture for development. World Bank. Retrieved April 5, 2016, from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/5990/WDR%202008%20-­%20English. pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y World Bank. (n.d.). Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, value added (% of GDP). World Bank. Retrieved May 17, 2021, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.AGR.TOTL.ZS WWD (Women’s Wear Daily). (2003). ATMI Report sees 630,000 lost jobs from China. Retrieved December 10, 2021, from https://wwd.com/fashion-­news/ fashion-­features/atmi-­report-­sees-­630-­000-­lost-­jobs-­from-­china-­726694/ Yates, M. (2011). The human-as-waste, the labor theory of value and disposability in contemporary capitalism. Antipode, 43(5), 1679–1695. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-­8330.2011.00900.x

CHAPTER 3

Tensions and Negotiations in Neoliberalism: Emergence of Garment Kormi as the Model Citizens

My golden Bengal, I love you (Amar sonar Bangla, ami tomai bhalobasi) —National Anthem of Bangladesh, Rabindranath Tagore, 1906 Bangabandhu desired to transform the country into a prosperous ‘Sonar Bangla’ (Golden Bengal) where women would participate side by side with men to build the nation. —Prime Minister of Bangladesh at the Global Women Leaders’ Forum, 2016 (Prime Minister of Bangladesh—Sheikh Hasina addressed during the official opening of the Global Women Leaders’ Forum, 2016 in Sofia, Bulgaria [see Hasina, 2016a])

Introduction The tremendous growth of the garment industries in Bangladesh (as also discussed in the previous chapter) has received international recognition. Financial institutions like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and PwC have branded Bangladesh as a ‘frontier’ country in recent times. In becoming a member of groups of countries believed to have a bright, growth-oriented future—for instance, as being included in the Frontier Five, Next–11, and PwC 30 list—Bangladesh has arguably made improvements in the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_3

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‘investment climate’ and established itself as an attractive frontier market with cheap labor cost and a large number of so-called ‘economically active populations.’ The present and future economic growth trajectories are heavily supported by the export-oriented industries, and recently the World Economic Forum (WEF) has projected Bangladesh as the new ‘Asian Tiger.’ Bangladesh is also termed South Asia’s ‘Standout Star’ and the new ‘Royal Bengal Tiger of Asia.’ Beyond these glowing depictions of growth and bright futures, in Bangladesh, the perceptions and politics of jobs in the garment industry and other low-paid works are much more mixed. Crucially, these millions of jobs are commonly presented in the media as propelling the country toward eradicating poverty, economic inclusion, freeing women from patriarchy, and contributing to socio-economic development at large (for instance, see WEF, 2018; Basu, 2018). Interestingly, the creation of non-­ farm jobs is treated as part of the comprehensive citizen-centered development plan of the government of Bangladesh (see Paci & Sasin, 2008). This plan began with nationalist ideas of rebuilding the country after its independence war in 1971 regarding socio-economic development through industrialization, including a willed transition from an agriculture-­ based economy. The vision of restoring the ‘Golden Bengal’1 has now taken the shape of a journey toward becoming a middle-income country. Bangladesh has enjoyed consistent growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the last 30 years. This economic growth has been accompanied by enormous cultural and social transformations that entail historically unprecedented class mobility, consumerism, changing social relations and family dynamics, increasing spatial mobility, and new systems of communication (for a similar argument, see Mankekar, 2015)—transformations that I also touch upon from the point of view of women, that is, garment kormi in this monograph. However, precisely both the enormous socio-cultural transformations that are visible in the country and the state-driven campaign for such change underline the need to move beyond purely economic analyses of growth, (failed or accomplished) redistribution of wealth, or indicators of 1  Bangladesh as part of greater Bengal (Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura, Jharkhand, and parts of Southern Assam and East and Central Bihar, as well as Bengali speaking parts of Myanmar [see van Schendel, 2004]) was one of the prosperous regions on the Indian subcontinent, drawing traders, pirates, travelers, and immigrants. It lost its prominence through invasions and colonialism throughout history (Kabeer, 2000, p. 56).

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gendered rights in a narrow sense. Moving beyond such well-trodden forms of analysis, in this chapter, I, therefore, argue that the development initiatives implemented since 1971 in Bangladesh facilitated the creation of a new kind of model/ideal citizen that would fit a future in which Bangladesh would remain a part of the endless spiral of the global production system. These encompassed a plethora of ideas as well as social projects closely linked to aspirations of progress and modernity. The Bangladesh state strove to create a new kind of citizen and human being simultaneously, and this paralleled efforts to create a developed and egalitarian society. Therefore, in this chapter, I explore how this idealistic and utopian goal of creating citizens under neoliberalism is linked to specific political and economic programs like structural adjustment programs (SAPs), rural development programs, human resource development programs, women empowerment initiatives, Non-governmental Organizations’ (NGOs) activities, infrastructural development, and public campaigns. This nation-building project through ‘engineering of citizens’ is linked with the global reformatting of relations between neoliberalism, globalization, capitalism, and state—a process which is irreducible to a purely economic argument (see Kapferer & Bertelsen, 2009). Furthermore, the process has always been a political agenda, as is evident from the fact that the current prime minister on numerous occasions, including during the sixty-sixth United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2011, stated having ‘good hope of converting Bangladesh [into] a middle-income country […and to become the] Golden Bengal by 2021. […] It is only a matter of time [before] our country will emerge as the ‘Golden Bengal,’ a land of peace, prosperity, and happiness’ (Hasina, 2011). In an op-ed article from 2016, the prime minister also declared: Our development model is based on harnessing domestic resources and providing an enabling environment for foreign investment. Our investment regime is one of the most liberal in the region. […] Through a people-­ centric development model, we have turned our population into an asset rather than a burden. […] In Bangladesh, we have placed the highest priority on mainstreaming women in the country’s development process. We have an ambitious and bold pro-women development strategy, which aims at ensuring equal opportunity and entitlement for women. (Hasina, 2016b)

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There has been a continuous, concentrated effort to use natural and human resources in building a new nation. Thus, in the following sections, I illustrate how model/ideal working citizens are being manufactured in practice in Bangladesh—which, over the past 50  years, has established itself as a frontier of capitalism. In concrete ways, these processes have created massive cultural changes and destabilized cultural institutions, reflecting vernacular forms of global processes. Here I write specifically about: (a) how women’s place has changed in family life, and (b) what new role workers and women have for Bangladesh as a nation, for the economy, and for the future of commerce—by referring to the public discourses (in newspapers, on television, and in how people talk about things) that portray and discuss the role of workers and women in Bangladesh. This chapter thus reflects the tensions and negotiations in neoliberalism—that accompanied the process of the garment kormi’s becoming of the model citizen in the country.

Rebuilding the Sonar Bangla Through Modeling Its Citizens After the liberation war ended with independence in 1971, owing to a devastated infrastructure and economy, Bangladesh, in its efforts to rebuild the Sonar Bangla—initiated extensive development plans toward war reconstruction, rehabilitation, eradication of poverty, and fostering socio-­ economic development of its citizens. Here, citizenship can be considered as the negotiated relations between individuals and the state because the role of the state in universalizing citizenship is paradoxically attained through a process of individuation whereby people are constructed in definitive and specific ways—as taxpayers, workers, and consumers (see Ong, 1996, p. 738). I start with the transformation of visions of the female worker because women had, to this point, held a marginal position throughout the history of Bangladesh owing to its patriarchal system. This structural position is also recognized by the Bangladeshi government, which in their National Women Development Policy 2011 (GoB, 2011, p. 3) stated, Our womenfolk had been exploited and neglected for ages together. They were always suppressed under religious bigotry, social stigma, narrow-­ mindedness, and discrimination in a male dominated society. The talent and

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labor spent by our women in their household chores were never properly evaluated.

This statement not only attests to the historically marginal position of women in Bangladesh but, crucially, reaffirms the central position that gendered perceptions of work have held, for the whole post-independence era, in state-led aspirations toward a form of egalitarian vision for the country. For, the situation for women did not change during the First Five Year Plan (1973–1978) that Bangladesh prepared after its independence in 1971. This key document recognized that Bangladesh’s vast workforce provided a potential for mobilizing resources for domestic investment and also suggested using voluntary work to leverage investment without necessarily providing a corresponding increase in the supply of wage goods (GoB, 1973, p. 67). However, the specific program strategy formulated for labor mobilization declared, ‘All males of working age in the area will be required to donate a given amount of labor in a calendar year’ (emphasis added). Here we can see that nothing was mentioned about women’s labor and such a vision is indicative of the exclusion of women’s (potential) contribution from development planning in general. This is despite several studies documenting women’s role in economic activities in Bangladesh during the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, in household production and agricultural post-harvesting work only (see Abdullah & Zeidenstein, 1982; Abdullah, 1983; Arens & van Beurden, 1980 [1977]; Begum, 1983; Bertocci, 1972; Chowdhury, 1986; Safilios-Rothschild & Mahmud, 1989; Westergaard, 1983; White, 1992). Arguably, the patriarchal social norms and the notion of purdah (i.e., seclusion)—prohibited women from doing work ‘outside’ of the household as it was believed that the rightful/ideal place of women was in the ‘home’ (see Amin, 1996, p.  189)—thereby, reinforced the invisibility of women and/or the lack of the incorporation of women in this post-independence era of economic development planning. But things were starting to change toward the middle to the late 1970s: NGO activities began to take up an interest in the lives of poor rural women, involving them in income-generating activities, and thereby addressed the marginal situation of women; the prime means of which was

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providing microcredit. For example, Grameen Bank2 started a development program issuing microcredit in 1976 with the assumption that if individual borrowers are given access to credit, they will be able to identify and engage in viable income-generating activities—simple processing such as paddy husking, lime-making, manufacturing such as pottery, weaving, and garment sewing, storage and marketing and transport services. Women were initially given equal access to the schemes, and proved not only reliable borrowers but also astute entrepreneurs. As a result, they have raised their status, lessened their dependency on their husbands and improved their homes and the nutritional standards of their children. Today over 90 percent of borrowers are women. (Grameen Bank, n.d.)

Besides, BRAC3 started a microcredit program in 1974, taking a similar approach: Empowering the poor is at the heart of our work. Our village organizations (VOs) consist of around 15 to 25 women from the local community. Not only do they provide an accessible and supportive environment through which to manage loans and savings, VOs offer a space for poor women to come together, share information, gain financial awareness, and receive support on health, social and legal issues. (BRAC, 2015)

The above statements show how the NGOs attempted to provide credit to people whom formal financial institutions considered not creditworthy. However, to make them viable to receive credit, NGOs financialized the people’s daily subsistence activities and skills—husking, pottery, weaving, sewing—and linked these with the market. In this way, they brought forward the image of women not only as reliable borrowers but also as entrepreneurs. In simple terms, the NGOs aimed to bring the rural world within reach of private business, transforming all subsistence activity into something providing a profit. This can be seen in Grameen Bank the annual reports: Beginning in 1991, these show pictures of rural 2  Grameen Bank has introduced the idea of microcredit, with a vision to reverse conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral (as Grameen Bank proposes on their website) (see Grameen Bank, 2021). Grameen Bank and its founder, Professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. 3  BRAC is one of the pioneering NGOs in Bangladesh. BRAC is the #1 non-governmental development organization in the world, measured by innovation, impact and governance [and the number of employees and the number of people it has helped] (see BRAC, n.d.).

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entrepreneur women creating pottery, weaving, doing carpentry, making mats and boxes, counting money, and maintaining ledger books (see, for instance, Grameen Bank, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995). Apart from empowering the rural women through market linkages, NGOs played the additional role of promoting the image of the independent woman through their own employees, as argued by Lamia Karim (2011, p. 79): Two of the NGOs, BRAC and Proshika, have also introduced radical ideas about women’s social roles. Women field-workers of these NGOs ride bicycles and motorbikes. Many of these female NGO workers have achieved limited practical freedoms. They are salaried and can use some of their income for their personal enjoyment. They live in NGO housing apart from their families, which gives them more freedom. The women also have contact with non-kin men. The NGO female workers serve as role models for rural women who see them in leadership roles with autonomy, money, and power.

Thus, through microcredit, NGOs could engage women within the market and promote these ideas among rural women through their connections to female workers. In sum, the perspectives of the Bangladeshi state regarding women’s economic activities gradually changed over the years: From being marginalized and eclipsed in early documents, women now became the locus of economic growth and egalitarian aspirations. This change coincided with the international focus on ‘market participation’ as the viable route of empowerment (Kabeer, 2003)—the era of World Bank– and International Monetary Fund–led structural adjustment, in which the country was undergoing reforms aimed at trade liberalization, decentralization, and privatization (Feldman, 1993). Meanwhile, the private sector boomed with the rapid expansion of the garment sector and the arrival of Multi-national Companies (MNCs) in telecommunication, energy, and banking (see Ahasan & Gardner, 2016). Further, to open up space for different forms of privatization and financialization, an ideological campaign put forward the images of the entrepreneurial woman and the (industrial) woman worker.4

4

 Some parts of the following sections were previously published in Hasan (2020).

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The Woman Question5 and the Financialization of Social Life As I mentioned in the previous section, women’s labor was not part of the initial development plans of the country after 1971, when the state was deeply engaged in agricultural marketing and the transformation of farming. However, since the 1980s, waves of reforms included the liberalization of imports, private trading in grain markets, and significant reductions to longstanding programs for public distribution of grains (see Carbal et al., 2006; Hasan, 2012; Khundker, 2001). Since around 1986–1987, privatizations of agricultural inputs, irrigation facilities, and machines had increased the cost of cultivation, leading to the indebtedness of poor peasants—forcing these to become wage laborers either to survive or to complement their income. Furthermore, with the introduction of mechanical rice mills, opportunities for husking and drying of paddies became unavailable for women. Men engaged in commercialized and mechanized tasks, which previously had been considered women’s jobs. While men found alternative sources of income, most women completely lost their means of income. The partial loss of women’s status due to the loss of productive control was exemplified by growing numbers of married women who were abandoned, separated, or divorced, as well as an increasing proportion of young women who remained unmarried. A shift in the marriage system from a bride price to a dowry model also illustrated the changing (affected) status of women during those years (McCarthy & Feldman, 1985, p.  8; see also Huda, 2006). The polarization of land that occurred due to agricultural reforms (e.g., green revolution) effectively opened up for NGO activities through microcredit. The microcredit model of NGOs rested on the idea of the individual entrepreneur who, with the help of microcredit, becomes self-employed and owns a private property (i.e., the assets acquired with the loans). The home-based entrepreneur was linked effortlessly with the ideology of neoliberalism, and the individual woman would become an owner of petty capital and be able to sell her labor in the market. Therefore, one can argue that neoliberalism and globalization operated directly at the grassroots level through the microcredit policies of NGOs (and by 5  This phrase generally denotes the social changes of the nineteenth century emerging out of reassessing the roles of women in western industrialized countries.

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non-­farm jobs in garment factories) (Karim, 2008; see also Rahman, 2001 [1999]). I believe the neoliberalization of Bangladesh took the shape of variable, contingent, and local expressions that were initiated by the removal of trade barriers and the emergence of open markets that created opportunities for NGOs to operate microcredit. I term this process the ‘financialization of social life’—social relations, skills, values, and norms being appropriated into the financial circuit to gain social acceptance of the process of capital accumulation. It became a tool for non-state actors, such as NGOs, to govern the people of Bangladesh and monetize social skills and aspects of life that were outside of monetary regulations. As such, grassroots globalization weakened the sovereignty of the patriarchal family and replaced it with the sovereignty of the market (Karim, 2008; see also Naher, 2005, 2010; White, 2010, 2012; Miaji, 2010; Salehin, 2014). Furthermore, NGOs have achieved this power mostly by ‘remaking’ people (i.e., the rural population) as community police to maintain and safeguard their investments. The operational model of microcredit makes this especially clear, as providers hold the whole group responsible for individual loans. Using Grameen Bank as an example, 40 women form a center and elect a group leader, who advocates loan proposals in weekly meetings. Eight smaller groups are formed by dividing up the bigger group. Each week, women meet in the center and hand over their weekly installments. All the women are jointly responsible for the repayment of individual loans. If a member defaults, they use force and sell off her household goods or bust up the house itself to sell off its parts. The group members (but not the NGO officials) commit these destructive and violent acts. In a way, social relations act as the collateral of the credit and are thus incorporated into the financial circuit (see Karim, 2008, 2011). The NGOs in Bangladesh, through different development programs, apart from microcredit, have financialized social relations and the skills of the rural women in the name of creating entrepreneurship. In the early 2000s, a video campaign by Plan Bangladesh (an NGO) describes, Moina was a typical housewife who, after getting trained as a health volunteer, started a new life. She was good at teaching all the village people about health. She became the people’s only hope in case of an emergency. Thus, the villagers proposed that she run for the election in the local government,

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and she became the people’s representative in return for her social services. Moina is our pride. (See Plan Bangladesh, n.d.)

Similarly, Save the Children used a campaign documentary that featured a girl (Shilpi) who could perform the duties of a son to take care of her family, which was contrary to the consideration of girls as burdens on the family. By learning self-confidence at the training of Save the Children (during 2008–2009), along with skills such as creating a budget and saving money, she realized she could help her family without even leaving her home, and she started her first business by weaving and selling bamboo mats. Then, from the savings, she bought a cow, and after one year, she started selling milk. She saved some more, and after selling one calf, she was able to rebuild their home. It is said in the documentary that if she were not part of the Save the Children project, she would have been married off like other girls. Now she wants to buy some land and wishes for her brother to be educated and get a job. Moreover, her mother thinks Shilpi has done more than a son would ever have done (see Save the Children, 2011). These examples demonstrate that NGOs, through microcredit and other financial means, try to install the idea of investment and return in the everyday terms of family and community life—through healthcare services, in the case of Moina, or the business plan of Shilpi. Every activity is measured in terms of entrepreneurship, profit, and return. The examples I have cited reveal that cultural elements (such as social relations, social services, and traditional skills) are now being considered highly reliable sources for ensuring the efficiency of credit markets and a means of achieving its broader social goals. These also display how diverse social and economic values are configured and disciplined in a way that becomes conducive to the realization of surplus values, rather than transforming every social grouping as a homogeneous entity.

Woman as (Industrial) Garment Kormi: From Burden to Prospects Apart from the burgeoning of NGOs and microcredit programs, simultaneously, the development of an export-oriented economy, with a concentration on the garment industry, created a major source of income and employment (Kabeer, 2000; Dannecker, 2002). In this context, the state

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and factory owners propagated the imagery of the woman as the industrial worker or garment kormi. The first garment factory was established in Bangladesh in 1978–1979, and since then, the industry has grown extensively (Feldman, 2009, p.  270; see also BGMEA, n.d.-a). It has been widely agreed that the flourishing garment sector in the 1980s established the era of neoliberalism in Bangladesh. It not only turned into a major national source of income but also created a large number of jobs, primarily for women (Dannecker, 2002). The migration of rural women into the urban areas and then working at the factories have been associated with developing the imagery of women as the (industrial) workers, expanding from the imagery of entrepreneurial women developed through their access to NGO microcredit opportunities. Presently, women are part of the national discourses on development, the productivity of workers, and modernity. Let’s investigate the national public discourses and narratives. We find that the Bangladeshi state stresses ‘productive employment’ and ‘human resource development’—a model based on turning the population of the country into assets. This idea is also visualized on the website of the Ministry of Labor and Employment of the Government of Bangladesh, which contains images of a garment worker, a laborer carrying bricks, and a tea plantation worker. Women have become the prototypical workers and breadwinners of the nation (see MoLE, n.d.). In a similar vein, the President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturer and Exporters Association (BGMEA) stated on their website that, Over the years readymade garment (RMG) industry has witnessed a steady growth and within three decades it has become the largest export earning sector of Bangladesh, generating 80 percent of the export earnings and contributing more than 10 percent to national GDP. The RMG sector has created employment for about 4.4 million people, of whom 80 percent are women. Apart from playing a vital role in Bangladesh’s economic growth, the RMG sector has bolstered the country’s image worldwide. (BGEMA, n.d.-b)

Here, BGMEA creates an image of the garment industry as the primary stakeholder in the country’s economic growth. If we consider what may be the industry’s strength in this regard, BGMEA has the answer. On their website, they declare, the main ‘industry strength’ of the Bangladeshi garment industry is ‘a vibrant population, 70% below 40 years [of] age, quick

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learning & dedicated’ (BGMEA, n.d.-c). This represents a particular kind of worker. Moreover, BGMEA portrays only photographs of female ‘workers’ on their website. The messages accompanying the pictures, such as: ‘We are committed to ensuring dignity and well-being and safety of our workers’ and ‘Children go to school today as garment factories run successfully,’ clearly render the role of women in the new Bangladeshi economy (see BGMEA, n.d.-d).6 Along with these, in the policy documents and also in the mass media, garment workers (as well as other female workers) represent a kind of ‘worker’ who can reduce the poverty of their household and contribute to the country’s economy by being ‘quick learners’ and ‘dedicated.’ For example, the 2015 Seventh Five Year Plan of Bangladesh stated that even though the country has poor governance according to some standard indicators, it has strong underlying social and economic forces and institutions, including a resilient population and a hard-working labor force who pick up skills easily (for example garment and footwear workers) (GoB, 2015, p. 40). Furthermore, since 2009 in the television advertisements of mobile banking services, female garment workers are shown as independent, able to send money home to their villages, exempt from paying higher charges, and capable of immediately attending to their responsibilities toward their parents (see bKash, 2012). In one of the advertisements, it is stated, ‘The days have changed,’ and in that, they can send money to their parents instantly. It is also said, ‘Before, I could not send money on time to my parents, which I earned through hard work.’ In the advertisement, the garment worker is portrayed putting on earrings and looking in the mirror while she speaks, representing the positive impact of the garment work on herself and her family (by sending money back home) (see Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited, n.d.). Likewise, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (BMP)7 sponsored a campaign featuring women as independent economic individuals. The video plot depicts a scene in a hospital where a couple is visiting with their sick daughter. The husband says to his wife, ‘You do not have to go to the 6  The BGMEA has recently introduced the version 2.0 of their website. In the current version, there are less photos and some of the statements are different than quoted in this chapter. 7  Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (BMP) is a women’s human rights organization. The organization has been in Bangladesh on a voluntary basis for more than three decades and pioneered the women’s movement with the slogan ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’ (see BMP, n.d.-a).

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office today; I will leave now, as I have important work.’ Before he leaves, the doctor comes in and hands over a paper with a list of required medical tests. The husband peruses the list and opens his wallet to find that he does not have enough money with him. The woman opens her purse and hands money to her husband. Furthermore, in the last scene, when a relative comes to see their daughter and asks, ‘How is she?’ the husband replies, ‘It would have been worse if we could not have done the medical tests on time,’ and he looks over at his wife (BMP, n.d.-b). In all these ads, we see the state, NGOs, business corporations, as well as mobile banking services and garment factory owners all uniting to facilitate and promote the image of a New Woman—a working citizen who can bring prosperity to factories, to the family, and to the nation.8 I should note here that there is a key paradox here, of course, as the visualization and celebration of women—and the state’s and BGMEA’s emphasis on the worker’s dedication and quick learning abilities—contrasts starkly with working conditions: As I have documented, garment workers are forced to work extensive hours of 12 to 16 hours a day or more to meet shipment deadlines. The condition can be judged from the comment of a garment worker, ‘we try not to even drink water so that we do not need to go to the toilet. We do not take breaks to eat either. We have to fulfill our target’ (see Chaps. 4 and 5; see also Bhuiyan, 2012; Hossan et al., 2012; ILO, 2008; Kabeer, 1991; Kabeer & Mahmud, 2004; Muhammad, 2007, 2011; Paul-Majumdar & Sen, 2000). Here we find workers who are employed and earning money in a condition of exploitation, but it may also reflect the ‘dedication of the worker,’ as the BGMEA president asserted on their website. In the abovementioned public campaigns, we can identify key terms that organize the social discourses that relate to women and the narratives surrounding them—for example, ‘development,’ ‘economic growth,’ ‘poverty reduction,’ and ‘worker.’ Industries as the site of productive employment are presented as opposite to seasonal agricultural work or household tasks. We can work out the meaning associated with ‘garment workers’ (as modern, independent, and empowered women), as well as the social space of the factories in opposition to rural and agricultural labor. Thus, development and economic growth manifest through industrialization and are realized through a specific kind of dedicated worker— commonly a woman.  See, for instance, UNICEF, 2010; MoWCA, n.d.; BAL, 2013.

8

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In the preceding sections, I have discussed the ways NGOs and other ideological apparatuses advanced the state’s priorities by establishing the image of the working (industrial) woman, which succeeded the entrepreneurial woman of the 1980s and 1990s. There was a continuation in the social process where women, through microcredit, could become entrepreneurs; otherwise, they could start working in the industries. Either way, women could transform themselves from ‘burdens’ and into prospects for the future. To complement these representations, the government, as well as NGOs, initiated campaigns surrounding women’s contribution toward family and the nation. The public campaigns promote women, not as burdens. Instead, women return more than what the family invests in them. For example, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) developed the Meena Communication Initiative (MCI) as a mass communication project aimed at changing perceptions and behaviors that hamper girls’ survival, protection, and development in South Asia. It was launched in Bangladesh in 1993, and later 32 episodes were developed (see UNICEF, n.d.; Anis & White, 2017). The theme song of the series promoted education for girls (UNICEF, 2010), as we can see below: If the life is spent inside four walls forever, I will only be a burden then. Education will surely give me freedom! I am the hope for tomorrow, I also have wishes and wills, Do not keep me locked in a home! Take me ahead! I am my parents’ affectionate daughter!

The song conveyed awareness messages for parents that if girls were not educated and spent their lives in the house, they would only be a burden. Education could give them freedom, and they could become the hope for tomorrow. Similarly, one of the campaigns of the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs shows women in different occupations, and it ends with the message, ‘If we give women what they deserve, we all and also the country will reap the benefits’ (MoWCA, n.d.). Another campaign of the Bangladesh Awami League (the current ruling party) describes special provisions for women in jobs and education that the current government

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created, ending with the message, ‘Let us strive toward light together’ (BAL, 2013). Further, the government and NGOs have incorporated imams (religious leaders) in mobilizing the idea of the working woman as not contradictory to religious values. The Seventh Five Year Plan seeks to implement ‘religious institution-based literacy programs [that will be emphasized] under the Ministry of Religious Affairs’ (GoB, 2015, p. XlVII), and the Ministry of Religious affairs will be ‘undertaking research and promoting religious values, universal brotherhood and good citizenship’ (GoB, 2015, p. 665). In this regard, the Ministry has taken steps ‘to construct mosques at district levels and upazila [sub-district] levels to improve and accommodate prayer services. To enhance the role of religious leaders in social development, proper training and capacity building will be implemented’ (GoB, 2015, p. 665). Similarly, NGOs such as the Asia Foundation took initiatives in the early 2010s to promote social justice, the importance of women’s role and value in the family, education rights, economic empowerment, inheritance rights, and security for women within an Islamic framework (The Asia Foundation, 2019). The program envisioned helping communities to understand women’s rights within Islam that involved Muslim scholars and activists. The program trained many imams and madrassa leaders, who in turn were disseminating the information within their networks. USAID, during 2007–2011, had undertaken a similar project in the name of The Leaders of Influence (LOI) (USAID, 2011). USAID trained 20,743 participants (10,787 imams, 821 mosque committee members, 2014 other religious leaders, and 7121 secular leaders). I mention these to indicate how the engineering of the population incorporated diverse mechanisms to reach out to the people. These are a few of the contexts that, apart from direct NGO or industrial initiatives, conveyed the image of the working (industrial) woman, which succeeded the entrepreneurial woman of the eighties and nineties. There was a continuation in the social process where women, through microcredit, could become entrepreneurs; otherwise, they could start working in the industries. Either way, women could transform themselves from ‘burdens’ and into prospects for the future. If we think about the first generation of garment workers, we find that a majority of the industry owners recruited workers through the creative deployment of existing village relations. Those who maintained contact with their home village, or desh, by either owning and managing family lands or contributing to the village by building a mosque or school, kept a form of patron–client

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relations within the villages. These relationships often obligated villagers to meet the desires of the successful ex-villager industry owner by sending young women to work for him. In some of these circumstances, industry owners responded to the perceived obligation by offering guardianship and employment to young women if their parents would allow them to move to Dhaka and work in the factories. These relations of obligation enabled entrepreneurs and industry owners to negotiate with families for the labor of their daughters, acting as a sort of custodianship in maintaining a family’s honor while allowing daughters to work in the garment factories (Feldman, 1993, 2009). This also reflects how people at the grassroots level gave shape to the concretization of neoliberal ideas. National development programs, microcredit policies, and emphasis on individual enterprise have shifted the discourse of poverty to a discourse of neoliberalism at the local level. It has become derogatory to call oneself poor in rural Bangladesh. Prior to the mass intermediation of rural social relations through credit, the poor section of the population felt a claim on the wealth of the rich because they were in a patron–client relationship (see Rudra, 1984; Rahman & Wahid, 1992; Breman, 2000; Datta, 1998; Islam, 2002; Mannan, 2005; Makita, 2007). Before the idea of petty-­ money entrepreneurship became widespread, the poor could forage on the lands and ponds of the rich for sustenance in times of hardship. In exchange, the rural rich would claim the free labor and adherence of the poor. However, Rahman and Wahid (1992) argued that traditional forms of patron–client relations were transformed once Grameen Bank emerged as a formal financial institution in 1983, targeting a population who had possession of less than 0.5 acres of land or assets not exceeding the value of 1.0 acre of land. Credit access of the poorest group of people led to an increase in agricultural wages, and traditional patrons were not happy about it (Rahman & Wahid, 1992, p. 319). Further, the role of the patrons as the judges of village courts was also minimized as microcredit groups settled disputes internally. The neoliberal discourse of self-help and individual responsibility weakened and replaced this traditional patron–client relationship (Karim, 2008). During my fieldwork, many garment workers mentioned that they had migrated so as to work in the garment factory and remit money back home to pay the weekly installments of loans received from NGOs. They had made a rational decision based on the situation and their available options. This demonstrates how the impact of microcredit has diffused well beyond the immediate goal of economic self-reliance and influences

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how people idealize themselves in relationships with others. Below is a common complaint of middle-class, urban households that I learned about in the course of my fieldwork: Because of the advent of so many work opportunities in the garment industry, we do not find housemaids to work in the city or in the village. Women now prefer to work in the factories, as it pays better. Additionally, many women work in offices, where they can cook or clean for a salary rather than do the same work for free at home. The provision of salaried work is treated as office work as well as a way to overcome rural traditional patron–client relationships.

This represents a time of change and opportunity on two levels: for both the individual (woman) and the poor as a group. The independent, working woman has a stake in the country’s pride as a group and individually for her own family. We can see this double meaning in the picture used on the BGMEA website, which states, ‘Made in Bangladesh with pride: It is HOPE that we knit.’ Another sort of public campaign complements the representations of the working person (industrial worker) as an independent woman. In the media, middle-class women are portrayed as having a distinct lifestyle of dressing, shopping, and working. Garment workers state, ‘In my free time, I like to watch the Gan–Bangla channel [music videos].’ Others say, ‘I am working hard so that in the future I can live better, and my children can have a better education and hold official jobs.’ The garment workers have an idea of a better life—due to the possibility of earning cash (see Chap. 7)—and aspirations toward making their future, and the garment industry presents them the opportunity to pursue the goal of achieving this life. Here, I think the workers’ understanding of their lives and decisions coincides with the national project of becoming a middle-income country. Being central to the development of both themselves and their families, women workers contribute to the nation-building process. Therefore, as the PM declared, the highest priority has been mainstreaming women in the country’s development process (statement quoted earlier). One hears the criticism that television advertisements portray a sexualized image of women and consequently encourage women to spend an incredible amount of money buying different things to elevate their social status. It is argued that these product advertisements are making women

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materialistic, for instance: ‘Fashion and lifestyle magazines help them become materialistic. The numerous articles on interior decoration, new shops, trendy and designer clothes, make readers desire those things even though they can very well do without it’ (Sharmeen, 2011, p. 16). Further, by television advertisements and lifestyle magazines presenting such images of young girls happily shopping, they thereby portray shopping as the key to happiness. Commercials representing women in different professions appearing alongside cosmetic commercials influence how women see themselves and enforce the idea that beauty is a core feature of modernity and women’s life (cf. Othondrila, 2014; Begum, 2008; Hossain, 2008). Many also claim that microcredit did not really empower women; instead, patriarchal values that suppress women strengthened with women’s access to income-generating activities (see Karim, 2008, p. 7). Even though I agree with these criticisms, I contend that these advertisements contribute to the imagery produced by the government and NGO campaigns in the continuum toward model/ideal citizenry. They represent independent working women who are the decision-makers of their fortune. Thus, we can see a proliferation of shops and beauty parlors that encourage and represent increasing consumerism in the areas surrounding the factories.

Concluding Remarks These portrayals of working women in the national media, policy documents, and NGO success stories contribute to the process that I termed the financialization of social values in the previous section. While I use the example of rural poor women, we should note that women from all classes of rural and urban areas are increasingly involved in a wide range of occupations and forms of employment. Together with the specific programs that offered microcredit, the opening up of work in factories increased women’s opportunities as participants in the public settings and created opportunities for the exchange of ideas among women. These campaigns also contributed to the altered discourses shaping their behaviors. They offered a new way for women to think about themselves and their desires. Therefore, for many women, such work was indeed a response to absolute poverty, whereas, for others, it was a source of mobility, increasing the capacity of households to achieve or maintain middle-class interests and goals.

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In the subsequent chapters, I illustrate how beyond the ideologies of the egalitarianism of the state—represented by economic inclusion, employment, income generation, or economic development of the masses—women display egalitarian ambitions by enduring, reworking, transgressing, and overcoming the hierarchical aspects of capital, states, and social institutions. Thus, as outlined in Chap. 1, I, in my analysis, move beyond the level of egalitarianism as a state-centric idea, as well as seek to document domains of egalitarian aspirations beyond a formal state–society distinction. In explaining the consequent transformations in the emerging social order, I describe workers’ relationalities inside and outside the factory setting. In the next chapter, I write about the life of the garment workers and contextualize the factory life and its emerging subjectivities.

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MoWCA (Ministry of Women and Children Affairs). (n.d.). Shombhabonar Bangladesh [Bangladesh: Land of possibilities]. Video, 1:12. Uploaded n.d. Retrieved July 25, 2018, from, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=17O62HGxhXU Muhammad, A. (2007). Phulbari kansat garments (in Bengali). Sraban. Muhammad, A. (2011). Wealth and deprivation: Ready-made garments industry in Bangladesh. Economic & Political Weekly, 15(34), 23–27. Naher, A. (2005). Gender, religion and development in rural Bangladesh. Ph.D. thesis, Heidelberg University. Retrieved June 17, 2019, from https://www.zef. de/fileadmin/user_upload/262d_AN_Diss_final.pdf Naher, A. (2010). Defending Islam and women’s honor against NGOs in Bangladesh. Women’s Studies International Forum, 33(4), 316–324. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2010.02.005 Ong, A. (1996). Cultural citizenship as subject-making: Immigrants negotiate racial and cultural boundaries in the United States [and comments and reply]. Current Anthropology, 37(5), 737–762. https://doi.org/https://doi. org/10.1086/204560 Othondrila, O. (2014). Representation of women in electronic visual media: Bangladeshi context. A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for Master of Arts in English and Humanities. BRAC University, Bangladesh. Retrieved March 22, 2017, from http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/ xmlui/bitstream/handle/10361/3946/12263008.pdf?sequence=1 &isAllowed=y Paci, P., & Sasin, M. (2008). Making work pay in Bangladesh: Employment, growth and poverty reduction. The World Bank. Paul-Majumdar, P., & Sen, B. (2000). Growth of garment industry in Bangladesh: Economic and social dimensions. Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). Plan Bangladesh. (n.d.). Women empowerment: Moina. Video, 00:31. Uploaded n.d. Retrieved August 20, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2lDKTQMkXfM Rahman, A. (2001 [1999]). Women and microcredit in rural Bangladesh: Anthropological study of the rhetoric and realities of Grameen Bank lending. Westview Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group. Rahman, A., & Wahid, A. N. M. (1992). The Grameen Bank and the changing patron-client relationship in Bangladesh. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 22(3), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472339280000221 Rudra, A. (1984). Local power and farm-level decision-making. In D. Meghnad, S. H. Rudolph, & A. Rudra (Eds.), Agrarian power and agricultural productivity in South Asia (1st ed., pp. 250–280). Oxford University Press. Safilios-Rothschild, C., & Mahmud, S. (1989). Women’s role in agriculture: Present trends and potential for growth. United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

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Salehin, M.  M. (2014). Piety, gender relations and Muslim women’s empowerment: The case of Islamic NGOs in Bangladesh. In M. Clarke & D. Tittensor (Eds.), Islam and development: Exploring the invisible aid economy (1st ed., pp. 173–196). Ashgate Publishing Company. Save the Children. (2011). Shilpi’s story: Proving the value of girls in Bangladesh. Video, 04:02. Uploaded n.d. Retrieved August 20, 2020, from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=u8Sh4fQ0waY Sharmeen, S. (2011). Representation of women in contemporary Bangladeshi print media. A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for Master of Arts in English Language and Literature. East West University, Bangladesh. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://dspace.ewubd.edu:8080/ handle/123456789/132 The Asia Foundation. (2019). Bangladesh. The Asia Foundation. Retrieved January 18, 2020, from https://asiafoundation.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2016/07/BangladeshOverview2019.pdf UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). (2010). Meena: Count your chicken. Video, 13:41. Uploaded September 26. Retrieved July 25, 2018, from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW9vHP5GHPE UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). (n.d.). Meena and UNICEF: Entertaining and inspiring children. UNICEF. Retrieved June 20, 2018, from, https://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/en/meena-­and-­unicef USAID (United States Agency for International Development). (2011). Leaders of influence: Evaluation report. USAID/Bangladesh. Retrieved February 5, 2018, from http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pdacr886.pdf van Schendel, W. (2004). The Bengal borderland: Beyond state and nation in South Asia. Anthem Press. WEF (World Economic Forum). (2018). Bangladesh is rising from poverty to become an Asian ‘tiger’ economy. Video, 01:15. Uploaded April 25. Retrieved May 20, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/watch/? v=10155301282766479&t=14 Westergaard, K. (1983). Pauperization and rural women in Bangladesh: A case study. Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD). White, S. C. (1992). Arguing with the crocodile: Gender and class in Bangladesh. University Press Limited. White, S. C. (2010). Domains of contestation: Women’s empowerment and Islam in Bangladesh. Women’s Studies International Forum, 33(4), 334–344. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2010.02.007 White, S. C. (2012). Beyond the paradox: Religion, family and modernity in contemporary Bangladesh. Modern Asian Studies, 46(5), 1429–1458. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0026749X12000133

PART III

CHAPTER 4

Becoming Garment Kormi: Life in the Garment Factory

Introduction Discussions in the previous chapters support my argument that the transition to a capitalistic industrial economy created possibilities for an emerging working population with particular social characteristics who were partially dispossessed from their means of livelihood. The working class was partially dispossessed because of the specific historical process through which capitalism and industrialization became dominant in the country’s economy. The capitalistic project arrived in its current state, influenced by national and global policies, and it did not produce a replication of the capitalistic formation with free labor, but an ensemble of social relations mediates the labor, that is, the working class, its modalities of exchange, and its characteristics. Capitalist production is usually characterized by the purchase and sale of labor power and commodities; thus, there ought to be progressive replacement of unfree labor by free labor, that is, progressive proletarianization under capitalism (see Marx, 2010 [1887]). Further, workers in capitalist industries are expected to go through a class experience determined largely by productive relations (see Thompson, 1963). However, in the transition toward neoliberal capitalism in Bangladesh, the relations between land, labor, and the people in political power were mediated through social relations and values reinforced by religion and culture—thereby, unique articulations of inequality and social openings emerged. I unpack these processes in the following chapters. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_4

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This chapter analyzes specific empirical instances within the garment factories, where new realities for garment workers are actualized. Here I provide snapshots of the garment workers and the work process1 in the industries as such; this is the background of my reflections from the perspectives of the garment workers themselves concerning how capitalism operates, producing an order both inside and outside the factories. However, I do not portray an established order of capitalism; instead, I argue that the order itself unfolds and refolds in the process of becoming. I seek to write about the ongoing and changing empirical configurations of the garment workers’ lives and the order of capitalism, highlighting dynamic and manifold aspects of ‘workers’ and ‘capitalism’ that do not remain static (Deleuze & Guattari, 2005 [1987]). I believe capitalism— that is, how it is ordered—emerges and transforms itself in its relation with the non-capitalistic domains of the social. Thus, the becoming of garment kormi gives an opportunity to understand the possible configurations of these dynamic social processes—new dynamics and features of inequality. In this chapter, I depict the ethnographic context of the present state of affairs. Through ethnographic descriptions, I explain how garment work and wage labor are realized, and how various forms of subjectivities, power, and practices of discipline complement the capitalistic production regime. I show that the production of subjectivity is hybrid and modulating.

Becoming Garment Kormi: A Way Out of Economic Crisis and More The narratives of garment kormi and their ways of speaking about themselves illustrate their diverse motivations for working in the garment industry and the future they perceived for themselves (see also Kibria, 1998). In this chapter, I describe the lives and choices of the garment workers. In my view, this bottom-up perspective of capitalism reframes the views we have of factory exploitation and dispossession. Here, I begin by revealing the diverse conditions that made the workers think about working in the garment factories. I then describe how the factories operate and

1  According to Marx, ‘The elementary factors of the labor-process are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments’ (Marx, 2010 [1887], p. 124). In the capitalist factory the work process demands large number of laborers producing even larger volumes of products.

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how various forms of subjectivities emerged through the power relations within the factory. During discussions with my interlocutors, it became evident that the respective socio-economic situations of the workers influenced their decisions to work in the garment factory. In situations of the widespread shrinking of livelihood opportunities, garment workers’ parents had often made the decision for them to find work in the factories. Others had made the decision themselves. In other instances, their family did not want them to work in the industry. Sometimes even relatives raised questions about the nature of an industry that had broken the social norms surrounding gender segregation and work. Garment workers knew they would have to accept and own the responsibility of supporting their families. Overall, the desire for a better life was the initiating factor for seeking out work in the industry. Most workers were dropouts from school or had no other viable option for making a living. Others noticed that a better life was attainable, and the garment industry presented them with the opportunity to pursue it. Moreover, by working in the factory, one could earn cash, which was preferable because then one could buy anything. It also seemed that they had been caught up in the state’s liberal policies for business, economic inclusion, and development through employment generation (see Chap. 3). We see from this overview that the garment workers’ motivations were diverse. They recognized factory work as an opportunity to overcome their economic hardship and to attain other socio-economic goals. At this point, I am introducing garment workers with whom I had several discussions and had the chance to meet outside of the factory. I briefly introduce them here, and later in the monograph, I come back to their reflections to argue in favor of my understanding of the life of garment kormi. ‘At Least We Do Not Have to Worry About Our Next Meal’ Ayjina, a 30-year-old female from Sathkhira,2 had been working in the factory for three years. She was working in the sample section, where samples of different products were made before mass production. I met her the first time during a group discussion arranged in the medical center of the garment factory. The social and labor welfare officer had asked a 2

 A district in south-western Bangladesh.

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supervisor in the sample section to send a few workers. She was one of the workers who came for the discussion. After that day, I had the chance to talk to her on several occasions, and from her testimony, I reconstructed her life here. She came to Gazipur searching for work after a flood destroyed her home. She found work in the garment industry. One of her maternal uncles had been working in the knitting section; thus, he was able to help her get the job. She had one son, who lived in Sathkhira with her parents. Her son was five years old when she and her husband decided to come to Dhaka. Her son had not wanted to come to Gazipur, she said, because he did not like living in the city in a confined place. Instead, he preferred to stay in the village. Also, she and her husband would have to be working outside of the home all day, and her son would feel lonely. She added another reason why she could not bring her son with her: because of the high cost of living. She lived with her husband, who worked as day labor in the surrounding areas. Her husband’s income was not fixed or regular. Sometimes he could earn money, and sometimes, especially during rainy seasons, he could not make much. She once said, ‘We are alive because of this job. At least we do not have to worry about our next meal.’ She stressed that her life was fine before, at home in the village, and she recalled her life of 2010. She used to live in a joint family with her in-laws. Her parents-in-law lived in their household, as her husband was their eldest son. Her brother-in-law also lived on the premises, but he would eat separately. They had a small piece of land that her husband cultivated. However, the return they received from the land was not enough. Therefore, her husband and father-in-law also worked as agricultural laborers. She said they decided to come to work in the city when a flood affected their house and destroyed the crops. They considered working in the garment industry as one of their options. As one of her maternal uncles was working in a factory, they thought they might find work there. Her husband was reluctant about the decision, though, thinking he would not be able to cope with working in the garment factory. He could only see himself working in the fields. However, after thinking about the possible outcomes, they realized, ‘What’s the worst that could happen? We could always return to the village if things do not work out.’ When they arrived at Gazipur, they stayed at her uncle’s place for the first few days. The following week, they rented their own place, a small room. She said, they had no furniture and used to make up their bedding on the floor to sleep. Two weeks after arriving, she got her first job at the same factory where her

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uncle worked. Her husband had tried to get work in an adjacent factory, but he did not like it and chose to work as a day laborer instead. There was plenty of construction work in the area, and her uncle introduced him to some of the local contractors with whom he started working. At this point, I asked her, ‘How has your life changed because of the garment work?’ She replied, ‘Everything we have today is because of my work in the garment factory. We had nothing when we came here. Now, we have furniture at our home, and we have bought furniture for the village home, too. We also restored that house, and now we can save money for the future.’ I asked her, ‘You have been working in the factory, but what is your future plan? What do you wish to do in the future?’ She replied, ‘We want to save money to start up a small shop in the village market. But we have to build a new house before we start the business. Therefore, we still have to save a lot of money. We have to think about our son and other family members, too.’ She continued, ‘My son is now studying in class two. I hope he will study well and work in an office job in the future.’ She had a fixed deposit scheme in a bank in Sathkhira, which was in her husband’s name. They sent money via bKash (mobile banking) to her brother-in-law, who deposited it. She disclosed that when she received her salary, she gave all of the income to her husband. Her husband then took care of their expenditures. She visited her village home twice a year, during the Eid holidays. These were the details I collected during our initial meeting. I wanted to understand her daily life both inside and outside the factory setting. Thus, I met her on different occasions thereafter to discuss issues relating to her family life, her role in the family, and the future she saw for herself and her family. From Ayjina’s story alone, we can discern different dimensions of life that drove women to become garment workers. Garment work presented a way out of economic crises, which arose when income-generating activities were lost, or people experienced a loss of income for other reasons. However, garment work presented its own limitations, owing to the limited income one received and the expenditures of city life. Furthermore, workers had to reorganize their family life and relations with their extended family. This case illustrates how kinship relations were used in the process of becoming a garment worker. Additionally, it indicates that workers wanted to reach for a different future through factory work. It seems that people viewed their time there as transitional, not permanent. They perceived it as a temporary crisis period, which they wanted to pass through toward a future. Unfortunately,

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most of them could never reach that future, as manifested by the large number of workers who continued working until they had been there for 12 years or even more. ‘The Return One Receives from Garments Is Better than Agriculture’ Shah Alam, a 37-year-old (male) garment worker, worked in the garment factory for more than 12 years. Previously, he had been a farmer in the village. His father had owned 15 bigha (approximately 5 acres) of land; however, he had sold much of the land to arrange dowries for the weddings of Alam’s sisters. He had seven of them. It became unsustainable to live off of the agricultural returns of the remaining land. So, he started to think about working in the garment industry. He got married before he decided to come to Gazipur to work; thus, he and his wife got jobs in the industry. They thought they would save one person’s income and cover expenses with the other’s. After I asked about his experiences in getting a job in the garment factory, he explained how he had gotten it. He also talked about the changes in his life that had come through working in the industry. He said that one of his paternal cousins was working at the same factory where he worked when I met him. He and his wife had come to his cousin with enough money to sustain them for a short time. They did not get jobs quickly, though. His wife got into garment work before he did. He initially worked as a rickshaw puller, spending half of each day at this task to earn money, and the rest of the time, he looked for jobs in the factories. He would walk around the industrial area, meeting people and looking for job circulars. Then one day, his cousin informed him that there would be recruitment in a garment factory. He went to the gate of the garment factory. Inside, he met with a supervisor who said they required an educational certificate, a certificate from a local government office, and four copies of photographs. The next day, he was hired at the garment factory as a helper. He had to go through medical tests during which his height and weight were measured, and then he started working. He worked as a helper for two months and received BDT 2500 a month as salary (at present, USD 1 is equal to BDT 84). He could not support his family on this income and tried to get promoted to an ‘operator’ position. He was looking for opportunities.

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One day he went to the gate of another factory and asked the security guards whether they needed workers or not. The security guards informed him that they did and let him through. Inside the factory, he met a knitting supervisor. He said that the knitting supervisor asked him how long he had been working. Even though he had been working for only two months, he replied that he had been working for two years. The supervisor asked other questions about the machine, and then asked him to demonstrate his skills. One of his friends had faced the same situation and failed the test. Nevertheless, he passed and was taken to meet the production manager, who also asked about his experience and how long he had been working. The production manager offered him the job, saying he could start working that day. After he submitted all the papers at the factory administration office, he joined as an operator with a salary of BDT 4600. He worked there for two and a half years. At that point, he returned to the previous factory as a senior operator with a salary of BDT 7000. On a subsequent occasion, I came to know about his family. In Gazipur, he lived with his wife and two daughters. His parents and youngest sister lived in their village home. He said that his family had supported their move to the city, saying, ‘Why are you suffering in the village? Many people are making a living for themselves in Dhaka. You do not need to be roasting in the sun all day. You should try the garment industry.’ At this point, I asked him how he perceived his work in the garment industry and how it had changed his life. He replied, ‘My experience of working in the garment sector is good. Some people have not done well. But people who are bad themselves find bad things everywhere.’ He said he lives a more solvent life than before. He could buy land and continue paying for his daughters’ education. His elder daughter had taken the SSC examination. He revealed that they were also able to accrue some savings. He remarked that those who have around 15 bigha (5 acres) of agricultural land live a comparatively poorer life than a garment worker does. This case, in addition to the case described earlier, illustrates how garment workers navigated their opportunities to earn a living and weighed the different opportunities that came their way. ‘I Can Make Changes in My Life Because of My Earnings in Garment Work’ Firoz, a 40-year-old male, was a supervisor who had been working for 17 years in the garment industry. Before starting work there, he had tried

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other jobs and businesses. He had plans to set up a printing press. He had bought an offset printing machine and a photocopy machine. However, he could not continue with this plan, as his partner betrayed him. Like many others, he had come to work in the garment factory when he had run out of options. He was hired into the garment sector in 1998. He said it was easy to start working. One day, he just went to the gate of a garment factory and started working. He continued, ‘Now the process requires a lot of paperwork. People need to submit a CV, a National ID, etc., but back then, we started working, and after a few days, the paperwork was completed. We asked colleagues for help and prepared the CV and other documents on the job.’ He regarded the garment industry as a solution to the economic crisis. He said, All my cousins work in the garment sector. We do not have enough money to bribe anyone to get government jobs. These days, every household in the village has someone working in the garment industry. Previously, a helper used to get 1600 taka [BDT]. Now a helper gets 5300 taka [BDT]. Everyone is surviving because of garment factory work. With overtime income, everyone earns around 7000 taka [BDT]. A person can live on 3000–3500 taka [BDT] a month. So, a person can send home around 3500–4000 taka [BDT] a month.

Firoz had three brothers. Two of his brothers lived in the village with his parents. One of his brothers used to work and live in Malaysia. His wife and two sons also lived in the village. His father was a farmer. They had some land, which his father cultivated along with his two other brothers. They had invested a lot of money to send his younger brother to Malaysia for work. They had taken up a loan, which they were repaying. Firoz’s eldest son studied in class nine. He said that the last time he visited the village, he had arranged private tuition (English, mathematics, and science) for his son. He said, ‘I send money, and my wife manages the household in the village. She also saves from my income. I just earn. After getting my salary, I send it to my wife. She takes care of my sons and parents. She also helps my mother, who is ill due to old age and needs to take medicine regularly.’ Regarding the contribution of garment work to his future, he commented, Whatever good happened in my life is because of this work. I could make changes in my life because of my earnings from the garment work. I built a

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new house in the village, which was a result of my savings. Nobody helped me; I have managed all this from my income. I have two sons. I have been working in the garment industry since before my sons were born. They are now 16 and 12 years old. I have raised them from my income. My wife was ill once, and I had to spend around 1.5 lac taka [BDT 150 thousand] on her care. I managed all of these expenses from the income I made by working in the garment factory. We have to be careful in life. We should always think about the ways we can improve our lives and save for the future. We have to think, plan, and work accordingly. If we waste money, we cannot improve our life.

Firoz’s case indicates the different dimensions of life a garment worker lives: the changing administrative process of recruitment at the garment factories, the widespread phenomena of garment work among the people of the villages, and the pattern of family relationships in Bangladesh regarding the investment of individual income. ‘The Hard Work Is Worthwhile’ Rahima, a 20-year-old female, was an operator. She had been working in the garment industry for three years. She used to study before starting work in the garment factory. She stressed that it was because of family problems that she had to go to work there. When she was trying to find a job, she did not get an easy entry. Many offices would not recruit her because she was too young. But one apa (elder sister), with whom she did not share any blood or affinal relations but was a neighbor, helped her a lot. She took her to a factory and talked with a supervisor and the management to help her get the job. She got a position as a helper (assistant operator) and nine months later was promoted to the post of an operator. One of her paternal uncles was sick. Thus, her father had to mortgage some land and use the money for his younger brother’s treatment. Later, after she started working in the factory, her father became ill, and thus they were still unable to pay off the mortgage. Rahima mentioned that her situation had not improved much and remarked, ‘I do earn enough, but my father is sick. I have to spend a lot of money on his treatment. Besides that, there are many changes in my life. I contribute to the family’s finances. But things have not improved for me much because of the circumstances relating to my father’s illness.’ I tried to understand what changes she was referring to, and then she said,

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When I decided to find work, I encountered many problems. Many of my relatives tried to talk with my parents and raised questions about the work I might find. When I was leaving for Dhaka, they asked, ‘What will you do there?’ Afterward, when I started working, they asked, ‘What kind of job is it?’ However, once I began contributing money to the family, everyone appreciated me, saying, ‘She is good. She is earning money and working hard; what is the harm in that?’

As Rahima was not following the religious-sanctioned cultural norms of segregation of work based on gender, her relatives raised questions about her work prospects in the city. However, from the above statement, we see that the focus on cultural norms ended up shifting from the idea of ‘women working outside the home’ to the ‘kind of work women are doing outside the home.’ Further, it changed along with her contributions, which led to the new idea of being a ‘good’ daughter for the family. Even though she said that her work at the garment factory did not make significant changes in her life when compared to the changes in others’ lives (for example, given that her father could not get back the mortgaged land), she still saw the hard work she was doing as worthwhile. She stated, ‘Now that I can earn, I can care for my own needs. I do not have to be dependent on others. I can also contribute more to my family. All these things are worth the hard work. I can also save some money.’ Rahima’s case shows a dimension of garment work where female workers had to defy religious norms and cultural hindrances in the process of becoming garment workers. ‘It Is Good but not Good Enough’ Shaila had been working in the factory for five years. She had been working in the same factory for the entire duration and lived in a place which was only a few minutes’ walk from the factory. Her maternal uncle, who had been working in the factory for a while, brought her from the village. She came with him and started living with his family, which included his wife and two children. She lived with them for one year before she found a place to live independently. She started working the day she arrived in the city. She said, ‘I came to the gate and got the job of a helper. The regulations were not as strict then as they are now. When I started working, my mother wanted me to go back to the village, but I insisted on working.’

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When I asked if she enjoyed working in the garment factory, her reply was ambivalent. She said, It is good but not good enough. When I realize that I could live as other well-off girls do with their families, I feel bad working in the factory. However, when I realize I would be doing nothing if I lived in the village and working in the garment factory gives me income, I feel like working.

Shaila was not married. She rented a room and lived alone. During my fieldwork, one of her sisters was visiting her. She explained, ‘She is here for a visit. She will leave next month.’ About her income, she said, ‘I get my salary at the end of the month. With the salary, I pay my room rent, buy food, and save some for the future. I do not send money home regularly, but occasionally I give them 1000/2000 taka [BDT]. It takes 3000 taka [BDT] to rent a room alone.’ She continued, ‘Sometimes my mother asks for money. My siblings study and my father cannot always pay for all of them. I tend to help out sometimes. I do not need to help every month. I save money in a bank using a monthly deposit scheme. I can save up to 2500 taka [BDT] every month. I do not waste any money.’ She went on, My father wants me to go back home, but I think it is better to work rather than do nothing. Whenever I have holidays, I go to the village. I do not want to spend my holidays here. We get 7 or 8  days off during Eid. Sometimes when the work pressure is high, we work on weekends, and in that case, we get extra days off during the Eid festival. When I go home, I spend time with my sisters and cousins. Occasionally, I visit them at their houses and meet other relatives.

About her future plans, Shaila said, ‘I am not beautiful enough, so who would marry me?’ Then she admitted, ‘There were some proposals at home, but I do not want to get married now. I will marry later, but I do not know when (whenever God wishes). If God decides, no one can change it.’ About the contribution of the garment industry to her life, she declared, ‘Without the opportunity of the garment industry, people would have starved to death. We are a poor country. What would we have done to make a living? There is no opportunity except in garment factories. The garment industry has created many opportunities. However, I did not experience any significant changes. Who I was five years ago, I am still today.’

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Shaila’s case adds one more dimension to our understanding of garment work: how workers sometimes wanted to leave garment work, but the idea and importance of the income for the workers induced them to continue working. Her case also shows how social and familial relations, as well as economic needs, created the conditions that encouraged female workers to continue working in the factories. We can also identify that simultaneous to defying the religious norms of purdah (seclusion) for women, they did relate their present condition and their future prospects in terms of religious determination. During the discussions with my interlocutors, it became evident that the workers’ decision to work in the garment factory was influenced by the socio-economic situation of their respective families.

Garment Kormi: Contextualizing Industrial Lives I did my fieldwork in a garment factory that employed approximately 2000 workers (50 percent of whom were women). It was a knitting factory that produced sweaters. The factory was located on the outskirts of Dhaka. The manufacturing process was set up to ensure higher production values. Different sections of the factory were designed to complete the various tasks in producing the garments. The factory produced samples of potential products, and buyers would choose from these samples and place an order. The factory’s first step was to collect yarn. Sometimes the buyers themselves supplied the yarn. It was collected in hank or spool form, which was wound into cones in the ‘winding section.’ In the ‘knitting distribution’ section, wound cones were distributed among the knitting operators. Once different parts of the sweaters were knitted and checked in the ‘quality control section,’ the sweater panels were distributed in the ‘linking section.’ After linking was completed, loose yarns were trimmed in the ‘trimming section,’ and the sweaters were checked by the ‘light checking machine.’ If any problems were found, those were repaired in the ‘mending section.’ After light checking approved a sweater, button attaching and holing were done in the ‘sewing section.’ Afterward, sweaters were washed and ironed. In the ‘finishing section,’ everything was rechecked. Finally, the garments were folded and packed. In regard to the daily routine of the factory, the workers started at 8  a.m. and worked till 1  p.m., when they had a one-hour lunch break. They resumed at 2 p.m. and usually worked until 7 p.m., which included two hours of overtime. During the peak season, work continued until

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9  p.m. and could even stretch to 12  a.m. If the workers worked after 7 p.m., they were given a 15-minute break and were served snacks from the factory. For each overtime hour, workers received an additional BDT 40 (approx. 40 cents). At the start of the workday, they submitted their ID card/timesheet at the factory gate, and their cards were returned to them before the end of the day’s work. In the meantime, the administration wrote down the duration of their work on the card for that specific day. Workers got an attendance bonus of BDT 400 a month (USD 4.5); however, they did not get the bonus if they were more than 10 minutes late to work for three days or longer. The factory also had a system in which those who worked at a ‘piece rate’3 rather than the fixed salary were given a ‘production bonus.’ During the workday, workers did not have permission to go outside of the factory area. The factory gates were guarded, and if they had to go out, they had to get a slip with the signature of their respective supervisor and the floor manager. They could not even go out to smoke or drink tea in the nearby stalls. Nonetheless, there were some informal practices. In the surrounding walls of the factory was a small hole where workers could get snacks, tea, or even cigarettes from hawkers outside. The Recruitment Process: The Long Wait On my first day of fieldwork, I arrived at the factory with the NGO manager, who introduced me to the factory manager. I entered the factory through a small gate adjacent to the admin office. The admin office was in a tin-shaded building. One part of this office was set aside as the ‘time section.’ This section was responsible for issuing ID cards to the workers and keeping records of how long they worked each day. Even though it was lunchtime when I had arrived, I had seen a few women and men waiting beside the factory. I had not had the chance to talk to them at that time. However, during my stay, I repeatedly saw such gatherings in front of different factories and engaged the people in small talk. They were there in the hopes of getting a job. As a stranger, it was difficult to approach them and explain what I was doing. Instead, I chose to rely on my key interlocutors for the details of their waiting-to-be-hired experiences, and from 3  In the garment factory, workers are paid by two methods. Some are paid a fixed monthly salary, and some are paid on the basis of how many pieces of the product they produce. The rate of a piece is declared during the first week of each month.

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these, I tried to glean how things operated at the surface. Factories recruited workers in large numbers when orders were placed. Otherwise, they recruited workers in small numbers every month. The absence rate of workers in the factory was 2–3 percent every day. Therefore, factories recruited workers in small numbers every month, depending on the rate of resignations. When it was necessary to recruit only a few operators, the recruitment process was not very visible from the outside. It was mainly conducted through personal connections. When the factories recruited many people, aspirant workers had to wait for a long time at the factory gates. The ‘long wait’ had several features. Men and women stood in small groups, and local vendors sold snacks. Aspirant workers waited for permission to go inside the factory while they chatted among themselves. They arrived in the morning and patiently waited, unsure of when they would be called inside. They waited without complaint. Sometimes security personnel asked them to move away from the entrance. Sometimes when a car or truck with shipment products came or went, the guards would clear the road. People who had been waiting at the gates would try then to get a sneak peek inside, but the security guards would move people away and close the big gates again. Once the administrative officials in the factory were ready, security personnel led the aspirant workers into the factory in a line. They needed their short curriculum vitae, birth certificate, and voter ID card. Workers would bring all of these papers with them. The documents were collected and listed by the human resource/admin office. Interviews were different for different positions. For helper positions, there was no formal requirement—however, those who applied for the post of operator needed to have work experience. The line manager or floor manager interviewed the applicants about their work, and sometimes they were asked to demonstrate their abilities. Once applicants were recruited as workers, the administrative process included getting an attendance card and medical certificate from the factory’s in-house doctor, who certified that they were fit for work. Usually, this ready-made paper was simply signed by the doctor. The Inclusive Excluded Space Large metal doors marked the entrances of factories, and guards always remained present at the gates. In the factory where I did my fieldwork, there were three entrances, which all led to an open courtyard from different directions. Other factories in the area had a similar structure of an area

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somewhat secluded from the outside. Workers needed their ID cards to get into the factory, and others/visitors had to register by signing in and getting a temporary visitor ID. From the courtyard in different directions, one could see different production floors. Just as the workers could not enter the factory without their ID cards, they were not allowed to leave the factory without the permission of their supervisors. They needed to give a written slip to the guards at the gates to leave the factory premises before the factory broke for lunch or before the day ended. It was a place with its own rules. In some factories, one would see signs like ‘No ID, No Entry’ at the gates, and in the finishing section, no one was allowed to carry any metal objects for safety reasons. They were extra cautious not to leave needles in the finished garments. There were ‘No Smoking’ signs all over the place. A factory area was a place of its own, with its power structure and hierarchy of people apparently cut off from the outside. During the Lunch Breaks Lunch breaks in the factory gave me chances to talk to the workers. The factory operated on a clock, and usually, at 1 p.m., the factory’s gates were opened for lunch, and all of the workers went out at once. Men and women streamed out the doors. They were, of course, mixed when they got out of the factory, but there were initially distinct streams of males and females. Some days I walked along with them to witness their interactions outside. Most were in a hurry to walk back home, but some chatted with friends, some bought crockeries, and some purchased snacks and vegetables from the marketplace. Some workers picked up their daily groceries at the shop where they could use credit. During these lunch breaks, I could also find workers who did not leave the factory but continued to work. This usually happened when people were falling behind in their production target or made mistakes and needed to alter the product on which they had been working. The Silent Power of the ‘Seniors’ Whenever I talked with the operators, either male or female, and a floor manager or anyone from a higher rank passed by, they tended to act as if they were concentrating on their work entirely and were not talking to me or anyone else. As part of the monitoring process, different layers of supervisors and managers from production teams periodically visited the factory

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production floors. The floor manager would walk down the production line a few times a day, and the production manager would come around at least once a day and talk with the workers about how the work was going, what problems they were facing, and so on. In addition, the factory general manager came around before any audit was conducted to see whether all the structural requirements were in place. This hierarchical nature of relations was distinctive, with the managers’ power and authority silently displayed in their gestures even if they were not directly interacting with the workers. The very influence that the floor manager had over supervisors and operators could be witnessed by a similar pattern of fear and subordination displayed by the floor manager to his superiors. Despite this dynamic, I had seen workers mocking the factory general manager after he had visited the production floor before an audit (see Chap. 8).

The Structure Inside the Factory Social relations of power, which were constructed and expressed in the daily interactions between the workers and the supervisors in the factories, can be understood by exploring and analyzing modes of domination in the garment factories and how the workers were caught up in them while enacting different covert forms of resistance. During my time at the factory, I observed myriad power relations within it, which were enacted in daily practices—between workers and supervisors, and between workers and the management or administration. Operators and Supervisors During my time on the production floor, I observed many instances where supervisors wanted the operators to work more and/or faster, whereas the operators wanted more breaks in-between work. As the supervisors were responsible for managing the work of the operators so that the production deadlines could be met, they always tried to force the workers to work continuously without taking breaks. In addition, new operators who were slower in their work compared to the experienced operators endured stricter monitoring. One of my interlocutors divulged, ‘New operators are supervised and pressured to work continuously.’ Similarly, to meet the production quota by the deadline, workers were pressured by their supervisors. In response to my query ‘What makes a good operator?’ one of the supervisors replied, ‘One who is loyal to the work and demonstrates good

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behavior is a good operator.’ Supervisors expected operators not to protest when they pressured them to finish the production quota on time. Supervisors also controlled the workers by using their power of authority concerning the ‘recommendation for leave.’ Workers needed a supervisor’s recommendation for any kind of leave. Moreover, since supervisors controlled the production line, they decided who would work on which pattern. If a supervisor asked an operator to produce different patterns every three or four days, the operator’s salary lessened drastically, as for every new pattern, the operator had to learn the design, and this slowed down the workflow. When machines were out of order and needed repairing or just needed a change of needles, the operators were dependent upon supervisors in order to obtain instruments and extra supplies of needles from the stock section. Workers were also reliant on the supervisors to check whether they were getting the correct measurements of the products and to solve minor problems in measurements by adjusting the machines. Asma, a 40-year-old operator, once explained the power of the supervisors. She said, If workers become sick while working in the factory, they are taken to the medical center. If the doctor or paramedic suggests leave for workers, then they get leave; if not, then workers have to continue working. However, sometimes, even if a doctor suggests that workers leave and rest, supervisors do not want to give them leave. Then the compliance officers need to come to the line and request that the supervisors permit early leave.

Asma also commented on how personal relations with supervisors can result in better income. She relayed, I work a lot but do not get a raise in salary, yet around me, I see workers who do not work a lot but have a better salary. If you have connections with higher officials or supervisors, it is easy to get better pay. This is because they recognize certain workers and favor those who have personal relations with them.

Workers helped one another in understanding the tasks, supplying required parts, and repairing machines. Within the factory, workers from the same locality formed solidarity groups and kinship networks (as described in the next chapter) to help one another. Rahima mentioned, ‘When I began working, I got help from the operators. I tried to learn skills from them. I

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saw what they did and asked them how to operate the machines. One operator treated and instructed me like she was my elder sister (sashon korse boro apa’r moto). She used to teach me everything she could’ In opposition to the supervisors’ power, operators also used a different kind of power to get what they wanted. Sometimes the workers would hide specific types of yarn, needles, or other small repair kits which they already had access to, so that they could take a break while the supervisors were trying to locate the item that was needed in the factory’s stock (see also Ong, 1987, p. 210ff). Otherwise, they persuaded and forced supervisors to grant them short leaves. I once observed an operator asking for early leave, but the supervisor said, ‘You must fulfill the production target; otherwise, I will not approve your leave. You enjoyed early leave yesterday.’ The operator continuously nagged and asked for leave. He started to talk with other operators and was in this way disturbing them. After that, the supervisor asked him to get a slip for an early leave. When the operator left, the supervisor said, ‘If I had not given him leave, he would have hampered five other operators in their work.’ From these discussions, I have learned that because of work pressure and fear of not meeting the production target, supervisors rarely physically assaulted male workers. On the other hand, supervisors abused female workers verbally. In most cases, workers could not help fellow workers openly. If someone tried to help, the supervisor would also scold that person. Therefore, nobody tried to oppose what the supervisors did. I witnessed supervisors asking operators to work and not interfere with others’ matters when trying to stick up for fellow workers. Workers attempted to console those who suffered by saying, ‘If you want work, you must forget all such small incidences.’ When I asked Asma, ‘Why do not workers go to the general manager (GM) or production manager (PM) to complain about the supervisors’ behavior?’ She said, ‘The GM and PM never do anything.’ She continued, ‘This happens because of the production target. They move up the target that we need to reach, saying that in this way the government has increased the workers’ salaries. Thus, if we do not raise productivity, how will they pay us more?’ She was thereby explaining that everyone on the floor was more stressed at such times, which explained the supervisors’ behavior. Regarding why other workers did not oppose the supervisors’ harsh behavior in support of workers who suffered abuse, she said,

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Everyone is in the same situation. Therefore, nobody can help anyone else. Sometimes with supervisors, our relationship is stressed because they force us to work more. However, with the admins, our relationship is good. They talk nicely, behave nicely but never make the right decision when we complain about bad behavior or physical assault. The PM and GM never exhibit bad behavior. It is done by supervisors or the floor managers, and in a way, they [the PM and GM] end up approving such behavior.

An operator named Rafiqul Islam told me, ‘In the garment industry, bad behavior happens. If someone scolds an operator, nobody openly protests. Everyone fears losing one’s job. When I am scolded, the worker beside me listens and only afterward consoles me. In compliant factories,4 there is less scolding and physical violence.’ He went on to say, ‘I have better relations with colleagues (as well as with my seniors). We stay together. Individually, they are good to me. When there are hard feelings about something, we go to our seniors. I go to my boss, and if he suggests I go further up, then I go.’ From his comment, we learn how the structure of hierarchy was maintained in every situation. Operators had to follow the orders of their supervisors, and supervisors had to follow the instructions of the floor manager. In case of any problem, an operator reported to the supervisor, and with the supervisor’s consent, the operator might approach the floor manager. This was true in the case of the work process or even in the case of disagreements and problems. The power of the supervisors was also manifested in controlling the workplace and deciding operators’ overtime. Asma mentioned, ‘Supervisors do not record the overtime work of the operators if they do not produce enough. Thus, they will not get the overtime payment and will only receive general payment.’ On the contrary, Asma emphasized that workers could work hard and thus avoid the supervisors’ abuse. She said, ‘Those who do not work well face more abuse.’ Similarly, Rahima said, ‘Supervisors give us the production target. If we do not fulfill the target, the shipment will not be on schedule. So, if the targets are not being met, supervisors ought to force workers to do better. We are willingly working to meet the target and produce enough for shipment. Therefore, we have to work a bit longer.’ About the interrelations of the workers, Jesmin commented, 4  These are the factories that are fully compliant with the requirements of local national labor laws and other requirements, such as no child labor, no discrimination, ensured Occupational Health and Safety (OHS), freedom of association, compliance with working hours, and custom and security compliance.

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People have better relations with those who work similar to their own—with operators or helpers, or even the ironmen. However, with supervisors, work relations take more consideration. Supervisors do not misbehave without reason. If we work, then the relations remain good. Supervisors always give extra leeway to those workers who are from the same locality or with whom they have personal relationships. Sometimes, when I have met my target, but someone else’s target is not yet completed, the supervisor expects me to work in her place, even if I needed and wanted to go home early. This can feel bad. I had met my target, yet I had to work even more. […] Regarding getting leave, people who are good operators or who do as the supervisor demands (khademdari) get leave easily. But those who do not work well or do not always follow the supervisor’s demands do not get leave easily.

She also said that sometimes they complain about bad behavior in the admin office. On our floor, there are 12 supervisors. Among them, one supervisor is bad. He curses at our parents’ names. Sometimes, he forces workers to get off the machine. He tells the workers to get off his line and never come back. Sometimes workers go to the welfare office or admin office to complain. Then they call in the supervisor, and he sits there for some time.

Moreover, she emphasized the workers’ responsibility of following the demands of the factory so that problems regarding supervisors might not arise. ‘If we work well, then this bad behavior will not happen. Sometimes the tasks are complicated, so they [the supervisors] need to consider that as well.’ She reported that workers no longer cared whether they met their target during a scheduled task: ‘We do not face any harsh consequences— only bad words or having to work a bit longer. We have endured such situations so many times that now it does not matter.’ Firoz, one of the supervisors in the factory, talked about the problems on the production floor, stressing how important it was to plan out the production work and execute these plans. He said, ‘When we have a shipment deadline, we plan out a monthly production target. We need better GMs and PMs to calculate and make these plans accordingly. But whatever the plans are, we need better workers to execute them.’ He also said, ‘We set a production target based on the average time required to do a task. Sometimes, the better workers get what is for them an easy target, while the new workers fall short of the target. Once we have set a target for a specific time, whoever finishes early can enjoy free time. Whoever does not

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finish has to continue working.’ He also explained how they would manage to meet a production target if they were falling short of meeting the target as a whole. He said, If we need some alterations to modify garments having faults in design, we ask a few operators to come and work during the weekend. We do not run the entire floor [at these times]. Sometimes, the workers will arrive in the morning, and before lunch, we have finished the work. This is the result of compliance; it is vital to follow all of these rules. If any breach happens, we will not get further orders.

Concerning complaints of bad behavior by the supervisors, he said that some supervisors have acted this way but that the factory never promoted those who did so; instead, the supervisors were trained to focus on getting the work done without resorting to harsh measures. He said that the supervisors, floor managers, and production managers meet and discuss the labor process in the factory. We have meetings twice a week. We are trained not to misbehave with workers. We are taught that if we approach them in an egalitarian way, it persuades them to work harder. When we talk amicably and request something by saying, ‘Brother/Sister, do it for the factory,’ they work enthusiastically, but if we use harsh words, they are aggrieved and do not work well.

He also mentioned, ‘It is due to such heated words and situations that all the protests happen. In the factories, there are many people cramped in a small place. It does not take long for an issue to spread. If we can improve production without misbehaving, it is better for all of us. The operators will also pray for us.’ He stressed this fact by saying, ‘All the bad behavior is initiated by the managerial staff. If everyone is properly trained and we can improve production without misbehaving, why would we not choose that? Then we would lose nothing.’ Firoz also emphasized the workers’ (including his own) responsibility toward the factory. ‘If everyone works honestly and follows the factory’s rules, we can progress. We have to work to improve the factory and it, in turn, will improve our future. Sometimes there are meetings scheduled after office hours. We have to attend those so that the factory gets better.’ During my time on the knitting floor, I often observed that workers managed to get time off from the intense pressures of work and meeting

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deadlines. I saw workers with earphones in and listening to music, some talking with nearby operators, and others taking a break and watching music videos on their mobile phones. Later, I understood why it was like this on the knitting floor. Since workers were paid based on their level of production, they were not strictly monitored. Additionally, I was there during the lean season, so there was less pressure anyway. However, in the finishing section of the factory, where workers were paid a fixed salary, supervisors handed down stiff production targets so that everyone kept working at a good pace and did not spend time gossiping. Moreover, when there was less work to do in the finishing section, workers were given other jobs, such as packing up goods. The factory structure has been influential in constituting workers as moral subjects through its mechanisms of supervision. In the dynamic interactions between the workers and others—that is, the supervisors, floor managers, production managers, general managers, and owners of the factories—workers have also constituted themselves. This constitution has happened due to both the structure of the work process and the self-­ constitution of the workers themselves, and these are different sides of the same coin (cf. Hardt, 1998). The created categories of persons that work at the factories, such as good operators who are loyal to their work responsibilities, initiated new subjectivities among the workers, and it also provided the possibility of establishing certain rules of conduct. In concretizing the order of the work process, the subjectivities of women workers were used. But these had been formed partly outside of the factories. One of the male workers reported, ‘The factory prefers female workers, as they are easy to handle. For example, let’s say that in the finishing section, there are eight males and two females, and the supervisor wants to increase the work pace. When he shouts at them, male workers might resist, but females would continue to work, keeping their heads down.’ Moreover, the workers often told me that supervisors could behave harshly with the female workers, as they would not react like the males. However, new categories of social persons have emerged, that is, the good worker who is also a good daughter, which is based on social forces that lie outside the factories. These have connotations of religious and familial ethics, as can be seen in the relations of workers that are framed as family and loyalty, and performing these roles is of religious significance. Larger social forces in society have substantially influenced the formation of the subjectivities of the workers in the factory (cf. Hardt, 1998, p. 148), and life outside has been influenced in return. We have seen that women are praised because

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of their contributions toward the family and within the factory. This has served the dual purpose of cementing the rules and continuing the practice of workers making their own choices. I would argue that the factory has become a new ideological state apparatus in Bangladesh (cf. Althusser, 2017 [1998]). The state is in partnership with industries, teaching and training rural women to be docile, on time, hardworking, and to spread the state’s values of freedom and autonomy—economic independence that is reflected in workers’ lives (see Chap. 6). The ideological state apparatus, by working with more flexibility and intensity (cf. Hardt, 1998, p. 150), produces different forms of subjectivities. The institutions of control have become intensive and extensive in reformed ways as the improvement of personal and family futures have been integrated into the improvement of the factory. Workers’ Disagreements with Management About Salaries In the previous section, I focused on the interactions between workers and supervisors and how in their daily practices, new categorizations of workers and persons tended to emerge. In this section, I write about how the workers navigated the larger factory structure and gave form to their disagreements with the management. Tensions and power relations existed in the factory between the workers and the factory management. Here, though, the power exercise occurred mostly surrounding disputes regarding the piece rate. On occasion, when the piece rate was declared, workers would protest. Protests grew when workers thought that the rate was incredibly unjust. They would stop working on the floor and discuss the factory’s unfair practices regarding payment, leave, and forced overtime. Gradually, these grievances would spread among the other workers, who would sometimes stop working in demand of an increased rate. These protests were spontaneous. A few workers might then walk over to other sections to tell workers there to stop working to support their protest. If someone did not stop working, groups of workers might force them to stop, stating, ‘Your protest will benefit all.’ This type of protest also happened regarding delays in salary payments. During the last Eid (a religious festival) in 2015, the workers wanted to receive their salary a week before Eid. Despite the protest, the salary was paid on September 22, while the Eid day was on September 25. I suspect that the salary was not paid beforehand because, if the salary was given that early, many workers might have gone on leave early, which would have hampered production.

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However, the operators did not just sit back and wait for their salary, whenever that would be. They kept hounding the supervisors and the floor managers. As the salary was sometimes very late, it could create problems among the workers. One worker asked the supervisor when they would receive their salary. The supervisor said that maybe on the 19th. The operator said that he wanted to go on leave starting the 17th. The supervisor replied that there was nothing he could do; he could only pass on what the management had decided. Further, I observed a situation in which some of the knitted products were not approved and were returned to the knitting floor. The supervisor asked who had submitted their products, informing the operators about the problem. The operator replied, ‘You will get products depending on how the salary issue is handled. It is almost the middle of the month, yet we have not even received last month’s salary.’ The supervisor declared, ‘The factory management told all the supervisors that anyone could leave if they are not satisfied with the ‘system’ here.’ The workers’ other issues of dissatisfaction against the factory management concerned the Eid bonus, leave encashment, and the overtime rate. Workers commonly mentioned that they did not know what their basic salary was and what the overtime rate was. Their salary was calculated at one rate, and overtime was calculated at another. One of the workers disclosed, My basic income is 4500 taka [BDT], but my overtime is calculated at 33 taka [BDT] per hour. I do not understand what my overtime rate is. I should get 5000 taka [BDT] as my basic income, in which case I would get 50 taka [BDT] per hour as overtime. I have tried to talk to the GM and PM about this, but they skirt my questions, saying, ‘We do not understand the calculations.’

Another worker reported, ‘In the garment sector, workers do not understand salary calculation. The salary is increased by increasing the worker’s housing allowance; management does not increase the basic salary, because then the overtime income would increase.’ Regarding these issues, Jesmin maintained, ‘Nobody protests. The owner says what he will pay and threatens everyone with the statement that those who want to work can work, and if they are not happy, they may leave the factory.’

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Concerning the bad aspects of working in the garment factory, operators identified a few: the late payment of salaries, low piece rates, and zero or very limited bonuses during Eid. One of the operators revealed, During Eid, they give a bonus of 1000 taka [BDT], or 500, or even 250. The factory earns hundreds of thousands of taka [BDT]. What do they do with this money? We, operators, do not get anything. Due to late salary payments, the factory does not get new workers. Young workers do not want to continue working here. We have been working here for 8–10 years, and it has become like a family; if this were not the case, we would have also left.

He further said that because of the deprivations, workers have to suffer, ‘No operator in the factory wishes good things for the factory owner. Everyone curses the owner. The owner must pay what he owes us [on the Judgement Day]. We work here only to survive.’ Here we find that even though workers felt like kin to one another, some also thought that the owner deprived them. Thus, the workers cursed the owner and believed that God would make the right choice and make the owner pay for his mistreatment. Moreover, to increase their income, workers did not fill the orders of products that were ‘low rated.’ For example, if two patterns were being worked on simultaneously, workers tended to fill the order for the pattern, which according to the operators, was ‘better’ in terms of piece rate. The company had a strategy to control this behavior: they would stop issuing orders for multiple patterns at once. Instead, the workers would have to finish the pattern, which was not popular among them first. During the off-season, the garment industry usually offered low piece rates. As the demand for operators was low in the surrounding factories as well, the workers would have to work at this meager rate. However, during the peak season, when the demand for operators in every factory was high, the piece rate was increased. If a lower rate was offered, operators might leave to seek work in other factories. One of the operators said, ‘During the peak season, we are the boss in the knitting sector.’ Additionally, because operators had understandings with one another, they sometimes left the job to start working in another factory together. Factory owners could use law enforcement agencies in times of any unrest in the factories. For example, during one incident in which the workers struggled for a wage increase, thousands joined in the protests. However, one factory forced its workers to continue working. The owner

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called in the police for BDT 2000 per day to fire some bullets, and they managed to chase the workers off. My interlocutors also said that during these days, the workers who protested were fired. I asked whether, when workers were sacked, they could find work in other factories. One of the supervisors replied, ‘All of the workers who were fired are working in a nearby factory.’ The workers did not care that they got fired, as they got jobs in other factories. Sometimes factories had to wait to get workers, but workers got jobs instantly during the peak season. The factory filed cases against the workers who had protested for a salary increase. I learned about this when I went for tea with a supervisor outside of the factory. As we were returning, I saw a list of names with photos of people hanging on the gate and asked him, ‘What is this list for?’ He said, ‘It is a list of workers against whom the factory filed criminal cases.’ When I enquired more and asked why the company had filed cases against the workers, he replied that they had led a protest to demand an increase in the piece rate. I pointed toward a woman on the list who was accused with seven males and asked, ‘Did women participate in these violent protests?’ He responded, ‘They did, and this woman took the attendance card of a few fellow workers who did not want to stop working, so that they could not submit the card to the time section at the factory and therefore could not continue working.’ The attendance card was required to get into the factory, and the factory administration needed these cards to keep track of the work that workers were doing. After an act of resistance, the factory fired many workers. Later, these workers filed cases against the factory. Some of these workers were part of the workers’ federation, and thus they knew there was a labor court where they could file cases against the factory. People who were friends with the workers helped them with information regarding where they could file a lawsuit. One of the supervisors mentioned, ‘When workers seek the help of the labor federation to file a case, factory management sometimes gives the workers compensation or withdraws the case. As there is a chance of getting benefits/compensation from a factory by filing a case, this is sometimes enough incentive for workers to do so.’ This kind of help and support from other workers became evident whenever supervisors publicly harassed or physically abused workers. Ajana corroborated, ‘If a supervisor is behaving harshly or is physically assaulting someone, sometimes we go to higher officials to complain. We also encourage new workers to do the same and give support in proving the allegations.’ Regarding the management’s importance and responsibilities, the supervisor Firoz stated, ‘When

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management mistreats the workers, it affects the whole system. If the management is decent, then the factory and its workers run smoothly.’ Here we find that workers and factory management had contested relations, and the factories did not have absolute power over the workers. In response to their marginally vulnerable positions, workers themselves formed solidarity to help each other. In the following section, I focus on how we can understand the particularity of power relations in the Dhaka factories. Contested Authority in the Work Process In this section, I focus on how workers contested the power of the supervisors and factory management. This reveals how work process subjectivities are produced and challenged. Contrary to the factory’s power and authority, a range of resistance tactics existed for the workers that silently negotiated the contours of daily work relations. As we have seen, the workers often resorted to isolated nonverbal acts to gain a symbolic and physical space despite fixed factory rules. Workers employed these individual tactics against factory rules to lessen their workload, gain short leaves, or reap economic benefits (cf. Fegan, 1986). These tactics included frequent absences from the production floor. On the production floor, operators sometimes feigned ignorance about the technical details of work, continuously asked the supervisors about the patterns, thus slowing down the rate of production. Even in the absence of rebellion, workers’ awareness of exploitation was expressed in their assessment of the working conditions in the factories. Because of the hardworking conditions, most of the workers stated that they wanted to go back home and did not want to continue working in the garment factory. However, because of job uncertainty, they usually did not leave their factory in order to work in other factories. In their resistance against the factory management, we could see cooperation among the operators, such as when they would take short leaves, and their friends would take their attendance card from supervisors, which had already been filled out as if they had put in a full day of work; without the card, they would not have been able to enter the factory the next day. I have seen workers asking their friends to take their attendance cards from supervisors when leaving early. Despite their difficult employment situations, workers did challenge industrial discipline. In this regard, Fernandez-Kelly (1983) provided

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accounts of female workers in Mexico manipulating sexual images to earn short-term gains in the workplace (see also Lugo, 1990). Maquiladora workers, in many instances, resort to their sexuality to gain stability of employment. This practice appeared in response to the frequent sexual-­ advances made by men of superior positions and widespread sexual harassments (Fernandez-Kelly, 1983, p.  140ff). This was not so widespread among the garment workers in Dhaka. However, in the garment factory, female workers were often sexually harassed (see Siddiqi, 2003). My interlocutors mentioned that the sewing and inspection sections were places where sexual harassment had occurred. One of the female interlocutors conveyed, Some workers (women) have to deal with and avoid attention from the supervisors (who can help them understand the work), the floor manager (who can help in getting leave if required), and the admin officials (who maintain the working hours). Sometimes supervisors touch them while inspecting their tasks. They do so in a way that seems like they are supporting the workers, asking, ‘How is everything?’ and patting and rubbing their back.

Because of this, women preferred to work in factories where their husbands worked as well or to build networks of relations that would deter the possibility of such incidents. There were other covert resistances, such as working slowly in response to speeded-up pressures and avoiding low-­ rated tasks. The factory management did not recognize these as scattered acts of resistance; instead, they treated such resistance as evidence of personal traits in ‘not very good or even bad workers.’ In their everyday lives, workers did not collectively challenge the status quo, but they did oppose the pervasive, negative aspects or practices of some of the factory management. Thus, there was no fixed and constant authority but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary agents of authority and subordination. Among the factory workers were individuals who had the ideas, the will, and the courage to challenge the factory owners. These workers did not work faster but rather worked longer (see the next section), asked for and received short leaves, helped one another to attendance cards if someone left early, consoled each other when the supervisors spoke to them harshly. The forms of resistance employed among the factory workers could be analyzed using the concept of ‘everyday forms of

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resistance’ (Scott, 1989). According to Scott (1989), ‘everyday’ forms of resistance of subordinate groups include quiet and piecemeal processes. Similarly, my findings indicated that collective action against a factory owner was a rare event and occurred with an aim to achieve benefits like the early payment of salary rather than changes in the factory’s status quo. I have described some level of cooperation among the workers, which generally helped in achieving individual benefits, like short leave. Many intended acts of resistance backfired and produced consequences that were entirely unanticipated, and many of the workers lost their jobs (I expand on this in the next chapter). There was also symbolic resistance (for example, gossiping and ridiculing superiors). Based on ethnographic findings, I argue that, on the one hand, resistance and domination had a relational character and could be both fixed and institutionalized forms of power; on the other hand, these could also be less institutionalized and everyday forms of power (cf. Foucault, 1978a [1975]; Scott, 1985). Work and Time In relation to the above discussions, the ideas of contesting authority and newly emerging subjectivities will be clearer with a description of the ‘model of time’ that developed in the factory. One of the subjects that came up during discussions with operators, supervisors, and managers was their respective ideas of time and work (see Ashraf, 2017). They considered these ideas as very much related and crucial in understanding the factory. Compliance practices did not allow the factory to force workers to put in more than two hours of overtime a day.5 However, workers had to meet target quotas and thus had to work more than the permitted overtime. Beyond this overtime limit, the rest of the tasks that the workers did were not counted as production time. Jesmin Akter, an operator, once revealed, Previously we had to work on holidays or had to do extra overtime. Now we do not need to do that. Management and supervisors used to force us to work on holidays. They would keep a few lines open and tell us to come to work, threatening to hold back our salary. Or they would even hold back on filling out the attendance cards so that we had to go to work the next day. 5  I write about the compliance and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices in Chap. 8.

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Also, during Ramadan, they used to force us to work after iftar, but now they do not.

Thus, she was happy about the changes. However, she was discontent concerning the production targets that workers had to meet. She said, We are constantly forced to meet the production targets. When it comes to these, supervisors invariably become irritable. I have a target of 120 pieces an hour. Sometimes I might produce 120 pieces in one hour but could make only 100 pieces in the next hour. When the production team counts what I have done, they find it short and talk with the supervisor regarding my target not being met. Then the supervisor talks with me and is upset that the production numbers are lacking. Senior officials scold the junior officials, and then the junior officials scold us.

Here we find two ideas of time. The factory management placed importance on the ‘recurring aspect of time,’ calculating production by the hour and thereby trying to orient the workers into these short time frames. However, workers were focused on the ‘cumulative aspect of time,’ they faced these cumulative effects at the end of the day. Time was also a significant aspect of the process that supervisors used to punish the workers and with which they evaluated their performance. Jesmin stressed that if the workers could not meet the production targets on time, supervisors not only scolded but also punished them. As punishment, supervisors sometimes recorded in their cards that they had left the factory at five o’clock. Thus, their two hours of overtime work were lost. This pressure to meet production targets on time forced them to work independently, and therefore less communication could develop between the workers. Jesmin said, ‘Everyone is pressured to meet the production goals. Who can help whom? Sometimes if an operator on my line is free, she might help another with a few pieces.’ She also said, ‘When there is work, everyone is busy. If the operator behind me finishes her work before me, then she might be able to help me if I am too far behind. Sometimes senior management also asks other operators to help.’ The tension between ‘recurring time’ and ‘cumulative time,’ that is, the pressure to reach production targets in a limited time, also became an issue of contention between operators and supervisors. In this regard, Jesmin noted,

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Supervisors know how much an operator can produce. However, they do not take into account the breaks that a worker might need. Sometimes we need a drink of water or to go to the toilet. Supervisors do not include the time that this takes when they calculate the production target. If we are expected to produce 120 pieces every hour, then we cannot go to the toilet or take any breaks. Whenever we do take breaks, the supervisors scold us.

‘Cumulative time’ was crucial for the garment workers. This was understood from another of Jesmin’s comments: ‘I have to work overtime for 2 hours on paper, for which we get overtime pay. But we often have to work 30 minutes extra for which we do not get paid, and sometimes it even extends to an entire hour. Besides, the rate of overtime is low compared to our salary.’ She said at another point, ‘Every day we have to work 30 extra minutes. Occasionally, the workers do not comply. When that happens, they do not fill out the attendance card for 2 or 3 days. If workers are absent for even one day, they do not get their attendance bonus. Sometimes one day of unapproved leave is also counted as a resignation.’ Crises at the factories might arise when this type of mismatch occurred in the categorical understanding between the factory and the workers. In this regard, Elizabeth Dunn (2004) discussed the transformation and privatization of a Polish food processing company, explaining how a specific category of person was introduced by American management in a Poland-based factory. Dunn (2004) argued that a neoliberal concept of self-activating and self-motivating individuals and personhood was brought about through new job evaluations and auditing mechanisms. However, in factories, workers had contested the idea of neoliberal personhood promoted through the construction of a self-activating and self-­ motivating person. Polish workers continued to draw on another concept of the working person based on the socialist idea of personal connections nurtured by exchange and gift-giving (Dunn, 2004, p. 94ff). Dunn (2004, p.  184) argued that while compliance standards generated knowledge about products, processes, and people, the new categories of people and routines of work were reworked and contested by Polish workers. These challenges could be identified as forming a basis for the critique of contemporary capitalism (Dunn, 2004, p.  8). In the Bangladeshi context, similarly, workers had always complained about overtime; they said that supervisors used overtime as punishment. During one discussion, I asked Shaila whether she would be happy if there were no overtime at all. She replied, ‘We want overtime. If there were no overtime, the salary would

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only be just enough for rent and food.’ Similarly, Firoz claimed that without the overtime, they would earn around 1000 taka [BDT] less than what they did at that time. Based on these experiences, it seemed to me that overtime and the calculation of ‘time’ were essential aspects of the workers’ lives. Workers experienced a different nature of the use of ‘time’ on the factory floor. On the one hand, they were happy when they earned money because of overtime work. On the other hand, overtime was used by the supervisors as a mechanism of punishment when the factory chose not to pay the workers for the work they did. Further, in the stories mentioned above, we can see how the workers perceived their work in the factory as a transitory phase to bring a ‘better time’ in their future life. All these various orientations toward ‘time’ constitute what Ashraf (2017) has referred to as ‘garment-time’ and ‘garment-world.’ If we consider the work process as a management practice, time was an essential part of it. The workers experienced a distinction between their employer’s recurring ‘time’ and their own cumulative ‘time.’ Employers, that is, the supervisors, took every action to use the labor time and to make sure that this time was not wasted; thus, time acted as currency (Thompson, 1967). Time was the medium of exchange between the workers and the factory. Even though some workers were paid according to their production, the primary measure of regulation in the factory depended on how long workers had to work. The factory had to produce a certain number of products, just as the workers did individually, and they had a fixed amount of time to do so. Therefore, it was time that was sold by the worker to the owner of the factory. This is why supervisors forced workers to work faster and to work overtime. Time remained the primary mechanism of regulating workers’ conduct on the production floor. Attention to ‘time’ in the work process was necessary for synchronizing labor in the industry. Therefore, another dimension sprung up, where the factory workers used ‘time’ as a form of resistance toward factory supervisors’ insistence on quick production. During discussions with the workers regarding the intense production pressure they felt and how they managed this pressure, Jewel and Selina admitted that they did not always care about the supervisor’s insistence on quick production. They said that sometimes they tried to work faster, but sometimes they just took it easy. Jewel said, ‘The only punishment is that I will need to work a bit longer, and this is better than running like a horse all the time.’ The ‘time’ management in the factory was contested. For garment workers, factory work was not only something that brought income but

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was also a passage through a phase of life that would bring a better future. The model of time that we encounter in the life of factory workers is comprised of overlapping short horizons. The factory is a distinct world structured around short horizons, where a near future is constantly being fulfilled materially by production. It is this recurring feature that becomes the issue of contention between the workers and the factory management. For the factory, the possibility of achieving the distant future of prosperity is achieved through recurring near futures. But for the factory workers, the near future is cumulative to the medium or distant future of climbing out of the economic crisis. Therefore, the factory regime is established on common short horizons of the future, with a tension between recurring and cumulative aspects.

Concluding Remarks In understanding the transforming subjectivity of the workers, we may start by explaining the role of power in the labor process and in society, which contributes to the creation of the worker. Power is generally thought to be repressive; it is used to ensure the loss of freedom of workers, who are in a subordinate position in the capitalist work process (Marx, 2010 [1887]). Although the origins of power are material and arise from the control of economic processes, this power eventually takes control over the various ideas and obscures domination. Thus, it makes the relation of domination—subordination looks natural and thereby ensures workers’ compliance. This formulation of domination–subordination cannot be extricated from the relations of production, and it structures individuals’ experience of the world (Marx, 2010 [1887]). In particular, workers’ subjectivity is essentially defined in terms of labor (Marx, 2002 [1973]), and when workers’ subjectivity develops alongside the progression of capital, the workers come to be viewed as incorporated into the machinery itself and ultimately become merely replaceable parts of it. The capitalist system thereby transforms a person’s essence, gradually alienating the working subject from their own labor power and from other workers. As opposed to Marx, Foucault (1978a [1975]) identified power as positive and as generated through different technologies of power. Foucault identified disciplinary power as that which produces norm-governed disciplinary subjects to be obedient and efficient ‘docile bodies.’ Overall, what we see in the production line is a process of disciplining (see Foucault, 2006). Foucault (1978b [1976]) also identified a second technology of

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power which he termed bio-power. Bio-power belongs to a system of government that addresses the entire population rather than the body of individuals. This power is achieved through the active participation of the people in the process of their own subjection. Subjection in this form is not imposed on people from above, but through themselves. Bio-political subjects are self-governed individuals who are governed through forms of regulation and modulation, that is, technologies of the self (Foucault, 2008). Bio-power can manage social risks (for example, those which would formerly have been responsibilities of the state, such as reducing unemployment and poverty) by re-casting them as individual problems. If we view the factory as a total system of its own, then we see that by using certain terms day after day, the factory was creating subjectivities that helped in managing the factory work. Expressions such as ‘loyalty to work,’ ‘work target,’ ‘individual responsibility,’ ‘not interfering in others’ matters,’ ‘efficient time management,’ and ‘buying the labor and time of the workers through money’ were creating new kinds of subjectivities which were imposed on the workers to manage themselves. However, the power of factory management was contested in mundane ways by the workers, like by working unpaid overtime instead of finishing on time. Further, the life history of the workers, the conditions that led them to find jobs in the factories, the networks they used to find these jobs, how they found places to stay, the ways the labor process operated, and the religious explanations for different situations, as well as the non-­ revolutionary protests against their exploitation by both individuals and collectives, demonstrate that the operation of these capitalist factories did not rely only on the buying and selling of labor. Instead, many social institutions were intricately related to the process. I reflect on the ideological world of the factory in the next chapter. As an extension of Foucault’s framework, a factory system can be treated as a society of control, as Hardt and Negri (2000) argued. In a society of control, in contrast to Foucault’s disciplinary society, discipline is not an external voice that dictates practices from a distance, but rather something like an inner compulsion indistinguishable from one’s own will, which is ever-present and ingrained in one’s own subjectivity (see also Hardt, 1998; Deleuze, 1992). Here we find the production of a subjectivity that is hybrid and modulating instead of being fixed. The factory floor becomes a site of contestation rather than fixed in the power relations. Hybrid subjectivities are produced in a society of control, as in the factories; factory workers are constituted simultaneously by all the social

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identities and their logic. We see tendencies of creating the worker so as to be a replaceable part of the labor process. However, the subjectivities of the workers are not their entirety, as I found in my fieldwork. The workers had other identities outside the factory, such as daughter, friend, son, husband, and wife, and these multiple subjectivities were equally salient among the workers when they were in the factory. A category of ‘good worker’ could include being loyal to work and possessing a good attitude. Moreover, workers mentioned that they felt very close to others in the factory, ‘like family.’ They also believed that the improvement of the factory would also improve their future. These various subjectivities helped the labor process to sustain and keep progressing. Subjectivities do not become narrow or limited in scope but disperse through different relationalities. In the next chapter, I delineate the ideological forces that formed workers’ subjectivities and operated within the lives of the factory workers. I write about how factories were structured around kinship ideologies and religious ethics. The ideological world of the factory produced a system of its own, and when the workers entered the factory, they became integrated into this ideological world and formed the base of the ideological system, maintaining the functions of factory production. I also write about power relations inside the ‘kinship world’ of the factory. Even though structured tightly within a kinship hierarchy, there were instances of individual and collective protests, and I discuss the impacts of religious ideas and ethics on such events.

References Althusser, L. (2017 [1988]). Philosophy for non-philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Ashraf, H. (2017). The threads of time in Bangladesh’s garment industry: Coercion, exploitation and resistance in a global workplace. Ethnoscripts, 19(2), 81–106. Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the societies of control. October, 59, 3–7. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2005 [1987]). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. Dunn, E. (2004). Privatizing Poland: Baby food, big business and the remaking of labor. Cornell University Press. Fegan, B. (1986). Tenants’ non-violent resistance to landowners’ claims in a central Luzon village. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 13(2), 87–106. https://doi. org/10.1080/03066158608438293

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Fernandez-Kelly, M. P. (1983). For we are sold, I and my people: Women and industry in Mexico’s frontier. State University of New York Press. Foucault, M. (1978a [1975]). Discipline and punish. Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1978b [1976]). The history of sexuality, Volume I: An introduction. Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (2006). Psychiatric power: Lectures at the College de France, 1973–74. Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978–79. Palgrave Macmillan. Hardt, M. (1998). The global society of control. Discourse, 20(3), 139–152. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Harvard University Press. Kibria, N. (1998). Becoming a garments worker: The mobilization of women into the gar-ments factories of Bangladesh. UNRISD Occasional Paper, No. 9, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. Retrieved November 30, 2021, from https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/148837/1/863128483.pdf Lugo, A. (1990). Cultural production and reproduction in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: Tropes at play among maquiladora workers. Cultural Anthropology, 5(2), 173–196. Marx, K. (2002 [1973]). Grundrisse: Outlines of the critique of political economy. Penguin. Marx, K. (2010 [1887]). Capital: A critique of political economy. Progress Publishers. Ong, A. (1987). Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline: Factory women in Malaysia. State University of New York Press. Scott, J. (1989). Everyday forms of peasant resistance. The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 4(1), 33–62. https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v4i1.1765 Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. Yale University Press. Siddiqi, D. M. (2003). The sexual harassment of industrial workers: Strategies for intervention in the workplace and beyond. Center for Policy Dialogue. Retrieved November 30, 2021, from http://www.cpd.org.bd/pub_attach/unfpa26.pdf Thompson, E. P. (1963). The making of the English working class. Vintage Books. Thompson, E.  P. (1967). Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past and Present, 38, 56–97.

CHAPTER 5

Kinship in the Factory: Garment Kormi Living a Life Away from Home

Introduction In this chapter, I illuminate the role of ideologies of relationality and religiosity in the garment factories from the perspectives of the capitalist owners, factory managers, and supervisors on the one hand and from those of the workers on the other hand. Combining all of these, I want to illustrate the importance of kinship (ideology) as an analytical category in understanding the structure of the work process in a Dhaka factory. Alongside the production of material merchandise in the factories, one can see continuous production of the social as well. I take relationality as the point of departure and argue that labor relations in the factories of Bangladesh are performed through a (corporate) ideology of relatedness and kinship, and these relations have effects on the workers’ total experience in the factory. This ideology of relatedness, which is essentially kinship beyond consanguinity and affinity—a relationality where individuals are placed in a network of relations, the factory’s own kinship system, so to speak—becomes directly imperative in workers’ daily interactions involving rights and obligations. An exploration of different relationalities (which were based on kinship idioms) and their associated religious ideologies leads us to understand how individuals acted and conceptualized their relationships with others during their

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_5

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transformation from life as workers subsisting in an agrarian economy to that of industrial workers in the capitalist economy. In the factory, it is crucial to grasp the ideological world. As Deleuze and Guattari (2000 [1983], p. 262f) argued, in the territorial1 or even the despotic machine,2 socio-­economic reproduction was always dependent on human reproduction and the social form of this reproduction. The process by no means remained the same in the capitalist system. Capital took upon the relations of alliance and filiation (Deleuze & Guattari, 2000 [1983]). Hence, how new relations/ties are established and experienced in the factory is the focus of this chapter. I am interested in revealing how workers make sense of themselves both inside and outside the factories. My emphasis on ideologies of relationality and religiosity is meant to provide a glimpse into the process through which garment workers, despite being of different age, rural origin, and geographic mobility, are being incorporated into the unitary factory structure. I describe social relations within factories and perceive this as an ideology of kinship—where relations fall into a regulated pattern, horizontally and vertically. The ideology of relationality is also supported by and embedded in religious ideology. I then describe resistance and protest in factories, and how this puts the ideologies of kinship under pressure and illuminates the religious ethics that form and inhibit collective resistance. These reveal practices of power and authority in daily interactions, and how workers negotiate with and break away from the collective ethos and create new space for social positions in the factory. I, therefore, propose to broaden the scope and analyze workers’ lives within a single but ever-changing frame of the social.

1  Deleuze and Guattari argued that biological bodies transform into social bodies in accordance with the requirements of the social existence. In the earlier stages, the primitive territorial socius organized people in terms of kinship, which they saw as systems of practices or strategies of alliance rather than structures (see Deleuze & Guattari, 2000 [1983]; see also Patton, 2000). 2  The despotic social machine, in contrast to the territorial machine, is characterized by instauration of a new system of alliance and a new form of filiation. The despotic machine substitutes hierarchical castes or classes for the lateral alliances of the territorial machine and introduces a new form of filiation, which connects the people through the despot directly to the deity (see Deleuze & Guattari, 2000 [1983]; see also Patton, 2000).

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Garment Kormi and Aspects of Relatedness: The Ideological World Getting a Job and Navigating the Factory Regime During my fieldwork, Parvin explained why and how she got her job in the factory. When we met, she had been working for nine months in the quality control department. She lived with her husband and two children. Her daughter studied in class seven, and her son was in class two. She said that her husband used to run a small business, but about two years ago, he lost his capital in the business. He had lent money to someone (a friend), and the person had fled without paying it back. With the demand for extra money, as they needed to repay their loan, she started working as a garment worker. She told me, I got the job with the help of a relative (attiya). I did not know anything regarding how and whom to approach. So, he helped me in finding a job. Azmol bhai told me that I needed my educational certificate, birth certificate, voter ID card, and a passport-sized photo. Once I had arranged all of those, I went with him to get the job. He even helped me to learn the tasks.

When I inquired about who the ‘relative’ was, she said he was their neighbor. They had no biological or affinal kinship relation. They had lived in adjacent houses for two years and worked in the same department of the garment factory, where she worked during my fieldwork. One of the operators, while expressing his initial experience of working in the garment factory, once said, ‘When I first got the job, my ‘brother’ introduced me to a person and said that he would be my supervisor. ‘Never do anything wrong toward him. Ask him for help if you have any problems, listen to what he says, and consider him as your elder brother like me.’ ’ He went on to say that during his first week, when he was facing difficulty understanding a flow chart at work, he addressed his supervisor as ‘supervisor brother’ (supervisor bhai), which angered the supervisor who had asked to be called ‘brother’ (bhai). It seemed that supervisors tried to establish more personal relations with the workers, like ‘real brothers.’ During my fieldwork, I did not come across anyone who did not personally know someone working in a garment factory. The people who worked in garment factories encouraged and helped others to get work there. They helped either by giving information or working out logistics,

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such as compiling documentation, finding accommodation, and recommending the prospective worker to their supervisors. The relations that thereby developed were deeper than mere work relations, enforced by the use of kinship terms. Many operators I talked with acknowledged, ‘I did not know anything [about the factory]. It was an unknown place with unknown people. How would I come here and get a job without someone’s help?’ They wanted reassurances from someone they knew, and these reassurances led them to regard the person that helped as kin. The process worked the other way around, as well, with the person who helped/assisted in perceiving the new worker as kin (see Chap. 4). Apart from getting the job, they went through a socialization process among their fellow workers and superiors. From discussions with the workers, it seemed to me that they tried to relate their new work experience with their life before coming to the garment factory. In the traditional relationality, a person occupying the higher position—for example, the father/mother in relation to the son/daughter or elder brother/sister in relation to the younger brother/sister—had the decision-making power. The young people always followed their seniors’ lead. Thus, whenever I asked an operator about their initial days of work, they responded that when they started working, they followed what their supervisor asked them to do and accepted help from fellow operators in understanding the factory structure and its norms of work. Thereby, new workers were able to position themselves in the relational structure of the factory. As the workers had gotten their jobs through people they knew, they also in turn helped new workers gain skills. Selina revealed, ‘When I started working in the garment factory as a helper, I used to seek support from the Lipi apa [apa means ‘elder sister’] who worked as a senior operator. Whenever she went to the toilet or had a break, I would operate her machine. Whenever I was given any chance to work for others, I had to do it to grow my skills.’ She further explained, ‘If someone on the production line were not going to meet the target and were short of a few pieces, then sometimes we would produce a few more for them. We would ask the supervisor to fit an extra machine beside a new operator so that we could help her keep up with the production pace.’ Regarding helping others during work, Laila corroborated, We are operators now, so we try to help others. Previously, I worked as a helper. When I learned to work independently, I shifted to this factory as an

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operator. I was a helper for 1.5 years and worked with other operators during this time. They helped me to learn the skills. Now, I help others who are new to the work. They are like younger sisters to me.

However, it should be kept in mind that there was not always cooperation between all the workers, as Jewel, a male worker, reported through his experience of learning garment work. He told me that he worked as a helper at first, then slowly, after learning the skills, he became an operator. Even though he knew people who supported him in getting the job, he said he did not get much chance to operate the machines as a helper. Because he was new to the work, sometimes the yarn would get cut because he had inappropriately handled the machine. This would result in arguments with the operators, and sometimes he was asked not to operate their machines. Gradually, he did make friends and learned to operate the machines. He said he used to go to the operators and ask them to show him how to set the machine. He would ask, ‘Bhai suta kete gele notun kore suta tanbo kivabe?’ (How can I set the machine if the thread is cut?). He would hang around and help different workers, lending a hand whenever needed. Later, he would operate the machine whenever the operator used to go to the toilet. He even said that sometimes, when an operator wanted to go on short leave, he would take over for him, saying, ‘Bhai apni jan, ami kaj agaye nibo’ (Brother, you go, I will do the rest). Over time, he had developed brotherly relations with operators and took on a younger brother-like role, supportive to the elder brother and, in return, affectionately loved. After learning to operate the machines, he changed factories and started working as an operator. He said, ‘Kaj korte amra attiya’r moto hoye jai’ (We have become like relatives through our work). Here also I found the importance of kinship relationality in their experiences. The ways workers used kinship terminologies, such as bhai and apa, in their interactions were central to the process of becoming garment kormi. From workers’ remarks, it was evident that everything in the factory revolved around production. As long as a worker could meet the production quota, everything was fine. They repeatedly maintained, ‘If you can deliver, then everything remains fine.’ Jewel also mentioned, Those who have good skills may finish early and go to the toilet and take a rest there. And those who are slow might have to work during lunchtime to meet the production target. If someone has amicable, friendly relations (valo somporko) with another person, then he/she might get help; otherwise,

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nobody pays attention to each other. […] During shipment time, if pieces need alteration or the worker goes to the toilet, then he/she suffers scolding from the supervisors.

In response to extreme work pressure in the daily workings of the factories, workers developed, fostered, and maintained kinship relations. If an operator did not return to work after taking a short leave, another might take her attendance card from the supervisor to give to her outside the factory. It was a way one operator could help another, as the attendance card was required to enter the factory. One of the operators mentioned, ‘If a new operator is hesitant in asking for leave, a senior operator through whom the new operator got the job would put in a recommendation to the supervisor or the line manager.’ Kinship relations and worker solidarity could also be found in learning skills and meeting production targets. From what the workers told me and what I observed, I think the workers’ relations with one another helped them to learn the work as well as added flexibility to the factory’s strict rules regarding production targets, time, and discipline—the factory regime. Further, kinship relationality based on origin (deshi bhai/bon) was one factor contributing to why garment workers continued working under harsh conditions and did not change factories except for the most severe reasons. One of the workers relayed, ‘The payment of salary is always delayed, but we do not change jobs because we know so many people here. It is like a family (poribar) for us. Nobody in the locality [outside the factory] can say anything or do anything to us [with the support we have from one another].’ Having this ‘family’ was important in order to find accommodation as well as during times of delay in paying the rent. The workers might get their salary almost two months late and could not bear the house rent on time. My interlocutors also conveyed that they sometimes gave loans to others during financial crises/emergencies. The factories’ recruitment policy enabled this kinship relationality to extend further. I identified that when workers were needed in the factory, generally, the management hung posters in the surrounding areas, spread information by public announcements, and relayed to those on the production floor the need for more workers. Many workers would inform their friends, families, or people from the locality in which they lived. New workers would thereby be recruited, and their hiring events would unfold as described previously. In this process, a hierarchy of relationships would be created, which included layers of ‘moral debt.’ Those who helped in

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finding jobs had created the provision for meeting the others’ need to eat. Thus, the person who helped had also contributed to the bodily subsistence of the receiver of help. Because of this idea, the largest social organization within rural Bangladesh was kinship-based (biological and fictitious), which included economic transactions in the marketplaces as well. It resulted in horizontal and vertical relations that influenced how workers reacted to different situations in the factory. Workers in the factory entered into kinship as well as ‘patron–client’ relationships. Additionally, relationships between workers and their supervisors were morally bonded. When the workers started working, they were unaware of rules, regulations, and rights; they remained dependent upon their supervisors (who acted as their big brothers/uncles/sisters). Workers were not interested in getting appointment letters or understanding what was written in the official records. In this way, the unwritten recruitment policy is what created kinship hierarchy and relationality in the factories. Disciplinary Power and Kinship Ideology in the Work Process Management within the garment factories differentiated and divided tasks to increase the productivity and efficiency of the work process. For specific tasks, they recruited workers to hold different positions. These included helpers, operators, senior operators, supervisors, floor managers, and production managers. In addition, of course, other personnel were involved in the management, business expansion, and marketing ends of the factory. Nevertheless, here I focus on the production floor, where each of the designations has its own tasks, responsibilities, and authority in relation to the others. ‘Helpers’ were the new recruits who did not have any experience of garment work. As they gained experience and learned to work independently, they became operators. With more experience and knowledge of the machines, some became senior operators. The supervisors had different responsibilities than the operators. They were responsible for meeting production targets in their respective sections. Supervisors maintained the liaison between operators and floor managers, distributed work among the operators, checked their production targets, fixed the machines for minor faults, and explained the designs to the operators. Supervisors worked closely with the floor manager, who worked with the production manager to create a production schedule. Through sample production, the floor manager estimated how much yarn was needed and ordered accordingly.

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He remained responsible for timely production to a larger extent than did the supervisors. Once production began, the floor manager regularly checked the products to ensure the production standard in terms of design and quality. Floor managers had the dual roles of planning and managing production. Despite the hierarchy among them, there was also equality as ‘family members.’ Their relationality took the shape of siblings (bhai-bon), nephews (vaigna/vaipo), nieces (vagni/vasti), daughters (meye), and sons (chele). At times, workers would support one another in accomplishing factory tasks (as described in the previous section). In the work process, supervisors pressured the workers to meet production targets, and the relations of authority were guised in kinship terms. For example, Laila said, Everyone is given a target, and they must fulfill it. If a new worker fails to meet a target, sometimes others help, working on their behalf, because if we meet the target, no one will bother about how we did it. If the supervisor scolds someone, it is because he is also feeling pressure about meeting the production target. Floor managers pressure supervisors, who then force us to work faster. Yet, after the task is completed, they make up with us by saying, ‘Sister (bon), while we work together, misunderstandings might happen. Do not keep hard feelings in mind, and do not hold this against me.’ We must build and foster relations at work. We spend the whole day together. We are like a family. We spend more time at the factory than at our homes. Therefore, we keep good relations with supervisors. We do not have many opportunities for direct relations/interactions with higher management. We interact more with supervisors and floor managers. We work together and live together.

She went on, In many instances, workers are scolded for negligence. We need to produce fifty pieces, and this is possible if the workers do not spend time gossiping. When workers talk and waste time, they sometimes fall short of the target, and problems arise. If the workers remain responsible and work consistently, then most of the problems will not occur. Sometimes we treat the bad behaviors of the supervisors as the scolding of our elder brothers.

One of my other interlocutors, Khadija, once mentioned, ‘If the production target is not met, supervisors misbehave. The main issue is production; if you can meet your target, you are fine.’ Khadija continued,

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We do whatever we are asked to do, so there is no problem. There is a list on the production slip, so everyone knows what they have to do. And everyone has an idea of how much a person can work. However, when there is a shipment deadline, sometimes we must work faster. During these times, supervisors plead, ‘Sister, you can do the work; please do it for the shipment.’ During shipment, we do not get any leave, but at other times if we ask for leave, supervisors help us. Supervisors also help new operators, taking on the role of big brothers and doling out easier tasks. Therefore, we need to follow the rules and do good work. If we provide good production, all the problems are solved.

Regarding harsh supervision, Rekha said, ‘Siblings also have differences of opinions. Here we live together, from different backgrounds, from different mothers, and sometimes differences of opinions arise; but in the end, we live together.’ She commented on their relationship with higher officials as well. She praised the higher officials, like the general manager and the production manager, saying, ‘They never behave rudely toward us.’ She proceeded, We have a compliant factory, so our seniors do not scold us. They talk to us nicely. Whenever we meet them, they tell us to concentrate on our work. They say, ‘It is our factory, so work as you would work for your home. If we neglect our work, then our factory will not do well. We run the factory together, so work as if you are working for your own factory.’

During my time on the production floor, I saw the production manager interacting with the workers, asking about their families, how their work was going, and so on. In the interactions between workers and superiors— that is, managers as well as owners—there was a tendency on the part of the superiors toward creating a more egalitarian relationship and becoming ‘egalitarian bosses’ in terms of creating kinship relationalities among them. On the contrary, regarding the interaction between supervisors and the production regulators in the factory, Jewel explained, Operators must produce to meet the production target. When individuals cannot meet their target, supervisors say that they will complain to the floor or production managers. Sometimes supervisors even scold the operators or force them to work until the production quota is fulfilled. In other instances, additional operators are called to help in the work. In such cases, operators

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who failed to meet the quota do not get the overtime payment; the overtime is given to the people who helped out. If a target is not met, sometimes the overtime payment is deducted from the salary. If the required production is not fulfilled, the floor manager scolds the supervisor, and then the supervisor scolds the operator. This happens more often when there is an urgent shipment. The ‘helpers’ suffer the worst behavior, as they are lowest in rank.

Jewel, on another occasion, said that he had seen a helper being slapped by the floor manager, as the helper had made mistakes in leveling the products. He said, ‘No one challenged this behavior. If someone had said anything or challenged the actions, they might have been sacked. It is an individual matter. Everyone tends to overlook these incidents, thinking there must be some fault on the part of the helper. Nobody puts any thought into others’ matters.’ Judging by Jewel’s remarks, it appeared that there was less solidarity among the workers than they had led me to believe. Thus, I note what he said on another occasion when I met him and asked why he was out of the factory before the day’s end. He replied, ‘Those who have strong voices get [their] leave [approved], and those who do not must go by all the rules.’ He continued, Yesterday, I returned home at 1 a.m. And today they were asking us to work until 7 p.m., but I did not stay. I left at 5 p.m. It is Monday, our weekend. For the last three days, we worked until 1 a.m. Today is supposed to be our day off, yet we went to work. We thought we would only have to work until 5 p.m., but they wanted us to work until 7 p.m. They might stop my salary or dock my overtime. But I told my supervisor that I did not care, and I came home.

Strong voices, or the workers’ power, came from the personal relationships (based on kinship idioms) that they had with other workers, supervisors, or people in higher positions. Jewel talked about a worker who was fired for protesting against the factory. However, factory management recruited this worker again later, on a local political leader’s recommendation. From these conversations, I understood how the production targets were made in each section. From input to production, there were fixed targets, and workers were also given their own production target. It was like a competition: if some workers could meet the target, this became the standard for others. Just as the target came from the top, the hierarchical relations also started at the top. If workers faced bad behavior from the

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supervisors, they did the same to the helpers. It filtered down from general manager (GM) to production manager (PM) to floor manager to supervisors to operators and, eventually, to helpers. If the GM made the PM wait for 2 hours, then the PM made the floor in-charge person (floor manager) wait for 1 hour, and he made it worse for the rest of the workers. It was not only the power of punishment that the supervisor or manager held above the workers. They also took fatherly/elder brother-like affectionate positions toward them. One day an operator came to the floor manager’s office and asked if he could get an advance, as all three of his children were sick. He said, ‘Amader beton to ekhono hoy nai, kobe hoy tar o thik nai, kintu amar 3 ta bacha e osustho. Doctor o dekhate pari nai. Kichu taka na hole to ar chotlese na, ektu dekhen na bhai’ (We have not received our salary yet, and we do not know when we will get it. But my three children are sick. I do not have money to visit a doctor or buy medicine. Please, brother, see if I can be given an advance). The floor manager said, ‘Let’s see. Bring a slip after lunch tomorrow.’ The floor manager had asked the operator to bring a slip for advance payment, and later the operator received BDT 2000. Inside the factories, the area was like a domestic space. Factory owners and workers alike asserted that they worked together as a family. Owners claimed to treat workers as daughters and sons. Workers identified the owners in protective roles that their fathers, as heads of the household, would have held. Among themselves, workers saw each other as brothers and sisters. The factory was like a household; kinship and family were the metaphors through which factory personnel thought about their relationships. This was evident in the way the workers approached each other, supervisors, managers, and owners. There were horizontal relationships as well as vertical relationships. The dimensions of this relationality could be identified when all of them worked together. In every instance of their interaction, they used kinship terms in addressing one another. These were affectionate terms but associated with specific hierarchy and authority. On the one hand, among the operators, relationships were like a brother–brother, brother–sister, or like sister–sister. They were more or less like equals in status and supportive of each other’s causes. The relations between operators and helpers were like elder–younger siblings, which were affectionate relations, and operators assisted the helpers in learning the work. On the other hand, supervisors, floor managers, production managers, the general manager, and the owner took a relationality akin to father/elder brothers, which were hierarchical in nature. From

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these vertical positions, they could command over the workers regarding their tasks. In relation to these hierarchical positions, workers took the roles of younger brothers/younger sisters or sons/daughters. Workers were inclined to follow the decisions that were made by their ‘elders,’ even if they disagreed. However, supervisors and floor managers had an affectionate side, using their elder brother-like approach to convince workers to work longer for the shipment deadlines. I argue that this was not merely a trope. These kinship relationalities helped everyone feel more comfortable in this ‘household’ outside of the household and made the factories run more efficiently. In understanding the work process of factories, I agree with Burawoy (1979, 1985) regarding the politics of subjectivity and identity in the production process. However, I cannot entirely agree that it was ‘class’ that determined interactions between the workers and the management in Dhaka. There were interlocking aspects of gender, age, locality, and religion that were all displayed through kinship idioms. Even though workers, supervisors, and management had different roles to perform in the work process, they were not separate entities. Still, they were placed together in a kinship relationality produced by their daily interactions. Through power relations and the interactions of the work process, factory management established authority based on kinship idioms, and the workers experienced and made sense of these interactions. In their everyday life, workers used the same kind of kinship idioms to survive and foster their lives as garment workers. Like Salzinger’s (2003) and Ong’s (1987) ethnography of Mexican and Malaysian factories, respectively, we find that factories used ideas about kinship relationality that helped establish the work process and aid in production. Kinship ideologies helped the workers cope with the tight production schedule and made supervisors able to command and pursue workers in fulfilling the production targets. In Bangladesh, in general, kinship as a set of mutual obligations and expectations starts with the immediate family and steadily covers everyone in the social structure while gradually lessening the intensity of obligation and expectations. It covers almost all social interactions and overrides all forms of social organization. However, in the factory, the organization of people was taken over by a fictitious kinship structure. We found a turn toward fictitious relations, which was also prevalent in the rural areas but had become the primary reference point in the factories. Fictitious kinship had become the

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overriding organizing principle in the factory and the determining factor in the work process. The factory was a household where no one was at home, for the structure was built on a ‘fictitious kinship,’ and membership was not permanent, unlike the village home where a long absence did not negate one’s membership. As workers changed factories, they developed a new fictitious kinship. This fictitious kinship was important, as garment workers reported that they did not leave jobs rashly because people in the factory were like a family to them, and also because they felt an allegiance to the factory owner (malik), especially after having engaged in such things as fighting with workers from another factory in defense of nearby land (see next section). Hierarchy of Values In contrast to the ideology of the household and fictitious kinships, we need to keep in mind that the relations fostered in the factories worked against the larger interests of workers as a class. For instance, one of my interlocutors said, ‘One of the factory supervisors was from my village.’ Thus, the supervisor got her a job as a helper. However, such access to jobs, which seemed to be an opportunity for workers, their families, and the community, also carried specific obligations for young workers. She emphasized that employers often used their authority and the workers’ obligation-embodied relations to ask them for information about other workers, especially during any unrest or strikes. In these circumstances, workers were vulnerable to demands for allegiance and loyalty by factory management, who asked them to spy on other factory workers and refrain from participation in struggles for better working conditions and rights. One of the knitting operators spoke about a protest, which occurred because of a delay in salary payment: Whenever a protest happens, the management finds out who initiated it from their ‘spy worker’ among the supervisors and workers. They then make a list of these people, and it is given to the entrance gate so that they may not enter the factory again. These workers are asked to leave and to come back later for their remaining salary. After the initial protest, when people are sacked from work, other workers cannot do anything except feel sympathy for them. Regarding those who were put on the list before Eid, they were asked to go to the admin’s office to collect their salary, and there they were handed over to the police.

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I inquired who these spy workers were and why they would choose to do this. He continued, There are a few people who give information to the owner. Some are from the same district, and some got their job with a reference. These people always pass information about the factory to the owner. Some people have a better connection with the production manager. These people know the owner or the manager personally or someone else who is close to them. They always prioritize the owner’s (malik’s) interest.

In addition, doing something which may harm the person who has helped one make a living means committing a religious sin. One of the operators declared, ‘Je manush ta amar khawar bebostha kore dise tar khoti korle to Allah shojjo korbe na’ (If I am not obliged to the person who arranged the provision of my food, Allah will never forgive me). Workers felt obligated toward the factory owner, as he was giving them the opportunity to earn and, with that income, they could eat and survive. Therefore, their very bodily subsistence was owed to the persons who provided them their earnings—in this case, the factory owner. This hierarchical relation—a form of allegiance developed through earning, eating, and sharing—has historical roots in the Mughal era (see Chap. 2 and later parts of this section). This was continued through traditional patron–client relations in the agricultural-­based villages where the patron, in return for giving access to the land, received allegiance and free labor on demand (see Rudra, 1984; Zaman, 1991; Rahman & Wahid, 1992; Breman, 2000; Datta, 1998; Islam, 2002; Mannan, 2005; Makita, 2007). Even though after the independence of Bangladesh, the ceiling of individual land ownership was fixed at 33.3 acres, powerful landholders owned a lot more (Zaman, 1991, p. 679). Thus, patron–client relations were sustained, and this sort of relationship demanded the allegiance of the clients to their patrons. The powerful and rich people of the village used the support of their clients to protect landed property as well as their socio-political interests (see Bertocci, 1972, 1975; Jansen, 1986; Zaman, 1991; Rahman, 2001 [1999]). At present, although many of the rich people have migrated to the city, they have maintained patron–client-type relations with the villages by owning rural land and contributing to the building of village mosques and schools (Feldman, 1993, 2009). From the poor people’s perspectives, in these relations, they can only provide labor and unquestioned allegiance in exchange for what their patrons provide (cf. Jansen,

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1986, p. 311f). So, the vertical relationships created in the factory, such as the workers’ fictitious kinship relationships as sons and daughters, compelled the workers to show allegiance to the factory owner. This demand of loyalty toward the owner was in contradiction to their responsibility toward other workers in the factory. They could not prioritize the horizontal relationships they fostered, such as the brotherly or sisterly relations between them, over, for example, their demand for an increased salary. Instead, they prioritized the vertical relationships that demanded their allegiance more than responsibility toward their brothers or sisters in the factory. To demonstrate the practices of hierarchical kinship relationality, I refer to another incident. Sometimes, because of the moral and kinship allegiance with people working in the factory, workers were forced to engage in clashes with other factories during land disputes. The floor manager of the factory told me, There was a fierce clash between our factory and an adjacent factory over control of some land beside our factory. That company bribed the government authorities, forged papers, and then came to take possession of the land. As this was happening, the factory owner called me and asked me to prepare the workers to defend the land if workers from the other factory came to take possession of it. Therefore, I asked the workers on my floor to get ready, and almost 100 of our people chased them off. I have worked here for nearly 12  years, so all workers respect me as ‘boro bhai’ (elder bother), and they do what I say. However, I still had to go to court, as the opponent filed a case against me. In this regard, the factory managed everything, as I had done all this for my factory.

Here we can find the generational hierarchy of kinship relations, including a father’s generation and his offspring’s generation. It is still hardwired in the system of values that it is one’s responsibility to protect the rights of one’s parents, which in this case manifested in fictitious relations where the factory owner was the father figure, the floor manager was the figure of the elder brother, and the workers were all like younger brothers and sisters. We find a tendency among the workers to prioritize the different ties that they formed as workers. In these two cases, we find that individuals acted not as distinct, solitary entities but as individuals having capillaries of relations. These cases reflect how workers experienced and reacted to the

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relationships between themselves and the factory owner (who took the role of father) and the manager (who took the role of elder brother) in the factory ‘household.’ Further, there was tension between the horizontal relationships (such as the brotherly and sisterly relations between workers) and the hierarchical/vertical relationships (between workers and management) that I describe in the next section. However, during the fight against the other factory, the vertical/hierarchical relations helped to create more dispersed horizontal networks, as we can see when the workers fought on behalf of the factory they worked for. Because of their relationship with the factory owner, mediated by the floor manager, all the workers became connected like a pyramid. The workers’ common allegiance within their shared hierarchical relationship resulted in horizontal solidarity among the workers, so they defended their factory. In the management of workers, social relations (i.e., kinship) determined the authority and power. Kinship ideologies as part of the social experiences of factory workers influenced the work process. The factory management relied upon kinship ideology to render authority/control over the workers in Dhaka. At this point, I mention Althusser (2006, p. 100), as he stated, ‘Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.’ The essential point was that in ideology, ‘men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imaginary form.’ For instance, the patrons of the agrarian system as well as garment industry owners used relationships based on moral ‘goodness’ and supported by kinship values and religious interpretation. There was, therefore, a cause for the imaginary transposition of the real conditions of existence. Thus, ideas or representations, which seemed to make up this ideology, did not only have an ideal or spiritual existence but also a material existence. For example, the factory as ‘family’ developed certain hierarchical and vertical ‘fictitious kinship relations,’ which were related to the economic conditions of the persons involved or their relevant positions in the work process. I hold that these imaginary relations were also endowed with material existence. Individuals (the factory workers) behaved in particular ways, adopted a practical attitude, and participated in certain regular practices which they had, in all consciousness, freely chosen as subjects. Because they believed in Islam, workers were reluctant to breach their social contracts. Because of their belief in the moral duty of supporting family, workers continued working despite harsh working conditions. Because of morality surrounding their

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duties toward ‘factory work’ and ‘kinship relations,’ workers had these corresponding attitudes in both the factory and interaction with others. Workers in the Factory: Uncertainty, Hope, and Collective Resistance In this section, I write about how ‘hope’ and ‘uncertainty’ about possible outcomes created ambivalence in collective resistance. Discussions with the garment workers revealed several aspects that instigated overt and collective resistance. They highlighted why they had endured those aspects for so long and did not strive for change sooner. From my experience in the factory and the understanding I gleaned from the discussions, I think several aspects resulted in collective action, such as the physical assault of workers, the delays in paying the salary, and the refusals to increase wages or piece rates. During conversations with the garment workers, I could identify different aspects of their experience. I listened to their expressions of grief and suffering and tried to understand their actions or non-actions in response to the domination they experienced. I approach the understanding of collective resistance at the factories through a comment from a worker regarding relations between workers and the factory, as well as workers’ solidarity. Rafiqul stated, ‘Without workers, no factory can run. We workers face the torture, but the benefit goes to everyone.’ He further said, I have seen protests, but I have never taken part in one. I fear all these protests. They happen because everyone has things that are pressing. I must pay my house rent on the 5th, but I will not get my salary until the 10th. The house owner will not wait for my salary, so I must pay it by the 5th. When this type of situation occurs, and we are not paid on time, it is like kicking the workers in the stomach. Then, when dissatisfaction emerges, it transfers from one worker to the others, and gradually the demand for salary payment arises. […] Managerial staff do not take part in the protests. Management sometimes tries to console the workers, but eventually, they look at their demands. After the protests, workers do not have any support from each other. Then, whatever the owner wants happens. I have seen many workers fired by the management after protests. When they are fired, others cannot help. The [most recent] protest was successful in achieving 2/3 of all the demands. But after the incident, four people were identified and asked to leave the job. Those who initiated the protests were fired.

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Rafiqul said that the workers’ solidarity was not sustainable, as people had to work to earn a living. ‘I have to work if I want to eat. I have never been fully satisfied with the management. Everywhere is the same situation, though.’ He went on, Workers are never recognized for their work, especially in the garment industry. I work the whole day, listen to bad words, and sometimes do not get my salary until two months have gone by. When we want a holiday, sometimes we do not get it. […] We must live, so we have to work and face all these difficulties. We do not get any benefits easily. We have to fight for them. For example, maternal leave is not given very willingly. There are many general duties on Fridays for a few weeks at a time. Then if they want, they give a one-day holiday or no extra holiday at all. It is up to them. […] Nobody can go to lunch even 2 minutes early. It is all work that they want from us without having to give us anything in return. [Regarding the inactivity of the welfare committee:] Welfare committee members never work on behalf of the garment workers. Even if they are workers themselves, they remain on the owner’s side. What the management says, they repeat. Workers do vote for them, and they get elected as leaders, but after winning, they never do anything for the workers.

Another operator, Jewel, mentioned the problem of formalized workers’ groups. He mentioned that there were workers’ leaders in the factory. The GM and PM consulted them when deciding when the Eid holidays should be or when to disburse the salary. However, the management selected these people (see Chap. 8). Sometimes, the management would coax welfare committee members to take their side of an issue. After managing these committee members, the factory administration would inform the remainder of the workers about their decisions. Jewel said that he had never experienced the workers’ committee doing anything good for the workers. If workers questioned them, they never answered the questions. He expressed how during the previous Eid, they got nine days of holiday when they used to get ten days. He went on to say, ‘I have never been a member of such a committee. Owners only make those people leaders who will listen to them.’ From the comments here, we see the despair among the workers regarding their work and themselves as a group. However, this hopelessness was not the whole picture. There was hope and aspiration, and sometimes individuals engaged in collective actions to change the scenario in their favor. I describe how they aspired and strove toward their desired

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future for their life in Chap. 7, but in this chapter, I explain the collective actions that happened in the factory. Jewel described a spontaneous act of collective solidarity and incident of protest, which was regarding the non-­ payment of the Eid bonus. He said, Usually, every worker [who has worked for the garment factory for six months] gets an Eid bonus. Last year, the factory management announced that they would not give bonuses to those who had been working in the factory for less than one year. If anyone were one day short, they would not get the bonus. Everyone protested. To disburse the salary, they had prepared two sheets, one with the names of workers who would get the bonus, and one with the workers who would not. Once they understood that the workers would disagree with this arrangement, the previous rule was reinstated, and they gave all the workers their salary with the bonus. They were prepared to give the Eid bonus to all the workers, yet they tried [to not do so]. Once they understood that the workers would not continue working if the Eid bonus was not given, then they gave it to everyone. There was no vandalism. We talked to the welfare committee members, and they talked to the factory management. On our line, there were around 20 to 25 people who were working for less than one year at the factory. If they had not gotten the bonus, how would they have celebrated Eid? During Eid, everyone goes back to their home [in the villages]. If they had not gotten the Eid bonus, how would they have gone home?

Jewel stressed, ‘When there is any protest and the possibility of vandalism, the management tries to agree to the demands. Later, they gradually sack the people who initiated the protests if they could not take action directly afterward.’ He further said that he did not want to shift to another factory because of uncertainty. There was a low chance of an improved situation in any other factory. ‘I do not want to go to a new factory because of uncertainty. The situation might be worse.’ We can identify three interlinked aspects from these comments: hope, uncertainty, and collective resistance. Workers in factories hoped for change, but the uncertainty of creating a long-lasting change inhibited them from forming a collective resistance. I think the individual ideas of hope and uncertainty did not lead to the formation of a common hope due to the larger ideological basis of which they were a part. We also find that even the workers who were in a formal collective of workers did not function in favor of the workers themselves. The reasons, I find, are ideological, and I will explain them in the next section. I believe the

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hegemonic construction of labor and moral–religious discourses did not provide a base on which to form a workers’ collective, and collective resistance instead produced a social web which tied the workers in covert resistance, helping them to endure the factory discipline (as described in the earlier sections and Chap. 4). (Religious) Ideologies and the Paradoxes of Collective Action We constantly face harsh supervision. We can produce 60 pieces an hour, but the factory management sets a target of 100 pieces an hour or even more. Moreover, when the shipment date nears, we must work on the weekends and do long overtime. We cannot take any breaks during work. We try not to even drink water so that we do not need to go to the toilet. We do not take breaks to eat either. We have to fulfill our target.

I quote a female worker regarding strict supervision and how they are forced to work long hours in the factory. I asked her, ‘Why do you take so much pressure? Cannot you negotiate with the factory supervisors to set an attainable target?’ She replied, The pressure comes from the top layer and gradually filters down to us. For this reason, supervisors sometimes misbehave, using slurs, the occasional slaps, or physically harassing the workers. What can we do? If we cannot produce enough clothes to meet the shipment target, the factory will lose the contract, and if the factory loses the contract, we will not get our salary. See, those working in the factory are not educated, so we cannot get better jobs; thus, we must live with working in the garment factory. We have to accept the supervisors’ bad behaviors. If we want to work in the garment industry, we must endure it. Light-skinned people do not work in the garment industry. […] The factory depends on our labor. We must produce quality products and meet the deadlines. If the products are not good, buyers will not accept the orders, and payment will not be made. If the factory does well, it is because of us; if it fails, this is also on us.

From the above comments, we could understand, garment workers had internalized and accepted that the working procedure of the factory was harsh. They assumed that they had to face bad words because of their inability to find other jobs. They further believed that if the factory accepted an order, it was their responsibility to complete the task, even if

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they had to work continuously for long hours to do so.3 The factory management had successfully transferred the sense of responsibility onto the workers. Therefore, the workers had to sacrifice and physically suffer for the factory’s well-being. One of the workers declared, ‘We praise the person whose salt we eat,’ which resonated with the famous Bangla saying, ‘Nun khai jar, gun gai tar.’ Thus, the workers felt it was proper to admire and appreciate the factory management to whom they were indebted. Protesting against them was regarded as nemok harami (treacherousness). Here, I found indications of religious ethics playing their part in placing people in hierarchies, and people observing their responsibilities toward others in their relationality. The factory management put the responsibility upon the workers of producing quality products and meeting the (sometimes unattainable) deadlines, using the notion of guilt to force them on a more profound moral level to work longer overtime (and even on weekends). This, in turn, gave the workers a stake in the production, feeling responsible for the running of the factory. The workers endured self-exploitation for the betterment of their factory. Hence, the workers rarely reacted to or resisted the extra work pressures. The workers’ sense of responsibility toward the factory and their employer, and the notion of guilt that they felt if they did not produce enough to meet the deadlines, could be understood by considering the totality of the ideological cosmology of the workers. It was not only about getting harsh treatment from the supervisors or not getting a salary because of failing to meet the work deadline that instigated a protest; instead, I argue it is to be understood as an outcome of a failure to uphold mutual responsibility and respect by the factory management. In their relationality with the owner, supervisors, and the factory at large, the workers assumed a stake/active role in the smooth running of the production; thus, their desire to perform their duty rose above all discomforts they endured. This can be equated with the kind of corporate solidarity of the ruling class that was created through the political cosmology in the Mughal empire (see Chap. 2; see also Eaton, 1993 [1978]). Despite this moral push toward self-exploitation, there were incidents of collective protest. For example, Selina, a senior operator, told me about 3  For a similar argument see Ashraf (2017). He describes how the production manager used the notion of halal (permissible according to Islamic law) and haram (opposite to halal, forbidden by Islamic law) to urge the workers to achieve optimal level of production. If workers do not give their full effort, their income would not be halal.

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her experience of participating in a collective action to demand an increase in salary. She said that the factory management had previously declared that their salary would be increased at the start of 2016. Yet, when they received their January 2016 salary, they found that it had not increased. They asked the floor managers, ‘Why was not the salary increased?’ The managers replied, ‘We have only done what the factory owner has instructed.’ At this point, the factory workers stopped working and left the production area. Few of the supervisors and line managers asked the workers to stay, and they said they would convey the workers’ message to the owner and general manager of the factory. However, the workers insisted on talking with the owner themselves. As more and more workers from different sections stopped working and joined in, eventually, the factory owner came to meet them and listened to their demands. He asked, ‘Why have you stopped working? I could not increase your salary because my father is ill, and I am in financial crisis.’ In response, one of the operators asked, ‘How much money do you need for your father’s treatment?’ The owner skirted the question, saying, ‘I care for you so much. I always consider your needs, but you do not consider mine. Instead, you stop production. Okay, I will increase your salary.’ Having said this, he left. She went on, Workers would not have become so angry if the factory management had let us know that the salary could not be increased in January for whatever reason. If they had discussed it with the senior people working here, then this event would not have happened. In previous instances regarding possible delays in salary payment, the factory managers discussed it with us (senior operators and people who had been working for many years and knew many people personally) and asked us to discuss it with others. Thus, no problems occurred.

However, later it was discovered that the salaries of those who had initiated the protest and had asked others to stop working, demanding to talk with the factory owner, were not increased, and that the factory owner threatened them not to protest again, or he would hand them over to the police. From Selina’s comment, it seems that the factory workers’ hope for getting a salary increase was not the central or sole issue of the collective protest; instead, at heart, it was the threat of losing their ‘stake in the decision-making’ that had caused dissatisfaction among the workers. We find another dimension of relationality in women workers’ lives. It reflects

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their transition from the roles of daughter, sister, or wife—all subordinate positions—to roles within a fictitious kinship structure, which positions them as worthy and vital in the functioning of the factory. From my discussions with the workers, I understood that even if a collective protest had not occurred, factory management would have gotten information regarding ‘who was talking with whom and about what.’ Whenever the management or supervisors decided that a particular worker might create problems, that worker was pressured with work and, in this fashion, forced to leave the job. Moreover, the factory employed different strategies so that operators would be less likely to unite and resist. For example, among the 30 operators working under one supervisor, ten operators were given products that allowed them to work at better rates, while the other operators were given products with lower rates. By creating a situation in which workers were differently satisfied with the rates, a common dissatisfaction could not arise among them. The recruitment policy also gave an upper hand to the factory owner in controlling labor unrest. As described in an earlier section, the workers in the factory entered into and maintained a ‘patron–client’ relationship. Doing something that might harm the person who has helped make a living was regarded as nemok harami (treacherousness). Additionally, the workers’ relationship with their supervisor was also morally bonded. Because of the familial connections used in the recruitment and management of the laborer, the relations of production in the factory were more akin to agrarian patron–client relations, dependent upon family relations, morality, and religious ideology (see Hasan, 2018). Thus, the domination of the laborers was persistent, and the unequal power relations had a new face. Even though workers understood that they were being exploited, respect and ‘the notion of guilt’ often kept them from airing their grievances by uniting through collective action. Moreover, the factory management used informal kinship relations among the workers to diffuse any potential unrest. These kinship relations, which helped the workers get their jobs and settle in the factory, in turn, were used against them in the larger context during potential collective action. Kinship Relationality: Dependency in Autonomy In this section, I write about how the kinship relationalities of the workers conserve dependency and autonomy in their lives. Workers in the garment

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industry were mostly migrants, and many lived without their parents or the members of their immediate family. As I dug deeper into their lives, I found a duality of dependency and autonomy, which I describe through the following life history. Rekha, who was a helper in a garment factory, had been working for two years when I met her. In describing her story of becoming a worker in the garment factory, she remarked, ‘It is a long story.’ She had been studying in class eight when her parents decided to marry her off in 2011. Many marriage proposals had been offered, and her parents were undecided about whom to choose. After looking into the different proposals, they made a decision that included BDT 100 thousand as dowry. Due to an accident during her childhood, Rekha could not see out of one eye; this is why her parents married her off with a dowry. She mentioned that her brother had wanted to use that money for her education, but her parents would not listen to him and used the money for the dowry instead. She regretted this and said that it would have been better if they had listened to her brother. After the marriage, everything was fine for a few months. She did not understand family planning and the use of contraceptives. Soon she became pregnant, and her daughter was born. She told me that her step-­ mother-­in-law and step-sister-in-law were taking her husband’s income. She soon was living miserably because her husband did not care for her. Still, she did not complain to her parents, as her parents had spent a lot of money on her marriage. Instead, she tried to live with her husband for as long as she could stand it. As a victim of spousal violence, one day, she could not tolerate it anymore and left her husband’s house. She wanted to file a case at the court against him for the violence she had to endure, but her parents did not support her in this. Rekha mentioned that her parents did not want her to work in the garment industry even though her husband refused to give her any spousal support. However, because she had a daughter to support, she needed to find her own income. She decided to come to Dhaka with her sister. Her sister assumed she would not be able to work in the garment industry because of her eye problem; however, she helped Rekha in the application process and arranged to get her educational certificates and other documents. Their neighbor also helped her. He was a distant relative (mama— mother’s sister’s son) who worked in the admin section of the factory. When her niece was born, her sister went back to the village and did not return to work. Rekha stayed and worked in the factory that her sister had worked in.

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She believed that she could work for the betterment of her future. She said her parents had done a lot for her in her upbringing, had spent money on her marriage, and were helping support her daughter too. She wanted to work and earn for herself. She wanted to earn her own living and make a future for her daughter. She continued her story, I earned 5300 when I first started, and after increases, I now earn 6200. However, when there are 2 hours of overtime, I earn around 7000 BDT a month. With the overtime benefit, the maximum I can earn is about 8000 BDT. After I pay for the room rent and food, I send the rest to my parents. I have confidence that my parents will not misuse my money. They save it for me. Whatever I save from my earnings is deposited in a bank. Sometimes I buy clothes for my daughter. When I get my salary, I keep 4000 BDT for food and housing; it costs around 3200 BDT for food and accommodation. I generally try to save around 3000 BDT a month.

Regarding her relationship with her family back home and visits to the village to see her relatives, Rekha conveys, ‘I have mobile expenses to keep updated with my mother and daughter. Because of work, I cannot go home every month. The last time I went home was in December. Counting weekends, I got four days of leave to have a visit at home.’ She said she found someone from the same area who was going home at the same time, so she traveled back with that person. She stated, Whenever I go home, I try finding someone from the same locality to travel with. I have never traveled home alone in the last two years. I also go home during Eid. I never stay in Dhaka during Eid; my family is in the village, so I go there. If I ever stayed in Dhaka during Eid, my parents would be shocked and might have a heart attack. When I go to the village, I try to stay with my daughter as much as possible. […] I have a maternal cousin who lives in Dhaka, but I never go there because I do not have the time after work.

About plans for the future, Rekha remarked, I have had many difficulties in my life. Since separating from my husband, he has not given me any support or kept contact with us. I came here for a cause, to try to make a living for myself. I saw many others making a living, so I joined in working in the garment factory. […] What about my future! I have had many bad experiences in life, and there is nothing more to be done for my life. However, I have a daughter now; I am working to make her life

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better. I have to make a future for her. If I can save some money, I will go back to my village and live with my daughter.

About living alone in the urban area, Rekha said she had not encountered any problems. However, she had to manage everything by herself and did not get any relief on the weekends. She said, There is no male member in the household here. I have to do everything myself, even going to the market for groceries. Nevertheless, I do not have any problems. My sister left me here under the guidance of Aunty (the house owner). If I encounter any problems, I can go to Aunty, and she solves everything. We consider Aunty our guardian. Whenever I need a small loan, I get it from my ‘aunty’ or ‘brothers’ in the factory.

Here, we find instances of how fictitious kinship works. Rekha transformed from being a daughter and sister into a mother; her new role as a mother was mediated through a stream of money earned from her work. It also mediated her relations with her parents and brother. Further, in the factories, her relationship with other workers created fictitious brothers and sisters who supported her in learning the work and helped her during times of financial crisis. She also felt dependent on the house owner as her local guardian. In this life story, we find several features of the independent woman with social dependencies. The workers were becoming independent, from their perspective, through their relational dependencies. When people migrated to Dhaka for work, they accepted help from relations that were formed in their village and also created new fictitious relations based on their positions in the factory. New garment workers initially relied on relatives for help in Dhaka. These family networks continued their support even after the workers had become established in Dhaka, and the workers themselves offered support to other migrating family members or relatives. Within the factories, workers, as well as their supervisors, took up kinship positions in their work relations, which helped performance in the work process. In becoming independent economic actors, these workers formed hierarchical and horizontal structures of dependence and support. This new structure was, in a way, a breakaway from the village structure of relationality, especially for women who had been dependent on parents and male members of the family. Women could scrape out of that dependency but became dependent on a fictitious structure. The incidents are in opposition to the idea of progress, which is

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generally equated with elimination or reduction of dependence. However, such choices become logical when we look at the social logic in Bangladeshi society. My cases of the garment workers reveal: These workers tended to look for flexibility within the structure when they were economically marginal, but as soon as they attained some stability, they reinstated the hierarchical order, either by giving alternative explanations of their activities or by creating new categories. For example, Rekha maintained the hierarchical order of parental authority by sending money to her parents and trusting them with her savings, which also served to present herself as a good daughter while she was trying to become a good mother within the social setting. She broke away from the traditional role of women to perform the role of a daughter (and mother) who would sacrifice for her parents (and children) (see also Chaps. 6 and 7). From the description of the life of a garment worker, we may identify several aspects of relationality, power, autonomy, and dependency in workers’ lives. They valued the personal kinship relations in their life. In their pursuit of becoming individualized factory workers, they acquired autonomy while also developing other kinship relations that were not formed through consanguine or affinal relations. Instead, their personal relationality was treated as kinship. There was a double valence of dependency and autonomy in the workers’ experience. There was autonomy and independent feeling based on kinship relationalities. The social form of human reproduction provides a kinship structure, and this form of socio-economic reproduction was always dependent on human reproduction. However, as we can see, the process changed in the factory settings, and capital took upon the relations of alliance and filiation (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 2000 [1983]). The social reproduction of motherhood was mediated through women’s work in the factory and constructed anew as a distant relation, which was maintained by a stream of money. Further, the relations between working daughters and their parents were mediated through the relations that were created in the factory. They became good workers (i.e., daughters), working hard for the factory’s prosperity, which resulted in them being ‘good daughters’ for their parents and ‘good mothers’ for their children.4 There is also a parallel 4  Dina Siddiqi (2000) argued, though the general preference for recruiting women in the factories initially emerged from their perceived docility and manageability, gradually the idea of productive worker was built on the characteristics of the ‘good’ woman who prioritized

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structure based on fictitious kinship in the factories, which transformed the direction of biologically formed kinship that radiated outward to incorporate others. In the current form, we find that the direction of incorporation and positions of kinship were formed from the supposedly fictitious kinship inward toward establishing and maintaining biologically formed relations in the family. Before the advent of factory work, economic relations outwardly lessened. If one needed a loan, one first approached closer relatives according to the traditional formation of the kinship structure that radiated outward from the immediate family (Aziz, 1979). We find in the factory that this formed in the opposite direction. Fictitious kinships were formed that help sustain the biological kinship.

Kinship Without ‘Fixed Faces’: Flexibility in Relatedness In the following section, I illustrate the blurring between relations that were constituted by procreation, filiation, and relationships developed during the social experience at the factories, in line with what Sahlins (2011a, p. 3) argued: ‘Whatever is construed genealogically may also be constructed socially.’ The constructed forms of the biological relationships, that is, the fictitious relationships, became more influential and solid in the life of the factories. The factory and the associated work acted as ‘shared substance’ to form relationality. It was a negotiated relationship created by the different levels of workers in the factories, which determined the ideological world of rights, obligations, duties, and positions in the hierarchy of interactions and ascribed authority and power to different persons. When people entered into the factory work and started working as ‘helpers,’ they were situated at the lowest level of the hierarchy. As they moved higher, they acquired positions that came along with the roles of elder brother or sister, and the fatherly role of an uncle. There was little, if any, effect of procreation, and the positions were transferable and acquired by different people at different times. People’s experience of working in the factory, sharing time together, and helping one another to meet production targets integrated them as kinfolk, similar to consanguine and affinal relations. The social construction of kinship, that is, a hierarchical ideological world, functioned as a necessary complement to the survival of family responsibilities. As we have seen, the management always framed the factory as a family (see also Ashraf, 2017).

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factory life as well as created vulnerability. Participation in the realities of factories constituted a person, as Sahlins (2011a) argued, for the kinship system is a manifold of intersubjective participations founded on mutualities of being. Such mutualities of being came in various forms and degrees: kin could be persons who belonged to one another, who were members of one another, who were co-present in each other, or whose lives were joined and interdependent. The workings of factories created a condition for developing such diverse and mobile mutuality and sharing. The process led to the transpersonal distribution of the self among multiple others and to the inscription of multiple others in the one subject, for what was in question was the character of the relationships rather than the nature of a person. This ideology entailed incorporations of others into one person, making them a composite being in a participatory sense, as we saw during the clash of factory workers claiming/defending the land. When being is mutual, experience is also transpersonal: it is not simply or exclusively an individual function (Sahlins, 2011b, p. 231). The process was temporal, cumulative, and performative. In this regard, Sahlins (2011a, p. 5f) contended that in a highly performative kinship order, the existing relations between persons are potentiality unstable—continuously vulnerable to events and ever subject to negotiation. The ideas of relationality-based kinship ideology are pertinent in the discussions of the role of kinship in the non-commoditized economy and the commodity economy. Viveiros De Castro (2009, p.  249) demonstrated that kinship relations have traditionally been conceptualized as jural relations, determining matters of rights and duties, and that alliance was a matter of choice. In contrast, in a commodity economy (where both things and people assume the form of objects), any relations between human beings are conceived in terms of rights (over one another), which are, one could say, prices in human form. He claimed that this made the jural notion quite inappropriate to a gift economy, where kinship relations were not as detachable from people as rights were, for example, in a commodity economy. Further, in a gift economy (where things and people assumed the form of persons), relations between human beings are expressed by classificatory kinship terms. Similarly, relations between things must be conceived as bonds of magical influence—that is, as kinship relations in object form—and thus, there remains a personification process. Viveiros de Castro (2009, p. 248f) cited Strathern (2004), who he argued had illuminated the contrast between the intrinsic temporalities of rights (which anticipate transaction) and

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debts (which presuppose them). What a gift transactor desired were the personal relationships that the exchange of gifts created, and not the things themselves. The way gift transactions created debt on the part of the receiver, through commodity exchange, people made a profit. Therefore, while prices described value relations between transacted objects, kinship terms described the rank relations between the transactors involved. Viveiros de Castro (2009, p. 250) maintained that while in the commodity economy objects were exchanged on relations of equality (the exchange of unlike for unlike), gift exchange (the exchange of like for like and problem of finding a common measure) established an unequal relation of domination (and/or influence) between the transactors. Suppose we apply how Viveiros De Castro (2009) draws a contrast between gift and commodity economies. In that case, we could perceive the situation in the Dhaka factories as one in which people had escaped from a non-commoditized kinship setting to a capitalist factory setting based on a commodity economy. Regarding exchange and rights in the capitalist setting, we, however, encounter the application of the same classification of people as used in a kinship-based economy rather than a de-­ personification process, which ensures the exchange of rights as a commodity. The idea of kinship relations became fluid where different people were guised in it. Different positions of classificatory terms in the hierarchical kinship order determined their relationalities and transactions. When workers came into the factory of this commodity economy, they occupied a position in the classificatory kinship system. This application of the kinship ideology in the factories influenced the dynamics of the two value systems of kinship and the commodity-based economy. There was a continuous personification process during the interaction in the factories between different workers and their supervisors. The question could be: What determined which terms were employed for whom? In a broad sense, gender and age played crucial roles. Everyone became brothers or sisters, and their relative position was determined by age. In such cases, people became uncle/aunt (who were father and mother figures, respectively). In the factory setting, relative positions of the task performed by them also placed them differently within the kinship system. Similarly, in the social arena outside the factory, aspects of kinship classification were observed even though daily life seemed to operate in terms of a commodity economy. Perceived hierarchical relations of kinship also determined the empirical consequent transactions. In the biological kinship structure of the family, the kinship roles defined the duties, tasks, and

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obligations. In the factory, which was based on fictitious kinship, workers’ positions in the work process determined their positionality in the kinship structure and obligation toward the factory. Persons were guised in different kinship positions, and these determined the transactions between them. People became kin not only through an affinal or consanguine process; it was a process of becoming. In the garment factories, we find a strong use of kinship ideologies, but the changes were in the pattern of what usually created the notion of relatedness. In a way, there was a general model of sharing between workers in the factory. We find kinship relationality without any fixed faces; for individual workers who had migrated, found work and accommodation through kinship-based linkages, and once settled in the factory, they continued to create different relationalities based on kinship idioms. This flexibility is demonstrated when workers first joined or later changed factories and developed new relationality based on the shared experience of working in the factories. In a situation of continual drift and transition to an industrial economy, kinship ideologies remained influential. Thus, while in the factory, when workers were away from their father and authoritative male relations, these relational positions were guised and captured by other individuals. Different individuals acted in different instances and at different locations in the hierarchical positions/‘figures.’ Inside factories, kinship relations posited the workers in total vulnerability to the seniors. Personal kinship relations were developed and helped the workers adapt within their daily lives, but these newly formed relations also made them utterly powerless in specific contexts. They could question the daily functioning when it was presented only in fragments. Kinship on one occasion created personal relations, whereas, on another occasion, it formed the basis of authority/subordinate positions. It bestowed workers with power and powerlessness at once. Kinship-relatedness formed in the factory settings reflected no limit to persons who could be related through kinship. It remained open and moved in different directions. In this regard, I want to emphasize that in factories or even outside of them, workers fostered kinship relations that involved a personification process, and, in different contexts, it served different outcomes. It strengthened the workers as well as oppressed and exploited them. It gave them possibilities of surviving while making them vulnerable to exploitations that were not and could not be questioned. There was a duality of experiences.

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Authority, Power, and the Paradoxes of Relatedness in the Factory Some scholars have claimed that modern industrial organizations in Asian societies were rarely ‘paternalistic’; and that ‘vestiges of kin relations’ were dissolved in the workplace (Salaff, 1981). In contrast, others have asserted that harsh and personal forms of control were features of peripheral Fordist5 systems (Burawoy, 1985; Harvey, 1989). However, my fieldwork suggested that the labor-management strategies were neither exclusively despotic nor anti-paternalistic. For example, I found during my fieldwork that most of the operators had been recruited through other workers at the factory; thus, it became easier to control new employees. In addition, operators mentioned that because they knew so many people in the factory, they did not think of finding work in other factories, despite low salaries and delays in payment. Moreover, unlike social formations of slavery or serfdom, reproduction of the skills of labor power required for industry workers tended decreasingly to be provided for ‘on the spot’ (apprenticeship within production itself) but was achieved more and more outside production, by the 5  Henry Ford introduced the concept of the moving assembly line. The move from Taylorism to Fordism left the worker no choice as to the pace of work. Firstly, Taylorism belongs to the chain of development of management methods and the organization of labor, and not to the development of technology. Taylorism as a method of scientific management was an attempt to apply methods of science to the increasingly complex problems of the control of labor in rapidly growing capitalist enterprises. It deals with the fundamentals of organization of the labor process and of control over it. With a set of principles, it aims to secure control by way of a systematic approach to administration. Taylorism raised the concept of control to an entirely new level as an absolute necessity for adequate management of the dictation to the worker of the precise manner in which work is to be performed. Taylorism comprises of three principles: (1) gathering together of the traditional knowledge which in the past had been possessed by the workmen and then transforming the knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae; (2) removing all brain work from the shop and centering it in the planning or laying out department; and (3) specification of not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done, and the exact time allowed for doing it. Scientific management consists very largely in preparing for and carrying out these tasks (Braverman, 1998 [1974], p. 59ff). According to Braverman, the quickening rate of production in this case depended not only upon the change in the organization of labor, but upon the control which management, at a single stroke, attained over the pace of assembly, so that it could now double and triple the rate at which operations had to be performed and thus subject its workers to an extraordinary intensity of labor. He argued that craftsmanship gave way to a repeated detail operation, and wage rates were standardized at uniform levels (Braverman, 1998 [1974], p. 101ff).

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capitalist education system and other institutions (Althusser, 2006, p. 88). I argue that the existing social relations between family, kin groups, and social networks were used to recruit, train, and control garment workers. Besides, the neoliberal industries had co-opted relations of production from rural, agricultural-based Bangladesh and were reproducing a different form of existing ‘patron–client relations’ based on kinship. Therefore, it was in the form of ideological subjection that provisions were made for the reproduction of the skills of labor power. As Ong (1987) indicated that in the factories (of Malaysia), relations of domination and subordination were based on gender and ethnicity, which became consistently salient in different spheres of daily activity, I argue that the practice of domination and subjection was based on hierarchies of kinship relations that were part of the broader ideological structure of Bangladesh. As Althusser (2006) discussed, I think the domination and subordination of the laborers and employers could be understood from the legitimizing process by ideology existing in society. Here, the actor and the context changed because of the transition from agrarian to industry-based work; however, the ideological domination persisted because of the nature of relations and the existence of ideologies that permitted such domination. The transition of the rural laborer from the patron–client relations of the agrarian society and into the garment industry was mediated by family members and influential local people who helped in getting a job and gave support in the workplace, thus creating other forms of patron–client relations within the garment industry. This process was also supported by religious sanctions, as breaching a contract was regarded as the severe sin of treachery. Workers did not rebel because of three main reasons: a lack of alternatives, a moral bond created through the kinship-based social network, and, despite exploitation, an earned living. Due to these reasons, a continuous flow of workers was attracted to the garment industry. Further, as we have seen, owners’ domination of garment workers consisted of violence and consent. Of these two components, the stronger of the two was not the violence of the dominant but the consent of the dominated (cf. Godelier, 1978). However, this consent resulted from the threat of violence, as the factory owners used the potential of legal action to control the laborer during any dispute (see Chap. 4). In the factory, workers imposed their own explanations of events and made assumptions about the factory system and its values to make the whole system meaningful for themselves. Workers from the villages migrated to the factories and started to work with sets of values that they

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used to explain phenomena. Despite their society consisting primarily of people they knew by working in factories, they perceived themselves and performed as daughters, sisters, wives, brothers, husbands, sons, or other kinship ties that comprised their ‘family.’ These relationalities were predominantly patriarchal, aligned with the broader cultural setting of the country. Because of their pre-existing relationality, they tried to assume the relations in factories as kinship relations and tried to see their relations with their co-workers and supervisors like kinship relations at home. With these relationships came obligation, hierarchy, power, and authority that determined and characterized the relations. In turn, these helped women and men who were working in the factory to retain their identity in the relationality, which they also valued having. This was an amenable system for the factory owners, as they could take the higher position within the relationality and claim authority over workers in a culturally approved way. Therefore, based on ethnographic information, I argue that in Bangladesh, the process of problematization entailed a mixture of coercion and appropriations of pre-capitalist skills, social relations, knowledge, and beliefs on the part of those being proletarianized. Kinship structures, familial and household arrangements, relationalities, and gender and authority relations (including those exercised through religious ideologies) all had their part to play.

Concluding Remarks In understanding how power relations transformed and took different shapes during instances of global connections and the incorporation of the rural, community-based agricultural workers into the commodity economy of capitalism, I have explained the role of ideologies of relationality (kinship relations) in this transformation and the formulations of the power structure in the factory. The changing relations of production and its correlate of workers as commodities came about differently (e.g., from progressive proletarianization) where overlapping forms of power emerged. In the case of Bangladeshi garment factories, kinship-relatedness took an important role. The practices of power in the factory were formed based on kinship ideology. I sought to understand how the workers and the factory management experienced and used kinship metaphors to make sense of their experiences and relations of domination and subjection. Relations of kinship marked the power relations. It did not allow fraternal equality; instead, it fostered complete authority to the different kinship

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and hierarchical positions. As power relations in the factory were based on kinship ideologies in the form of egalitarian supervisors, managers, and owners of factories, so too was oppression intensified and domination itself legitimized and made unquestionable, thus also made unspeakable. Moreover, based on the ethnographic findings presented in this chapter, I argue that hierarchy and equality were intricately connected rather than being in opposition among the garment workers in Bangladesh. Paying attention to the complex discourses (religious and relational) through which migrant workers constructed new forms of cultural practice for the interest of co-workers highlighted the interplays between hegemonic structures and ideologies of domination on the one side, and the struggles and responses of the workers on the other. In Bangladesh, the cultural notions regarding patron–client relations, relations between the owner (malik) and workers, and nemok harami (treacherousness) defined how the workers tried to respond to factory discipline. As it was commonly regarded that the factory was favoring the workers by providing work, hence the workers felt they must do all that they possibly could for the benefit of the factory owner. Similarly, workers remained willing to sacrifice for one another. Thus, voluntary associations among workers appeared in reaction to the crises of daily life in the factory. These associations were vested in the existing value systems and cultural discourses that shaped the composition of life in Bangladeshi society. We find the development of a fictitious kinship structure in the factory that took precedence over the biological/affinal kinship structure simultaneously as it mediated these relations. Workers became ‘good mothers’ or ‘good daughters’ through becoming ‘good daughters’ (workers) in the fictitious kinship structure of the factory. Further, fictitious kinship allowed women to establish themselves as worthy in their positionality in the relational structure, indicating a break away from the dominating structures. This process reveals how capitalism manifested in the industries appropriated the relational and religious values while these values were simultaneously re-­ enacted anew, mediated through new sociality. The intentionality of workers (actors) evolved through their everyday experiences, and the meanings of their acts changed contextually. In a relationship of power, the dominant (factory owner, managers, and/or supervisors) often have something to offer, and sometimes this is a great deal, to continue to remain in power. Thus, the subordinate (worker) has many grounds for being ambivalent about resisting the relationship. In the factory, there was never a single, unitary subordinate (workers’ solidarity

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group), the workers were internally divided by gender or status, and they had opposing perspectives on the situation. Thus, there was tension between different discourses (i.e., brotherhood/sisterhood vs. patron–client relations), in the horizontal relationships between themselves, and in their hierarchical relations with the owner. Workers placed different levels of importance on different ideas. Therefore, even though there was a social web and covert resistance aimed at surviving the factory discipline, collective resistance could not be sustained, and solidarity remained in flux. The daily life of garment workers and their solidarity and resistances were molded by ‘public opinion,’ ‘cultural discourses,’ and ‘ideologies’ (of relationality and religiosity) (cf. Bakunin, 1871), which enabled the garment workers to form solidarity groups supporting individual acts of resistance. However, these discourses also created ambivalence in large-scale collective resistance. Thus, I hold that solidarity formation, everyday forms of individual resistance, and collective resistance were often conflicted, internally contradictory, and ambivalent. This also reflects that the expansion of capitalism in Bangladesh not only exploited or fragmented the social order but created a new relational order among the workers and the population. The ways ideologies (formed by kinship and through religious ideas and ethics) made their presence necessary in the capitalist factory have set the premise of my explorations of the totalizing process of the social. Here we also find flexibility in the social structure that could accommodate alternative positions in the hierarchical structure, blurring the fixed positions of the superiors and the subordinates. In other words, the possibility for women to assume and perform the social roles of men emerged. I develop the idea of this totalization process of the social, which encompasses the complete social experience of the garment workers in Bangladesh, in the following chapters. In the next chapter, I move away from the factory and write about the continuity and changes in the social life-world of the workers, highlighting how ‘new possibilities’ were created outside the factory. The workforce of the garment industry, made up largely of women who had moved primarily from rural areas in search of work, broke the traditional isolation of Bengali women in purdah (seclusion). However, women always grounded their sense of identification in an ethical and spiritual connection to Islam. Therefore, I uncover the wider cosmology—the worldview of the garment kormi inside and outside of the factories—which might otherwise be distinguished and treated differently, as economic, relational (kinship), or religious aspects (see Coleman, 2005; Tambiah, 1990, 2013 [1973]).

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References Althusser, L. (2006). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes toward an investigation). In A. Sharma & A. Gupta (Eds.), The anthropology of the state: A reader (1st ed., pp. 86–111). Blackwell Publishing. Ashraf, H. (2017). The threads of time in Bangladesh’s garment industry: Coercion, exploitation and resistance in a global workplace. Ethnoscripts, 19(2), 81–106. Aziz, K. M. A. (1979). Kinship in Bangladesh. International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research. Bakunin, M. (1871). What is authority? Retrieved February 24, 2009, from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/ authrty.htm Bertocci, P. (1972). Community structure and social rank in two villages in Bangladesh. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 6(1), 28–52. https://doi. org/10.1177/006996677200600102 Bertocci, P. (1975). Microregion, market area and Muslim community in rural Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Development Studies, 3(3), 349–366. Braverman, H. (1998 [1974]). Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. Monthly Review Press. Breman, J. (2000). Labor and landlessness in South and South-East Asia. In D. F. Bryceson, C. Kay, & J. E. Mooij (Eds.), Disappearing peasantries?: Rural labor in Africa, Asia and Latin America (1st ed., pp. 231–246). Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) Publishing. Burawoy, M. (1979). Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism. The University of Chicago Press. Burawoy, M. (1985). Politics of production. Verso. Coleman, S. (2005). Economy and religion. In J. G. Carrier (Ed.), A handbook of economic anthropology (1st ed., pp. 339–352). Edward Elgar. Datta, A. K. (1998). Land and labor relations in South-West Bangladesh: Resources, power and conflict. St Martin’s Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2000 [1983]). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. Eaton, R. M. (1993 [1978]). The rise of Islam and the Bengal frontier, 1204–1760. University of California Press. Feldman, S. (1993). Contradictions of gender inequality: Urban class formation in contemporary Bangladesh. In A. W. Clark (Ed.), Gender and political economy: Explorations of South Asian systems (1st ed., pp.  215–245). Oxford University Press. Feldman, S. (2009). Historicizing garment manufacturing in Bangladesh: Gender, generation and new regulatory regimes. Journal of Women’s Studies, 11(1), 268–288.

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Godelier, M. (1978). Infrastructures, societies and history. Current Anthropology, 19(4), 763–771. https://doi.org/10.1086/202197 Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. An enquiry into the origin of cultural change. Blackwell. Hasan, M. T. (2018). Moral economy of female garment workers: The relevance of the history of inequalities of class and gender in rural East Bengal/Bangladesh from 1947 to the present. Social Science Review [The Dhaka University Studies, Part-D], 35(2), 135–155. Islam, S. A. (2002). The informal institutional framework in rural Bangladesh. In K. A. Toufique & C. Turton (Eds.), Hands not land: An overview of how livelihoods are changing in rural Bangladesh (1st ed., pp.  97–104). Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. Jansen, E. G. (1986). Rural Bangladesh: Competition for scarce resources. University Press Limited. Makita, R. (2007). Changing patron-client relations favorable to new opportunities for landless laborers in rural Bangladesh. Journal of South Asian Development, 2(2), 255–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/097317410700200204 Mannan, M. (2005). Rural power structures and evolving market forces in Bangladesh. In K. B. Ghimire (Ed.), Civil society and the market question (1st ed., pp. 271–298). Palgrave Macmillan. Ong, A. (1987). Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline: Factory women in Malaysia. State University of New York Press. Patton, P. (2000). Deleuze and the political. Routledge. Rahman, A. (2001 [1999]). Women and microcredit in rural Bangladesh: Anthropological study of the rhetoric and realities of Grameen Bank lending. Westview Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group. Rahman, A., & Wahid, A. N. M. (1992). The Grameen Bank and the changing patron-client relationship in Bangladesh. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 22(3), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472339280000221 Rudra, A. (1984). Local power and farm-level decision-making. In D. Meghnad, S. H. Rudolph, & A. Rudra (Eds.), Agrarian power and agricultural productivity in South Asia (1st ed., pp. 250–280). Oxford University Press. Sahlins, M. (2011a). What kinship is (part one). The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 17(1), 2–19. Sahlins, M. (2011b). What kinship is (part two). The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 17(2), 227–242. Salaff, J. W. (1981). Working daughters of Hong Kong. Cambridge University Press. Salzinger, L. (2003). Genders in production: Making workers in Mexico’s global factories. University of California Press. Siddiqi, D.  M. (2000). Miracle worker or womanmachine? Tracking (trans) national realities in Bangladeshi factories. Economic and Political Weekly, 35(21/22), L11–L17.

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Strathern, M. (2004). Transactions: An analytical foray. In E. Hirsch & M. Strathern (Eds.), Transactions and creations: Property debates and the stimulus of Melanesia (1st ed., pp. 85–109). Berghahn. Tambiah, S.  J. (1990). Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality. Cambridge University Press. Tambiah, S. J. (2013 [1973]). The galactic polity in Southeast Asia. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(3), 503–534. https://doi.org/10.14318/ hau3.3.033 Viveiros de Castro, E. (2009). The gift and the given: Three nano-essays on kinship and magic. In S.  Bamford & J.  Leach (Eds.), Kinship and beyond: The genealogical model reconsidered (1st ed., pp. 237–268). Berghahn Books. Zaman, M. Q. (1991). Social structure and process in char land settlement in the Brahmaputra-Jamuna floodplain. Man, 26(4), 673–690. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/2803775

CHAPTER 6

Negotiating the Public and the Private: Garment Kormi Becoming Joggo

Introduction In this chapter, I explore the role of wage labor and highlight the socio-­ economic effects that it has had on the workers. Furthermore, I explore the persistent but unpredictable effects of the global connection. In the previous chapters, I investigated how factories were ideologically structured and how workers created possibilities for themselves and resisted the exploitative systems, sometimes even turning them to their advantage, even if only in fragments of moments. We tend to think of factory life as limited to the inside of the factory, its work hours, and its discipline, but I have found that factory life in Dhaka encompassed all aspects of life for the garment workers among whom I lived. This chapter, therefore, concentrates on how life outside the factories, to a large degree, revolved around the same values and concerns that preoccupied workers when they were at work. I demonstrate and claim that the ideological world had no outside and that all the ruptures or changes in it continuously created new social orders with open-ended possibilities to which the workers were connected. This shall be seen reflected in the economic autonomy and freedom of the workers. I describe how the women workers responded to the traditional ways of conducting themselves with the availability of new forms of industrial work—how a garment kormi negotiated the public and the private, that is, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_6

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the macro-level and the micro-level. Anna L. Tsing (2005, p. 3) argued that there could be unexpected and unstable aspects of global interaction because different value systems come into contact as capitalism spreads. The experience of the garment workers is a vital aspect of my investigation, as it might shed light on the effects of the global economy as it articulated the possibilities of different forms of social relations in Bangladesh. In this regard, I agree with Anna Tsing’s argument (2005, p.  270) that the mingling of unexpected aspects—such as despair and hope and freedom and unfreedom—under capitalism might remake the cultural forms. In this process, the freedom and economic autonomy of the women workers intersect at two levels: at the macro-level (in society, economy, ideology, religion, and polity) and the micro-level (in the household, family, and community) (cf. Wolf, 1988, 1990). The possibilities of emergent cultural forms and ideologies are an important intersection for explorations. As Louis Althusser (2006, p. 86) stated, ‘In order to exist, every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce.’ However, transformations in the production process and the potential mingling of hope and despair in workers’ experiences might produce an open-ended plurality of the ‘ideological (state) apparatuses.’ The ideological state apparatus, as conceived by Althusser (2017 [1988, p. 115f]), refers to the type of apparatus that functions on ideology or persuasion or inculcation of the dominant class’s ideas: on consensus. Factory work created new ideas and trained the workers with expressions such as ‘loyalty to work,’ ‘work target,’ ‘individual responsibility,’ ‘not interfering into others’ matters,’ and ‘efficient time management,’ which created new kinds of subjectivities based on fictitious kinship relationalities. However, the emergent complexities also provided workers with spaces to recreate and reformulate the ideological spaces, which relate to economic autonomy and women’s freedom. In this chapter, I explore the values in the life-world of the garment kormi to describe the emerging socialities in neoliberal Bangladesh—that is, among the industrial workers. I show how the workers navigated between the established social orders and created possibilities of freedom, that is, a break from the dominant relationships. I illustrate my arguments by explaining garment workers’ understanding of their work, income, relationships within families, and use of consumer goods, and reveal situations where the social encompasses ideologically contradictory events in forming a temporal totality. This indicates reconfiguration of the social order, manifested by the

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ever-emergent category of the joggo nari, that is, the worthy woman. An analysis of these events and processes sheds light on the ongoing creation and transformation of the social in its totalization process (cf. Rio & Smedal, 2008, p. 235).

Socio-economic Effects of ‘Modern Industry Work’ Garment factories have created an opportunity for massive numbers of Bangladeshi women to get involved with formal income-generating activities. When the polarization of agricultural lands, mechanization, and the commercialization of agriculture (partially) dispossessed people from their means of livelihood and created a surplus labor force, the garment industry arrived as a way out of the economic crisis (see Chap. 2). The associated transformations included issues related to the gendering of work, gender responsibilities, gender roles, exposure to violence and discipline, and the conception of money and work. I propose calling these transformations continuity and change in the social order. From the cases described in Chaps. 4 and 5, it is evident that both male and female laborers decided to work in the factories so as to increase the family’s economic stability. However, in some cases, females faced barriers because of the social norms surrounding women’s roles. In the following sections, I discuss how this change in women’s roles altered the conceptions of gender as well as the roles of women in the family. Before I go into detail on how the social order is being negotiated, I give a brief overview of the social order that governs the life of people in Bangladesh. In particular, religious ethics, kinship relations, and patriarchal gender relations (in this order) largely determine the social relations between people. These orders or structures are interrelated and influence one another. In the totalizing system of Bangladeshi ideology of the present-day—religion, kinship, and patriarchy determine people’s (e.g., women) social relations. Peter Bertocci (1975, p.  350) suggested that in understanding the Bangladeshi countryside, we should move beyond the study of the single village, searching for a ‘total community—the basic unit of organization and cultural transmission’ of which the village or caste were only parts. He further claimed that kinship alliance impelled the villagers outward from their home and rural economy, enmeshing the peasants in extra-village institutions and relationships. These groupings extended in time and space, which Bertocci (1975, p.  351) termed a microregion, whose populations had moral, ritual, and political expressions as a single community. At different

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levels, kinship remained the building block of rural communities in Bangladesh, surrounding patrilineal kin groups. The kinship geography determined the ways men and women related to the larger community. The citizens of these small groupings were ritually united by the fact that they shared food on ceremonial and religious occasions. In these larger groups, the closeness of interaction was reflected by the mutual address of the members by kinship terms and the relaxation of purdah restrictions. The traditional leadership in these groupings was transferred from father to son and was centered on patron–client relationships (Bertocci, 1975, p.  354ff). Despite factions between wealthy households, socio-political unity was symbolized on at least one ritual occasion in the yearly ceremonial cycle, on the evening of shab-i-barat (the night of reckoning), on which all Muslims prayed, acknowledging Allah’s (God’s) judgment of their lives, and asking that Allah remain merciful. The events were organized by a cooperative society (formed every two years) that was given charge to maintain the nearby mosque that encompassed all the homesteads in its embrace. During such occasions, everyone contributed to the maintenance tasks of the mosque and voiced ceremonial expressions of solidarity. The family name was an important feature of social life, and it was sustained despite economic changes (cf. Mukherjee, 1957). People in the villages generally made categories and discriminated between high, medium, and low statuses of lineage through name (cf. Bertocci, 1972; see also Ghosh, 2015 [1968], p. 9ff). Even during the 1960s and 1970s, the most prominent social organization (samaj—the village council) in the villages of Bangladesh was kinship-based (Aziz, 1979). As a whole, the social scene in Bangladesh was dominated by patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems (cf. Rahman, 1994, p. 21). The social order was based on the relations between these different systems, and it was said that ‘women are defined by their relationships’ (White, 1992, p.  140), addressed and referred to as so-and-so’s mother, wife, daughter, and so on, instead of by their names. Contrarily, for males, the important reference point was the lineage to which they belonged (Arens, 2011, p.  17f). Furthermore, women were thought to have less intellectual aptitude and control over their emotions, thus prone to make wrong decisions. Women were to be taken care of, protected, and guided by men. Thereby, ‘identity with male kin make a woman “half-human” and a “man-made doll” (Zaman, 1995, p.  109). This was also related to ‘predestined limits and potentialities bestowed by Allah’ on individual women (Jansen, 1986, p.  301). Moreover, rigid segregation based on gender prevailed in the country.

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In relation to the patriarchal ideas, there was strong segregation of gender roles in the rural areas of Bangladesh. By analyzing data collected based on time–budget allocation over seven months at a village in 1976, Khuda (1980) argued that the division of labor between men and women was culturally prescribed, and women worked inside the household (Khuda, 1980, p. 111). In this system, men remained the unchallenged decision-makers regarding household resources and governed women’s economic mobility. The elements of patriarchal control were reinforced through the marriage decisions regarding women, laws of inheritance, and social customs (Rahman, 1994, p.  21; see also Mahmud et  al., 2021). Further, studies on women’s condition in Bangladesh identified that women would forgo their share of parental inheritance in favor of their brothers. Women did this to maintain good relations within the kinship networks and in their social relationships, as well as to keep the property of the paternal lineage intact (Arens & van Beurden, 1980 [1977], p. 53; Ahsan et al., 1989; White, 1992, p. 131; Agarwal, 1994, p. 260ff; Kabeer, 1994, p. 163f; Rahman & van Schendel, 1997, p. 245ff). In addition to gender segregation, the institution of purdah implemented the Islamic reinforcement of women’s seclusion. It represented a system of isolation of women from the public sphere and imposed a standard of female modesty. This had come about gradually since the sixteenth century, after the Muslim conquest of the region. The normative vision that separated male and female labor came about with the gradual diffusion of men and institutions associated with religious literacy, and the written words of the religious/sacred texts started commanding authority over life (Eaton, 1993 [1978]). The scriptural norms translated into a social reality that had been associated initially with upper-class Muslims gradually engulfed the whole of society. In rural Bangladesh, women’s seclusion and the family’s honor were interlinked (Rahman, 1994, p. 20). As in other patriarchal societies, these values in particular were important, indicating men’s superiority and women’s need for protection, and regulating the social relations in both the household and the larger kinship network, be it the neighborhood, the village community, or even the wider society. Women in their social relations had different positionalities as a mother, wife, sister, daughter, daughter-in-law, and mother-in-law, each of which had different dimensions of power depending on the kinship relations. As Arens (2011, p. 17) mentioned,

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[A]s a wife a woman may feel dependent and insecure and therefore be more inclined to opt for her husband’s interest rather than her own, while as a mother she may feel stronger as she may want to act in the interest of her children out of love for them. As a mother-in-law who has power over her daughters-in-law she may feel confident and powerful and act more in her own interest or her sons’ interest.

I argue that Arens had rightly pointed out women’s different positions in a relationality that constrain their position in the social relations as a whole but came up with a strict structure–agency opposition, such as by stating, ‘[P]eople are not necessarily completely trapped in the structure and that it is possible for individuals or groups to transcend the structural conditioning and act outside of it. […] [P]eople at the margins are less trapped in the dominant structures’ (Arens, 2011, p. 15). Bangladeshi people, in general, inhabit an ideological world determined by religion, kinship, and patriarchal social relations which govern sociality, even though there are instances of role reversals indicating transformations and possible changes to the whole. These transformations relate to certain characteristics that are found in the social organization, such as kinship, the moral obligations of religion, and purdah, which perpetuate the hierarchical values of the social and women’s position in it. Mukherjee (1957), Bertocci (1972), Aziz (1979), White (1992), and Rahman (1994) also indicated this in different contexts. The ways women in the larger social order have been creating alternative positions for themselves is the ethnographic focus of this chapter. I demonstrate that the category of the joggo nari, that is, the worthy woman, is being produced and reproduced, thereby reconfiguring the entire social order while women navigated the social inequalities they faced in society. This finding problematizes the neoliberal framing of economic development and women empowerment through wage-earning labor. The inherent paradox lies in the complexities of gendered relationships and expressions of agency, desire, and freedom (see Chap. 3; see also Chowdhury, 2018; Siddiqi, 2015). Roles and Responsibilities at Home It has been assumed in the literature regarding the household economy that increased participation of women in wage labor (e.g., in the garment industry) would lead to the reallocation of the household’s labor

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resources—that is, women who are engaged in wage-earning through working in the garment industry would have reduced household work (see Becker, 1981; Zohir, 2001; Karim, 2014). However, during my fieldwork, interlocutors indicated other factors. Even though in practice there was limited involvement of male household members (husbands) in the household tasks, the division of gender roles existed, and these household tasks were perceived as the women’s duty. They stated that the time they had to devote to domestic tasks remained the same as before. Even though women were working in the formal sector, household tasks were not reallocated. The general norm of women as homemakers persisted. This norm was associated with a woman’s role as daughter, sister, wife, and/or mother. In this respect, during my fieldwork, I was told by Ayjina, one of the female interlocutors, ‘We have to prepare food and do all the household chores before coming to work, so sometimes I am late.’ In response to my query, ‘Why do men not help in household tasks; do you ask them to help?’ she replied, ‘Our dhormo (religion—Islam) encourages women to do all the household work, so we tend to do it all.’ In relation to this comment, I can share another experience from my visit to an interlocutor’s house. It was an afternoon in Shah Alam’s home, and I had met his wife and two daughters. I talked with them regarding their life on the weekends and how they managed their time juggling household tasks and their jobs. Shah Alam mentioned that sometimes he returned home before his wife, Farhana, and sometimes she got home before him, and whoever arrived first tried to do some cleaning or cooking. Farhana pointed out that their two daughters were adolescents, so they could help with the household tasks as well. However, Shah Alam said, he tried not to involve their daughters in household tasks as it might hamper their studies. At one point, I asked them how they divided the tasks among themselves (or if they did so). Farhana replied, ‘What household chores can a man do? It is our responsibility, and he works hard all day, so I ask him to rest.’ She went on to say that whenever she was home, she took care of the household. Their statements revealed that even though women were working outside of the home and earning money, their tasks both at home and in the factory were undervalued compared to work carried out by the men. I also asked garment workers about their roles in the family/household: ‘Did these roles change because of your work in the garment industry?’ They replied, ‘No, what would change? We are the same as we were previously.’ I followed up, ‘You work at the factory all day and even late

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into the evening. How do you manage the duties of both your home and the factory?’ They replied, ‘What would change! We must manage everything. We try to help each other in the family by getting the chores done. It is just that now we are also working in the factory.’ However, for the male workers, there were fewer complications. There was little if any social or ethical pressure for them to perform household tasks. Nevertheless, male household members were participating more and more in these tasks. Shah Alam mentioned, ‘Whenever my wife is late, I try to help out by doing some chores.’ The conception and division of household tasks and income-generating tasks had been part of workers’ semantic memory, and this prevailed in how they treated the tasks. Therefore, housework was still more important to the women. However, the boundaries of women’s ‘work’ had changed, for it had swelled to encompass their work at the factory. On a different occasion, I asked Salma1 how she spent her weekends and what her usual routine was on these days. She responded that because she had started to work (in the factory) against the will of her parents-in-­ law, she had to remain conscientious so that all the household tasks were taken care of as nicely as before. She said that even though women work outside the home and earn wages, they also must do all the household chores. In addition, she mentioned that her husband did not work at home after returning from the office. Moreover, I observed while living in the community that when kids played in the afternoon, female adolescents stayed home to take care of these younger siblings or helped their working mothers with their tasks. However, male adolescents studied, played, or sometimes worked on/at repairing something or went to the shops to bring something, though this rarely included household tasks (if their mother or sister was present). Young, unmarried women had fewer household responsibilities than married women with or without children. For example, on weekends, when all the garment workers stayed home, I observed that sometimes problems arose among families regarding who would be allowed to use the stove for cooking. In the kind of housing the garment workers lived in, they had access to two stoves for six to eight families. Every morning, there were issues, as someone took too much time and made others wait. This escalated during the weekends when everyone was home, and the women had to take care of all the housework that had piled up through the week. 1

 I discuss her detailed life story in Chap. 7.

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The difference between married women and unmarried women was that unmarried women could refrain from the pressure of cooking early. They could sleep in in the morning and do the cooking later. However, because of the living arrangements, all the workers had to compete with each other in the early morning hours for the use of the toilets and bathroom facilities. Even though women were involved in wage employment and contributed a considerable part of their income to the household, the division of labor did not change at the ideological level. Let’s think of this in relation to the larger social structure that I sketched at the start of the chapter. We find that there were modifications in practice even while the ideological separations between men’s and women’s perceived roles persisted (for a similar argument, see Siddiqi & Ashraf, 2017). The reason for this could be found in how the women were related to others in the family. In terms of ideological categories in the family, women had four different roles: daughter, sister, wife, and mother. In respect to their male counterparts, the wife was dependent on the husband. For the children, the mother was the caregiver, and the father was the provider (cf. Arens, 2011; Jansen, 1986). Unmarried women sacrificed for their parents as daughters and for their siblings as sisters. Work in the garment industry provided a situation where the daughter/sister/wife/mother at once could become the carer and the provider, while men’s traditional role as providers for the family mostly prevailed. This also explains why the woman who was an earning member of the family handed over her entire salary to her husband, who then remained responsible for managing the household finances (discussed in the next section).2 The Earner Versus the Manager of Finances During my fieldwork, I found that almost all female workers gave their earnings to their husbands. They had little control over their income. One of the female workers said during a discussion, ‘As long as we give them the salary we earn they are okay with us working,’ while another said, ‘Those who save money for themselves are basically divorced or widowed; those who stay married have put their money under their husband’s name.’ These statements reveal that women regarded it as their moral duty to give their income to their husband, and that this was necessary if one was to be a ‘good wife’ (valo bou). One of the interlocutors stated, ‘I give my salary  See Hasan (2018) for a discussion on this from a moral economy perspective.

2

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to my husband, and he manages all of the household expenses.’ Women’s income even helped males of the household set up a business (opening a furniture shop or purchasing a small vehicle to use as a taxi). In this regard, Shah Alam said that while his wife worked in a garment factory and also gave him all her income, she had the right to use it herself; still, she thought about the family and did not waste money on herself. On the contrary, Firoz, who lived alone while his wife and family lived in the village, said that after getting his salary, he would send all the money to his wife, who managed the home there. The woman’s role (Firoz’s wife) as the caregiver of the family took a priority position. Here we find an interesting contrast between a working woman and a woman who did not work in the garment industry. Their husbands each praised them, but they achieved those accolades by doing opposite tasks. Farhana (Shah Alam’s wife) was praised even though she had broken out of the image of the adorsho nari, that is, ideal woman. One more issue should be mentioned here, as Ayjina once told me that occasionally, she sent money to her mother, which she did not reveal to her husband. I had been talking to her during lunchtime and asking about her parents and siblings. She said that her father was an agricultural laborer, and her mother sometimes worked in wealthy households as house help or worked as a day laborer on agriculture farms. I asked whether she could help them economically, as she had been earning money working in the garment factory. She said, We are all in crisis; sometimes, I try to help my mother. There is an acute need in my own family, but I cannot forget my parents. My husband never opposes me if I want to help them, but you know it does not feel right to give money to my parents when we are struggling with ourselves. So, I tend to help my parents without telling anyone.

Further, Ayjina disclosed, ‘My income is sent to my in-laws whenever needed. It is not always possible to send money to my parents; rather, I give them gifts like clothes on occasion.’3 There was a sense of conflict in deciding how to spend her money, which she tried to resolve by keeping the two family realms separated. Similarly, Salma reported that sometimes she did not reveal her actual salary to her husband. As there was variability 3  During my fieldwork, married women workers during group discussions on several occasions mentioned: ‘After marriage, we do not send money to our parents.’

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in salary because of overtime and production bonuses, she did not get a fixed salary. So, every month she wanted to save something of which her family members or husband did not know. She said, ‘I am working to improve the family condition and do as much as I can. However, if he [her husband] knew everything, I would not be able to save for future crises. We would end up spending all the money.’ In order to prioritize some savings over spending everything that she earned, sometimes she told her husband that she had earned less than she actually had. She used the savings to help her parents and siblings, and she also saved for future needs. Single women, who usually lived with a relative, were found to be more independent, as they could save money and do so in their own account. The single women generally said that after being involved in income-­ generating activities, they could buy whatever they liked. Shaila, one of the interlocutors, declared, ‘Now we earn cash which we can spend as we wish.’ However, I noticed a kind of refrain among the garment workers, who always told me that ‘they could do whatever they wanted with their income, but they do not.’ It seemed that there was a ‘moral policing’ on their instincts and desires as consumers and users of money. Another operator said, ‘I cannot spend on myself because others in my family are in crisis. I feel obliged because of my conscience’ (Bibek er karone nijer iccha moto khoroch korte pari na). This represents how women were inclined to perform their roles within the ideal categories—daughter, sister, wife, or mother. Yet, they were transforming themselves from dependent and caregiver to supporter and provider. This also reveals a new categorization of the ideal woman, differentiated from women who would save money for themselves alone and spend as they wished. Thus, Ayjina had to deal with the economic needs of her parental family and her in-law’s family separately. Salma saved money without her husband’s knowledge. Moreover, they were performing the role of the ‘son’/‘man’ in the family, following the imagery of the privileged male position. The situations I encountered while in discussion with my interlocutors are quite different from what Rahman (1994, p. 28) asserted about the income generation of women: ‘[W]ork gives them access to resource entitlements other than those associated with socially ascribed relations and dependence for, when a woman touches the first taka she has earned with her labor, she feels liberated.’ Rahman used the subject of income generation by women to demonstrate how the ideology of the village in Bangladesh was challenged—that is, by breaching the traditional power structure and authority of the village norm. Thus, these women

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demolished the category of the ‘ideal woman.’ Contrary to the idea that the ‘ideal woman’ category was demolished, I contend that even though these women were working outside the home and, in practice, violating the traditional norms of the division of labor, workers’ tendencies to perform the role of the ‘ideal woman’ through other acts, such as sacrificing for the family and morally policing themselves regarding their own expenditure, reflects a re-idealization of the category. Thus, I see the changes in women’s positions as a continuous totalization of the ideological whole, for example, recreating the idea of joggo nari (worthy woman) as the adorsho nari (‘ideal woman’). I claim that this refers to the category of valo/lokkhi meye/bou (good daughter/wife), even though the criteria of evaluations were different. In Bangladesh, the two spheres of household work and income generation were separated historically. When women started to work outside the home, it gave them an alternative position, yet they had nostalgia for their previous role. Yet, some social norms and religious values persisted and encouraged women to be the ‘homemakers.’ Thus, by giving money to their husbands, women could continue to perform their role of carer of the household as well as keep intact the character of the household, which was that of a patriarchal reference point for everyone in the family. This also served to keep intact the category of grihalakshmi (the ideal woman) within the Muslim home. The ‘ideal woman’ brought good fortune to the family as well as fed the children, husband, and in-laws with her own hand. This category was in opposition to women who did not do household chores and who liked to go out in public rather than staying home during colonial times (see Amin, 1996, p. 85). The categorization persisted during the initial years of industrialization (see Azim, 2013, p. 90; Zaman, 1995, p. 109). What I find important here are the changes in the categorizations of women, who can thereby become grihalakshmi (ideal) through their work as a worthy person. In Bangladeshi society, religious teachings, values, social expectations, and norms associated with women inspire ideas such as patience, sacrifice, modesty, obedience, and virtuousness (Zaman, 1995). Thus, through garment work, there was change; it provided possibilities for women to step into the privileged role of men as providers of the family. They were able to keep some money for themselves to help their parents’ households and for individualized commodity expenditures. Nonetheless, they could display the patience (dhoirjo—keeping patience), sacrifice (tyagi—sacrifice for siblings, parents, husband, and children), and modesty and obedience (anugotto—adhering to the norms

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and not being explicit with any complaints) that signify the virtuousness of a woman. Even though they broke the idea of the traditional gender segregation of work, they could still display patience and sacrifice. Further, modesty and obedience came to be differently explained and practiced so as to overcome the stigma associated with working outside the home (see the following sections). Thus, there was an interchangeability of the actors within the different positions even though the spheres perpetuated. Women and men, in practice, performed each other’s roles. Women’s actions also represented how they navigated between their roles as daughter, mother, wife, and the self. In Bangladesh, the separation of home and ‘outside,’ of male and female, continued to exist, but the actors, like amphibians, roamed around different spheres. It was not an alien object like money that was transformed through the transition between different spheres of social order but rather the actors (i.e., women) who, by themselves moving between the spheres, took new roles and were the upholders of previous roles. In a way, new possibilities were created within the structure. At different stages of their lives, these garment workers could become worthy daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers, and this raised the possibility of the creation of the category of ‘worthy woman.’ Marriage by One’s Own Choice In rural Bangladesh, a family’s ijjot (honor) resided in the virtue of its women. Thus, parents made marital decisions for their daughters very early, normally after the first menstruation, as a way to control their sexuality (Dannecker, 2002, p. 184). In the literature, women’s migration from the villages and their participation in the labor forces have often been explained as their attempt to contribute to their future dowry cost, in this way making themselves less of a liability to their families (Kabeer, 1997, p. 290). Studies in other Asian countries have posited similar arguments. For example, Kim (1996, p. 558) and Wolf (1990, p. 49ff) stated that in South Korea and Java, unmarried women workers saved money for their dowry and worked to advance their educational and social attainment, thus accumulating symbolic capital for their roles as wives or mothers. Further, Foo and Lim (1989, p. 223) stated that in almost every Asian country, factory employment had resulted in or contributed to later marriage and a switch from ‘arranged’ to ‘self-choice’ marriage. They also suggested that this development reflected an exercise in personal autonomy, choice, and freedom.

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Dannecker (2002) contended that employment definitely expanded women’s room for maneuvering with regard to marriage in Bangladesh. They became actively involved, for example, in the discussion processes taking place in the household, when in the past they were supposed to remain ignorant of and detached from marriage negotiations, as White (1999, p. 100) claimed. Dannecker (2002) further indicated that women’s working experience made them interesting brides for families in rural areas. She stated that earning had increased a woman’s value for her prospective husband. However, I argue that there are other important reasons. Sometimes, marrying a co-worker could be a strategy to ensure ‘male protection’ and to avoid the ‘patriarchal gaze.’ One of the workers who had been working in the garment industry for three months used to live with her sister before she got married to one of her co-workers. They were from the same home district. After they met in the factory, the marriage was arranged with the family’s consent during the Eid holiday. Many women who married by choice did so to avoid the potential attention that a single woman attracted. A woman without male protection was exposed to various forms of sexual harassment (as described in Chap. 4). Thus, marriage provided women with a ‘male guardian.’ This was reinforced by the more profound tradition of gender subordination in Bangladesh and women’s reliance on male protection (cf. Kabeer, 1997, 2000; see also Naved et al., 2001; White, 2017). Moreover, regarding getting married, Rahima said, ‘It is better if one can marry, because then everything is settled. But I am content being single; I do not want to get married very early. It brings a lot of responsibilities.’ It showed the conflict between being a daughter and a wife. She perceived the dual roles of daughter and wife as contradictory and chose to remain as simply the daughter. It was a complex scene, the different motivations for getting married early and not. These diverse possibilities were the outcome of income opportunities that working women could use differently in different instances. Rahima’s statement also reflects how choices at the micro familial level intersected with macro societal ideals, and how micro–macro aspects did not really operate, therefore, at separate levels. Overcoming Stigma There were individual and familial motivations for starting work at a garment factory. Workers, especially women, had chosen the work, but as

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some of them mentioned, there was a considerable social stigma attached to garment work in Bangladesh (see also Kibria, 1995; Paul-Majumdar & Zohir, 1994; Siddiqi, 2003). Awareness of this stigma was apparent in the workers’ statements as well as in the narratives surrounding them. In the early years of the garment sector’s development, workers in the factory had been stigmatized (see Amin et al., 1998). Over time, the workforce expanded rapidly, and the nature of the stigma changed. More than two million women are engaged in garment factory work, so it is no longer regarded as deviant or unusual behavior, as it was 20  years ago. Selina noted that even during the time she had been working in the industry, she had seen changes in attitudes. She reported, In our village, those who do not work outside the home and devote their full time to the family are regarded as valo meye (good girls). If a girl works, people ask many questions like, ‘Where does she work? How is the environment? Is it safe? What does she do?’ However, I had to overcome the questioning. I could not sit idle just to be a good girl. I had to earn money for my daughters.

Discussion with garment workers who had been working for more than 15 years revealed the fact that once they had decided to work for the garment industry, several factors contributed to the agreement of their parents, including the influence of people from their locality who had already started working in a factory and local elites who were working in the cities also encouraged their parents. Nowadays, the family does not pose a problem for working women, perhaps because the stigma was overcome once examples became apparent of the inability of male members to support the family, which is discussed in Salma’s story in Chap. 7. Rahima mentioned that when she started working in the industry, she did not run into any problems. She stressed the fact that ‘all the problems depend on the individual. If you are good, then nothing bad can happen. People knew how I was, so they did not make any problems for me working in the factory. My family never endured any humiliation because of me and never will face such a situation.’ Shaila said similarly, If I do not harm others, what problems would I have! I go to the factory, do my work, and live alone, so I do not encounter any problems. On weekends, I go to the shop if I need something. I prefer to go alone. I do not visit others, and people do not visit me. If I feel sick, then someone from the factory might come to visit. Friends who live nearby visit me on rare occasions.

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Rahman also noted, ‘With the break-up of the extended family system and the increase in hardship, an increasing number of women from the poorest households are in need of economic support. The normative structure of women’s seclusion through the purdah has loosened, and the “idealized model of woman” is at stake’ (Rahman, 1994, p. 23). Even though working women were viewed as symbols of shame by the village leaders, women were ‘proud of their work, chiefly because it has provided them with some income and economic independence’ (Rahman, 1994, p. 28f). Female garment workers were stigmatized for their greater autonomy and mobility because they were beyond the supervision of their families. They were assumed to be at risk of breaching the social status of the family by having romantic affairs, engaging in sexual activities outside of or before marriage, or even by mixing and working with unknown males. In discussing the social stigma associated with their work, the interlocutors reflected on their coping strategies to reduce the stigma. Many workers, especially married women, tried to find work at the same factory where their husbands worked. When family members already lived in the city, it helped them to break free from the social bindings and stigma. Social networks and contacts in the village, as well as family members and kin relations through marriage, generally facilitated the process of seeking jobs, and these people became protectors for the women workers. This also created an informal network of workers. Factories relied on these networks in their recruiting. A garment manager revealed, ‘Garment workers come from villages, and it is like a pathway of ants, one following another. They have created small networks or families for themselves. People move from villages to the slums, and their contacts in the slums help them obtain employment in the garment sector.’ The importance of this informal extension of network based on the kinship network has played a great part in the proliferation of garment workers as well as assuring their survival in the factories. As discussed in Chap. 5, kinship ideologies played a pivotal role in factory supervision and management. From the garment workers’ perspectives, we can see that they have not completely denied the customary ideas that prohibited their movement outside the home or working in male-dominated spheres. Instead, within their set of values, they explain the issues differently and still distinguish between those who adhere to the social norms and those who do not, for example, in maintaining honor both as a woman and as a daughter even while outside the home. Some people also made distinctions between individual maintenance of behavior

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and involvement in something that they perceived as humiliating for themselves and their families. The women valued the modern nature of their work, considering garment work less strenuous than other forms of agricultural labor, and they appreciated the autonomy and independence that came with earning. Workers said that they could maintain a higher standard of dress than their nonworking sisters could. They further said that they could adhere to the latest fashions and spend money on makeup and jewelry. Thus, working women became role models and encouraged other young women to follow. In this regard, workers tended to support others from their locality who wanted a job. Hasina, a 21-year-old single woman, working as an operator, said, ‘My married friends have to wear a saree, but I can wear a salwar kameez, and I have access to all the modern accessories to wear with the dress. I go to the village and come back to the city on my own; they cannot imagine doing this themselves. Working at the garment factories has made me confident, because I have a job.’ The garment industry, which presented itself to the rural men and women as an opportunity to break the spiral of poverty, in turn, reworked the notion and stigma about working women. Further, from the workers’ perspectives, while jobs at the garment factory were a way out of economic hardship, they also allowed them to project themselves as conscientiously ‘modern.’ I found that the larger ideological level continuously reformed to accommodate the changed practices of women. I hold that wage work and some control over their income (at the micro-level of the household, family, or community) could lead toward women’s autonomy when societal, economic, ideological, and religious values reinforced and validated women’s autonomy. It is not that one form of autonomy influenced the other in a linear process. Instead, it was a system of reinforcement in which the micro and macro processes form complementary relations, continuously reformulating one another. Thus, we find a shift from the ideal (adorsho) to the worthy (joggo) category. Despite the possibilities of a lack of social acceptance, new ideas of ‘a worthy woman’ (joggo/lokkhi/valo bou, joggo/ghorer lokkhi/lokkhi/valo meye) emerged. I emphasize a focus on the relations between the everyday practices and their bearing on the ideological system and vice versa. In this regard, even though I agree with Kabeer’s (2000) theoretical middle ground in explaining labor market decisions by Bangladeshi women in Dhaka and London, considering agency and structure at the macro- and micro-level of society as mutually interdependent, she still

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tends to uphold the opposition between structure and agency in describing labor market decisions of Bangladeshi garment workers in Dhaka and London. She referred to ‘the role of agency in shaping [these] social practices and the correspondence between agency at the individual level and patterns of continuity and change at the structural level’ (Kabeer, 2000, p.  361). We should make it clear that structures and individual agency all contributed to the ‘social whole.’ I think there is also scope for individuality within the structure of the ideologies, and how people used their choices might have changed the structure in the end. In both Dhaka and London, the Bangladeshi Muslim women’s ideological world was intact. In Dhaka, the contradictory activities were incorporated into the system through alternative explanations—for example, purdah as self-conduct rather than as maintaining complete segregation from outside contact. On the other hand, the ideological whole was performing without such possibilities in London. The new structural freedom was exclusionary, as it created a new category of ‘worthy woman,’ marginalizing women who could not perform the duties similar to that of males of the households. There were different conflicting views and experiences regarding household divisions of labor, management of finances, and marriage decisions through which changes in the social relations and values came about.

Life as Garment Kormi Work as Responsibility: For Family and Factory ‘What is garment factory work for you?’ and ‘Why do you keep working in the garment industry?’ I asked these questions to my interlocutors on various occasions. From their responses, I realized that workers had different circumstances that had forced them to start working (described earlier in Chap. 4) and diverse motivations to continue doing so. Discussions with the workers made me consider certain phrases, one of which was ‘What we do is our responsibility.’ Invariably, I got this response whenever I asked why they continued at the factory or how they saw their work. When discussed further, it became evident that, on the one hand, it was their duty as father/mother/son/daughter/brother/sister, and, on the other hand, their duty within the respective roles they were supposed to perform in the factories. Nevertheless, they did prioritize their role as kin

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(as a daughter, sister, wife, or mother), and ‘family first’ was the norm. Other ‘work’ was an extension of these kinship duties, for example, the job in the garment factory. ‘We work for our family’ (Amra kaj kori amader poribar er jonno). This is the statement that factory workers always used whenever they talked about the harsh conditions at work, the extended overtime, and the very low salary. Their dissatisfaction with factory work was intensified when they could not perform their familial duties. Workers mentioned how upsetting it was to not be given enough holiday leave during the religious festivals. As most of the workers traveled back to their villages during this time, there was dissatisfaction about the festival ‘bonus’ salary that they received. Workers told me, ‘After working the whole year, if we cannot go back to the village and spend extra days with our family, then why do we work?’ Workers also said how important it was to them that salary and bonus were given before they went home at Eid. On different occasions, workers opined, ‘If we do not get the bonus on time, then why and how would we go back to the village? There is no point going home without money.’ Thus, the family seemed to be part of their existentialist idea in the larger social arena outside of work. These instances reflect on how they treated their work as part of their ability in maintaining and fulfilling their responsibility toward family. Regarding this idea of the responsibility toward family, three aspects converge: kinship obligations (especially mothering and one’s responsibility toward siblings and parents); performance of religious duties in taking care of the family; and the diversification of gender roles, for in the changed economic conditions women were taking on more and more roles which men had traditionally performed. These aspects created a pathway for women to become worthier members of their families, and it gave the women themselves a sense of accomplishment. However, ‘work’ was not only an instrument with which to sustain their social relations. Workers felt a sense of ‘work responsibility’ toward the factory also. ‘We are dependent on the factory for work and income, and the factory is dependent on our labor.’ This is how they related to the factory. They thought that the work and the labor they put into it was important, as Tomal once expressed. ‘You see the fans running, the machines running, the general manager getting 300 thousand BDT as salary, the owner making a profit, and even the local homeowners making an income by renting out rooms, all because of us. If workers do not exist, everything will come to a stop.’ While they tied the work to the idea of

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their existence, whenever the specific activities they performed were discussed, their individuality came to the forefront. Work and skills were part of each making a mark concerning their worthiness as individuals. Workers tried to refashion the idea of themselves into that of good workers through their work performance. One of the interlocutors claimed that she could become an operator in one and a half months. She said, ‘If you can work better, you can become an operator. Management sees your work and gives you a machine.’ She also said, ‘I even got a chance of becoming a supervisor, but I did not want the position. I am happy being an operator. If I became a supervisor, I would have to do much more and would thus suffer more.’ Although kinship was something the workers valued in life, there was a sense of individuality based on one’s work ethic. Shah Alam, one of the operators, stated, ‘In the garment industry, we do not have time to slack off. I get a task handed to me and need to forward it along. I got my first promotion in one and a half years. Everyone needs to try to learn and thereby be promoted. I tried to learn from my seniors. I would go to my seniors’ homes to learn measurements and other techniques.’ Over time, work and the ability to produce helped the workers to maneuver power relations with supervisors and others. Shah Alam estimated, ‘I worked well; thus, nobody was unkind to me.’ He said that his experience in the garment industry was good. He remarked, ‘Bad experiences happened to those who were bad themselves; you can find such people everywhere.’ On the same topic, Jesmin noted, Some operators are good at their work and also help others out. Some are not good (fazil), and they will not listen to anyone. Efficient and good workers do not need to worry about anything. Supervisors and line managers remain amicable with them and never mistreat them. They even let them leave early. Then the next operators must work longer to fulfill the target.

Salma contended, Our relationship between operators is good. We do not ask each other to do our work. When one finishes, she gets to go home, and there are no hard feelings. We also have good relations with our supervisors. However, during production hours, there is harsh talk. They scold us, and we scold them back in our minds.

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She went on, ‘They give us unattainable targets. They give more work than the workers can do. Thus, they force us to work longer. We must meet the target before going home. Workers cannot help one another, because we are all working toward the same target.’ From these cases, we see how workers are individualized based on their work ethic and responsibilities, creating the tendency of giving every worker an individual status based on work performance. From the workers’ comments above concerning their work, relationality, and individuality, the factory can be thought of as a social arena where, along with material production, a sociality was also produced. This sociality was composed of both a relational value and the individualities of the factory workers. Ideas About Money: Expanding Necessities Ayjina once told me, ‘We need money; that is why we are here. Why would we live in an unfamiliar place if we did not need the money?’ Her remark reflects that the need for money to sustain life had driven the workers out of the rural areas and into the urban areas. The garment industry offered them the option to work and earn money. Her comment also indicates that there were not enough available income options for making money in the villages. There was also the matter of dispossession from income opportunities, which is a third meaning that we could infer from her comment. It indicates how differently the factory workers treated working life in the village and the urban area. Therefore, even though life in the city and work in the garment factory seemed alien, they continued working there. They had to uphold their familial responsibilities and needed money to fulfill expanding necessities (described in the next section). Tomal, age 24 at the time that I first met him, was sent to work in a garment factory when he was 15 or 16 years old. He described how he coped with the family’s decision during the difficult initial days of the job: ‘I used to cry all the time when I first came to work, but I needed the money for myself and my family. When I received my first month’s salary, though, all the pain vanished. After seven long years of work, I have become a supervisor.’ When Jewel explained why he had considered migrating and working in the garment industry, he said, ‘I used to help my father with the farming. I did not have my income. Whenever I went out

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with my friends, I had to ask my father for money. I was young and had many friends. I needed cash in my pocket. It did not feel good to ask for money every day. Eventually, I decided to start working and earn myself.’ Contrary to the idea of money as a disciplinary tool used by the factory supervisors (discussed in Chap. 4), here I regard ‘money’ as the convertor of value(s), which is not the same as to use value or exchange value. For the workers in the garment factory, this value is related to their worth as persons. Money could be used to get commodities, could be invested to get more money, and here we find that it was transformed into social values. We can discover cultural meanings surrounding monetary transactions connected to culturally constructed consumption, exchanges, or even production with other socialites (Bloch & Parry, 1989). For example, we can consider how Ayjina, Tomal, and Jewel used their work and earnings to make a new identity for themselves. It helped them to perform their duties to their families, it gave them a sense of achievement, and it gave them a sense of individuality, independence, and autonomy. Therefore, there were coercive aspects as well as infinite imaginations associated with money. Money was incorporated in the social values (rather than dismantling it) and provided a form of freedom different from possessive individualism (cf. Simmel, 2011 [1907]; Schmidt, 2017). Garment workers did not perceive themselves as the sole proprietor of their skills. They were in a relation of socio-moral debt toward their families, even though they were individualized workers in the factory. There was also a dimension of the workers’ ‘will’ in converting their earnings and money into something which they could not have achieved otherwise or the sense of self they acquired by using money that could not be converted back to other commodities. The personal relations this fostered and/or solidified because of the expressions of good ‘will’ helped in their future endeavors and socially legitimized their actions. Because of their good ‘will,’ workers engaged in self-exploitation by saving money and contributing to the family cause. I found a one-way cycle where the workers sold labor, earned money, invested in buying products, and eventually acquired worth and value in family and society. I found that the moral behavior of the workers followed the ‘universal law’ of prioritizing larger values over individual inclinations. It made them aware of their freedom of action, and there was an infinite potential for the conversion of money into something else. These patterns of behavior could be seen as outcomes of the process. The neoclassical theory assumed that all human behavior involving the allocation of resources in pursuit of some kind of scarce good so as to

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achieve the most product from the least sacrifice is trying to maximize some other sort of value, such as prestige, fame, or religious value. So, we need to understand the reasons why people acted as they did. Imagining how the total system was maintained and reproduced over time, I argue that value(s) formed a large system of categories, and it was a matter of how these values were defined in relation to each other. If we think of patriarchy (or kinship relationality) and money as two different value regimes, workers considered kinship superior to money. Therefore, kinship encompassed money—that is, the value of money. Further, the comparison of importance was relative at two levels: firstly, between two categories (e.g., money and kinship relationality), and secondly, between the actors’ possession of money and the proportions that were converted into relational value. Thus, value is something that makes people’s actions meaningful to them and how they become incorporated into a larger system of meaning. Meanings with which money was invested were quite as much a product of the cultural matrix into which it was incorporated as of the economic functions it performed as a means of exchange, unit of account, store of value, and so on (Bloch & Parry, 1989, p. 21). Money could be seen as an instrument for the maintenance of valued social relations. On the contrary, money could be destructive to the moral order, as these adages mentioned by the garment workers at different contexts indicate: ‘With the money, you cannot become human; you have to have the heart to spend it,’ ‘One cannot become human earning money,’ ‘She had earned money but not respect,’ ‘She is rich but not worthy of it,’ and ‘Money cannot buy respect.’ Ideas About Consumer Items Most of the women workers were commodity consumers; one of the incentives for working in the garment factories included the ability to buy new dresses, cosmetics, and other consumer goods. The prospect of earning money and spending it on ‘luxury’ goods was encouragement for almost all the workers to migrate and find work in the factories, as they had seen others in the family or from the locality earning cash and buying goods. One of the interlocutors disclosed, ‘Despite working in the harsh conditions all month, when I get my salary and have a lot of cash, it feels really good.’ During my visits to the households, I noticed certain brands of products that some families always used, indicating that they had developed a kind of brand loyalty. While they had developed this trait of using

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consumer goods but did not always have enough money to buy what they wanted as a month progressed, garment factory workers bought goods from specific small shops where they could buy on credit and repay the loans when they received their salary. My findings could be compared to what Mills (1997) demonstrated regarding women’s experiences as labor migrants in Thailand. She argued that commodity consumption is a central goal in migration decisions and an important feature of the urban sojourn. She further claimed that urban consumption practices were constitutive of young migrants’ sense of themselves as modern women. In Dhaka, even though the economic crisis was the prime driver of women to the garment factories, consumption had become one of the reasons that motivated workers to keep working under its strict regulations. I saw hawkers set up stalls beside the factories during lunch breaks and women buying small consumer goods on their way home. In response to my queries regarding why so many women kept working in this sector despite its persistent problems, one of the interlocutors said, ‘Women can at least wear salwar kameez now. If they return, they will have to wear a torn saree. Women can earn money and lead a life here.’ During a discussion about her life during holidays and when visiting relatives, Salma confessed, ‘I did not have a nice dress and/or ornaments. Now, after working in the factory, I earn enough to save to buy gold ornaments and can buy different new dresses. It feels good to wear new clothes while going out or visiting relatives.’ Here we see how consumerism led to an equalizing force when we consider how the workers thought about their access to consumer goods. However, in the larger context, it also gave the workers a higher position in the social spectrum, as those who could use certain products to which others did not have access.4 Value of Work as Freedom and Becoming Joggo Regarding the ‘value of work’ and associated ideas of ‘freedom’—I emphasize what ‘freedom’ meant for workers in comparison with the past contexts and realized in the same social arena from where they have migrated. This also reflects how the ideological separation between the male sphere and the female sphere was maintained (cf. Carsten, 1989) even though workers had blurred the split between male and female activities for family 4  See Chap. 7 for a discussion on the equalizing and hierarchical forces in the lives of the garment workers.

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and in the factory. Negotiating social norms and gender roles remained an ongoing process though many transformed the social grids of their social positioning (cf. Rudnick, 2011, p. 100; Hussein, 2018, p. 98). As such, in everyday life, the practices of the garment workers extend and transgress the socio-cultural terrains (cf. Haynes & Prakash, 1991, p.  1). It thus reveals, social structures are not monolithic and static unless a dramatic event alters it; instead constellation of forces and practices enmeshed in the process of becoming. The need to earn money is an existential fact and a practical necessity. Still, I think workers (in Bangladesh and also in general) did so to become higher valued persons by the measure of cultural values as well. Work at the garment factories was just a job/occupation; a means to earn cash/ subsistence to fund expenditures of one kind or another. The real values lay in the relations between family and community. I argue that, for the workers, different actions were undertaken in accordance with social and religious values and that the production floor was also regulated by social values. While these may not have always coincided, they were part of the total system. The social life spanned more than the industrial premises, and in understanding how work was conceptualized by the workers, we ought to seek into the social arenas where the capitalist logic did not penetrate. For example, worth did not come from the amount of money earned and spent by the individual; it was the individual’s contributions made to the family that mattered. The workers could not be conceptualized as ‘individual,’ for their individuality was submerged in the social, which teemed with many relational bonds. Their work had limited value in itself. It was part of the ideas of prosperity, autonomy, and workers’ freedom, that is, through performing their roles as daughter and wife, for instance. However, there could be tensions and conflicts between different value regimes and their potential evaluators, such as the factory management, workers, parents and other kin members, and the society/community. It could be understood from the workers’ conceptualization of their work. There was a double meaning of the ‘value of work’ as responsibility toward family and responsibility toward the factory, as described earlier in this chapter. Values related to work for the workers remained obscured and realized in temporality. I have also explained in Chap. 5 that workers established and performed fictitious kinship relations; executed roles of the daughter, sister, wife, and mother in different stages of their lives; and also became worthy workers for the factory. In these diverse socialities, the

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‘value of work’ was recognized and realized. There were also tensions and conflict for the women, as they had to balance their contribution to their own parents’ family and their parents-in-law’s family. Thus, the ‘value of work’ cannot be seen as static but remains dynamic in its potentiality and actualization as well as in its forms and expressions. Garment workers measured the value of autonomy/freedom and prosperity in terms of their relationality. It was not the work itself but the opportunity the income brought that mattered. One of my female interlocutors, Salma, stressed during a discussion, ‘I could spend all of the money I make on myself, but I do not. The income helps me to run my family smoothly. Previously, with my husband’s income alone, we could not buy all the things we desired. Now both of us earn, so we can save some money.’ Farhana (Shah Alam’s wife) said, Our family members in the village are living a good life. We are also leading a good life here. We were able to send our children to a good school. We can do all of this because of our income. […] I can buy whatever my parents-in-­ law ask for. I can buy the things my children want. I can also buy things that I desire. I purchased a refrigerator, a new bed, and I built a new house in the village. In doing all these things, I myself have changed.

Her comment here reflects what I am arguing about continuity and change in the structure. Even though she thought about her individual activities and preferences, she also evaluated her worth in relation to others in the family. Both individuality and the collective emerged through her work in the factory. The ‘change’ she referred to indicates a new categorization of ‘worthy woman.’ On a similar issue, Jesmin commented, My mother worked alone to raise the two of us. She has been working since we were very young. Now, my sister and I also work in the garment industry. My mother married both of us off. I have my husband now. We are happy to be working in the factory. […] We can wear nice clothes. When we visit relatives or go out to a function, we can wear nice clothes, which contrast our lives years ago.

She continued, ‘Since starting work, my relations with relatives have improved. I work, earn money, can give presents to everyone, and can visit relatives occasionally. So, we all get along quite well.’ Jesmin further stated, ‘Previously, we were living marginally, but now we all work and earn enough money. We do not have to ask anyone for anything. We can

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manage every need ourselves.’ She told me that in the past, people could not send their children to school and could not even afford enough food. Now, everyone could afford such things. Many people had bought land, others bought electric rickshaws, and some had built new houses. All the changes had happened because of the garment industry. Here we find different dimensions of freedom that were realized with the creation of greater real-life opportunities and choices. The ‘freedom’ that the workers enjoyed was not situated in the life of the ‘factory worker’ alone; instead, the broader life of the worker’s social relations was deemed important. We find a form of both sociality and capitalism (cf. Allison, 2012). For female workers, this has created a certain space for becoming worthy in the patriarchal relationality of the country. It sustains the patriarchal character of the household, with women’s activities regarded as a performance of the male roles (see also Chap. 3). Thus, the ideological superiority of males over females also persists. Rahima once said that on her income, she could live just fine but could not yet buy any land. However, she said, families in which two or three people could work at once did not have any problems. From these comments, we can reflect on the fact that she did not prioritize her own living but rather what she could contribute to raising her family’s status in the village by buying land and building a new house, which would impact the status of their patrilineage in the village. All the life stories I recorded indicate that the value of work was associated not with the individual but with the ‘social person.’ Thus, the whole structure of social relations was being renegotiated so as to create certain subject positions for women as well. Working women (i.e., joggo nari) are not stigmatized in the same way as they were before. I argue that this new categorization can serve as an important contrast to the development of the bhadramahila, a category of women developed in the colonial times representing the modernity and emancipation of women in Bengal. These women were educated and were free to move about outside of the homestead with an in-law’s or the husband’s permission. They were upholders of national sovereignty in the households and, thus, were also part of the nationalist movement against the British colonial rule (see Mani, 1987; Sen, 1993). They accompanied men in the transition toward a middle-class society. They contrasted the working-class women (Hossain, 2008) as well as could represent the grihalakshmi (ideal woman) of the modern Muslim family (cf. Azim, 2013; Amin, 1996). This category of ‘Bengali woman’ was socially created and maintained the patriarchal structure of the Bengali society. The joggo nari

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(worthy woman), while retaining the structure of patriarchy and unique in its formation, could blur the distinction between the socially constructed Bengali men and Bengali women (see Hasan, 2020). Using the different experiences and understandings of the garment workers, we might find and assess the significance of the value(s) they thought of as guiding their lives. We could identify and explain what was distinctive about the ethical as opposed to the non-ethical values, as the workers possessed these apparently contradictory values in terms of the tension they felt between family and the individual (regarding how they would spend their earnings). The workers’ practices pointed toward a composite solution that appreciated both larger family duties while maintaining individuality. Still, individuals had to make choices. In addition, it could be seen as the emergence of holism and hierarchical relations. The ideas of prosperity, autonomy, and freedom of the workers were contextual and exercised differently. Values in the workers’ lives were not fixed but perpetually reinvented through their choices and action. Freedom for the workers consisted of the possibility of deciding the kind of person he or she wanted to be. The a priori value5 was ever-changing in the life of the workers. Women could achieve a status that was once only occupied by men. The measurements of prosperity and freedom were not individualized; thus, a position in the family that might seem burdensome was in a way a possibility of a new life. Therefore, income generation by women, which is associated with the development of individualized consumerism (see the previous section), is only one part of the story. Following the ‘money’ and finding how it turns out to be valuable reflect the generation of a new sociality. Here, we have seen how women have kept the patriarchal structure of their families intact. As we move forward into the life situations of the garment workers, we find that ‘work’ and ‘money’ translate into values in the social order and thereby transform the social order (see Chap. 7). This happened as women became part of formal employment and started earning, which was a result of the flourishing garment industry in Bangladesh.

5  Nietzsche (2007 [1887]) rejected the a priori claims of traditional metaphysics on the basis that they purported to represent a true world which is in reality utterly fanciful. So, logic and mathematics are inventions, not in any way given to us, either by a true world or by any kind of fanciful a priori intuitions. Thus, he proposed revaluation of all values.

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Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have explained the changes employment in the garment industry brought about in the workers’ lives and the structural forces that influenced the lives of these workers in Bangladesh. I have described how these garment kormi perceived their work, their ideas of money, and the value that they felt their work had brought to their lives. Based on my ethnographic data, I argue that the employment of women in income-­ generating activities and their financial contribution to the family have not led to changes in gender relations, gender roles, and patriarchal norms in the households at the ideological level. Even though women’s entry into the factory was a change in itself, it did not give them decision-making power regarding financial matters (in terms of savings, investment, or expenditure), and the control remained with their husbands or other males. However, there were indications of transformation, and workers experienced confrontations of value(s). Thereby, new value configurations emerged, and the alternative category of joggo nari (worthy woman) was formed. This shows how workers experienced freedom and economic autonomy in the transforming social orders of Bangladesh. I believe, as Althusser (2017 [1988], p.  128) argued, that ideology forms a system with no possible outside to which it might be compared. A system is, therefore, nothing but ‘outside’ because, at its formation, it encompassed all that existed in the world and pronounced the truth about everything in advance of the slightest experience. Following Althusser, I also claim that there was no ‘outside’ in regard to the workers’ values. The social values reigned over workers’ experiences without exception. Thus, in this dialectical process, continuous production of the ‘whole’ went on merging the social and the individuals. There were changes in how the workers acted and valued their work, with possibilities of becoming worthy for the family. The women (workers) in the family and the society operated at the same ideological level. Women, for example, in performing double duties, kept the totalizing idea of their religiously sanctioned roles, and by keeping the relational roles intact, they became the whole in itself (cf. Rio & Smedal, 2008). Women workers were reemphasizing women’s responsibility for the household even while they started working outside of it. They ideologically maintained the separation between earner and manager of finances— at the ideological level, despite women gaining the ability to become commodity consumers. There were apparent ideological conflicts among

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the women deciding how to best use their income, whether on family or themselves. In the continuing process, the possibilities for women were changing, with different positions being deemed worthy by women performing dual tasks and supporting family needs. In a way, this reveals how the values of an ‘ideal’ woman were reinstated by the very fact of not performing the traditional role. Women’s worthiness could not be understood without its relation to kinship obligations. Thus, the dominant ideas were encompassing its contrary. Further, a reconfiguration of values was evident in the ways people reinvented and re-explained norms of purdah through their practice. In the end, the value of the work did not reside in women’s income but in the economic autonomy and freedom that was manifested in their relationalities. Workers reinvented these values through their choices and actions. Therefore, to uncover the wider cosmology—the worldview of the garment kormi inside and outside of the factories—one must consider these many-stranded economic, relational (kinship), or religious aspects not discrete but overlapping (see Coleman, 2005; Tambiah, 1990, 2013 [1973]). I argue that the ambivalences over the conditions and in my interlocutors’ opinions were because they found themselves in diverse circumstances. There were unevennesses in their expectations, motivations, and desires. Individuals (who were immersed in these social relations) might have been acting variously in their roles as daughter, sister, wife, mother, or self (as a garment kormi), but they were thinking about their performance in relation to the ideological whole that was established based on kinship relationality and the patriarchy sanctioned by religious ethics. This also illustrates the dynamic nature of the ‘social whole.’ There was a hybridity of realities through which they were becoming garment kormi. There were changes in social relations in the form of the destruction of the old forms as well as the development of new ones. All life stories indicate that the value of work was associated not with the atomized individual but with the ‘social person.’ The next chapter illustrates how garment workers related to the ‘future’ and how their everyday experiences informed how they conceived of the future. Finally, I argue that in the capitalist process of accumulation and exploitation, workers themselves remade the indeterminate futures and aspired for a better life.

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CHAPTER 7

Dare to Dream: Remaking Everyday Realities

Introduction During my discussions with the workers, I talked with them about the problems of working in the garment factories. They had uncertainties about when they would get their salary and fear of losing their job. One of my interlocutors once commented, ‘We have heard that some workers will be sacked, as there are fewer work orders now. Workers were sacked in the past [for the same reason]. The factory recruits workers again when there is a new production order. If the sacked workers are still unemployed, sometimes they are re-recruited.’ I asked what they wanted to achieve by working in the factories and tried to understand how they negotiated between complex forms of individual and familial desires. Thus, in this chapter, I explore what may, arguably, be the opposite end of capital and state—that is, the workers’ perspectives on their future in a life where they are continually being subjected to global and state policies and their implied uncertainties. I explain how the workers remade everyday realities of life toward a future they perceived as better than the present. Choosing a middle ground between absolute exploitation, inequality, and a developmentalist argument of empowerment, I demonstrated in the previous three chapters that the workers in the garment factories managed to find some possibilities escaping from abject poverty amid exploitation but that there was inequality and exploitation even in their ‘new freedom.’ Nevertheless, there were possibilities of navigating and rearticulating the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_7

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social order, and they, in short, found ways of making a life for themselves in and around the garment factories. The workers’ experiences revealed the effects of neoliberalism and industrial capitalism, and the workers developed new and different forms of social relations around factory work. In this chapter, I attempt to portray the social realities of the garment workers and their expressions of hope, and the aspirations in which they invested toward creating an alternative future. I examine how the workers plan for the future in relation to their present conditions. In this regard, I propose to enlarge the spectrum of analysis, including the larger social arena, to reveal the co-existence of capitalist exploitations, possibilities, and worth in the workers’ lives. In this attempt, I comment on three related aspects. Firstly, an imagined future has indeterminate horizons— two versions: the immediate or near future and the nostalgic/distant future of going back to a past life in the village. Secondly, the capacity to aspire and hope is played out on the level of the individual. Thirdly, a fragmented striving of individual workers toward an imagined future creates an alternative collective sociality. Here, I consider everyday life as Veena Das (2010) understood it. She underlined that everyday life might be thought of as the site of routine and habit, where strategic contests take place for culturally approved goods, such as honor and prestige. Further, she argued that everyday life provides the sites and occasions through which hegemonic power or normativity could be resisted. Drawing on such insights, I focus on workers’ experiences in different spheres of life and write about various desires and aspirations in their everyday life. I emphasize aspects of their life they valued in contrast to the ill-treatment they received or the sense of worthlessness they felt as factory workers. Thus, I am focusing on the lived realities of human beings, identifying contexts of their practices, and locating reconfigurations of values (cf. Kapferer & Gold, 2018, p.  8). Here we may approach the life conditions of the workers, in which chronic crises have pushed them to live life in fragmented and volatile worlds rather than wait for normalization (Das, 2006, p. 80). Thus, their crisis of uncertainty has become not a moment of decisive change but a durable condition and a state of ordered disorder (cf. Taussig, 1992). In such situations, Henrik Vigh (2008, p. 20) argued that people constantly produce future scenarios and terrains of action by anticipating and predicting distant futures through flourishing social imaginaries (see also Guyer, 2007). Because of the anticipation and prediction that relate to ideas of the future, it has a cultural element to it. In writing about insecurities and

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uncertainties in the new global order, Arjun Appadurai (2013) defined the future as a cultural fact. ‘Future,’ as Appadurai saw it, is not just a technical or neutral space but is sought out and shaped with affect and sensation. Specific conceptions of aspiration, anticipation, and imagination are configured to produce the future as a horizon. This future might have temporal frames of the ‘near future’ along with the idea of the ‘distant future’ (Guyer, 2007).

Worth, Uncertainty, and Futures How do workers relate to the promises of a better future that industrialization forwards? This provides the problematic of the chapter: that workers plan for the future in relation to their present conditions. Looking into the larger social arena, we find the value regimes that reveal both capitalist exploitation and possibilities and worth.1 The tendencies of worthlessness and worth, and exploitation and possibilities, are found to eclipse the life-­ worlds of the workers. Individual self-exploitation and suffering, which the workers endure, are rooted in the social arena but not in the capitalist mechanisms of surplus appropriation. These dynamics might provide opportunities for alternative collective sociality, as I will describe in this chapter. Based on my fieldwork, I argue that there were instances where, in this apparent exploitation, factory workers continuously strove toward a better life, creating different kinds of worth or value that they cherished in their everyday life. On a larger scale and in a longer time frame, capitalism creates inequality, and workers are exploited to a greater extent, but what we generally tend to overlook is the possibilities that the workers make out of the apparent uncertainties of life. Regarding life outside of the factory, I have tried to understand the patterns of spending time in the locality and the marketplaces. Living in the community, I understood their experiences in terms of the short horizons the workers set themselves for evaluating 1  Some might disagree with my point of views; for instance, Don Kalb (2013) emphasized to look out for the ways actual pressures of the global value regimes on concrete labor were often delegated to local actors, relationships, and histories. Hence, these workers are dependent actors within a wider relational field of global capitalist value generation that exerted pressures and set limits on the ways they could react. Undoubtedly, there remain extreme forms of exploitation of the factory workers, as we have seen in the previous chapters. But there is also more to understand in the case of Bangladesh. Nonetheless, Kalb (2013) has inspired my thoughts as reflected in structure of the chapter.

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their life conditions. In the following sections, I show how different ideas of the future became a regular aspect of life for the workers. The reconfigurations of the economy served as sources of aspiration and hope (cf. Miyazaki, 2006, p.  151), and imagined and anticipated futures affected the lived realities of the workers (cf. Mankekar & Gupta, 2017). Further, loss and uncertainty in the current economic conditions do not make them fall into complete despair but generate new dreams (Harvey & Krohn-Hansen, 2018, p. 24). Here, I explore various aspects of the life of the garment workers, elaborating on their histories and, mainly, presenting the everyday life of two of my interlocutors. The Family: Responsibility and Desire I discuss the stories of two garment kormi with whom I have talked about their initiation into garment work as well as the consequences of factory work on their lives. Jamila, a senior operator in a factory, was 17 years old when she started working and 23 years old during my fieldwork. She had a big family of three sisters and two brothers. Her elder sister was married and lived with her husband in another village. She was the eldest among her remaining siblings in the family. She said, We were not rich, but we had a beautiful life in the village. My father farmed the land that he had inherited from my grandfather. As the family grew, he had to work on other’s farms also to make extra earnings. However, everything changed when my father had a stroke and could not recover fully from paralysis. We had to sell some of the lands for his treatment, but he could not farm or work again. […] My father now rents out the remaining land, and my mother works as a house help. My two younger brothers go to school, but my two sisters did not continue studying. I still remember the day when my mother told me that Karim chacha (uncle) had come to the village, and my parents talked with him about me going to Dhaka to work at a garment factory. I felt terrible that I had to leave my family, but I was also excited to go to the city.

‘How did you like your initial days at the factory?’ I asked. Jamila replied, I cried when I first came to work, but I needed the money for myself and my family. It was a month-long pain, but the first salary removed all of this pain. When I phoned my mother and talked with my family after sending the money, they sounded so happy. As time passed, I discovered a new world

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that began with the salary. Supporting my family through my earnings gave me a better space in the family. Their attitude toward me has changed in many ways as each month I contribute with my earnings. […] I wanted to quit many times, but I never could because whenever I call my parents, they always praise me for what I am doing for the family. They say they will buy some land if I save more money. I also imagine my younger siblings’ faces, and I could never tell them that I wanted to quit the job. Once, I left my job for a better post in another factory, and I had to wait for a month to get a position as a senior operator. I did not tell my parents about this but got a loan from friends so that I could send money home.

During my discussions with other young, unmarried workers, it became evident that their decision to work was made by their parents. Therefore, they considered supporting their families as their responsibility. Many garment workers described how they reconciled themselves to the family’s decision during the difficult initial days of their job. This trend was seen elsewhere in the garment industry—that is, employing women in a patriarchal society. For example, Cairoli (1999, p. 37) mentioned the strategy in factory households was to send all eligible family members to work and combine the meager incomes earned to ensure household survival. In Fez, Morocco, 89 percent of workers reported contributing some or all their salary to the family (Cairoli, 1999, p. 37). However, the average factory salary fell severely short of meeting the needs of any single-family. Nonetheless, in Fez, these salaries contributed significantly to lower-class households where men did not have secure and steady work. Similarly, in Bangladesh, workers of the garment industries earn meager salaries, as I have mentioned and elaborated in Chaps. 1 and 4. In the case of the garment kormi in Dhaka, I think this family responsibility also opened a life for the workers in which they became decision-­ makers and creators of instances of freedom and fun in contrast to merely having their lives defined by the constraining structure of factories. For Jamila, different aspects of life to which she aspired were fragmented in nature. She could contribute to her family’s needs and specially planned to buy some land in the future, which we can treat as her understanding of the near future. To achieve this future, she strived individually and sometimes with her parent’s support. She planned to change factories on her own and took the risk of being without a job so as to get the job of a senior operator. From her above statement, we find three fragmented parts of her anticipated future: firstly, ensuring daily subsistence; secondly,

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buying land for her family; and thirdly, deciding on her employment position. These were also interconnected, for she wanted to become a senior operator so that she could earn extra with which she would be able to cover the expenses and save up to buy land. We can find similar planning meant to stabilize the family economy but was disrupted for different reasons in the life stories that I described in Chap. 4. For instance, Ayjina migrated to Dhaka and began working in the garment factory after a flood destroyed her house in the village and damaged the cultivated crops. Shah Alam migrated after his father had to sell most of their land to give dowry during his sisters’ weddings. Firoz lost his business capital before he considered working in the garment industry. And Rahima went to work after her father mortgaged his land and later became ill. Similar conditions, motivations, and aspirations were part of every garment workers’ life story. It reflects how becoming garment kormi was related with the aim of rearticulating the life condition after a disruption. I argue that these workers had future plans on short horizons of different scales and planned accordingly in fragmented ways to achieve them. At the subordinate position of the Bengali social order, the women mentioned here did not form a union to demand their rights but, individually and in fragmented ways, planned and found ways to reach the short horizons of their future. In contrast to Jamila, Salma reported that she decided to work on her own against the initial disagreement of her family. Salma was an operator in a garment factory. She was 28 years old and had been working there for two years during my fieldwork. She had two daughters who were 6 and 8 years old. Her husband worked as an office assistant in a bank. She had gotten married when she was 19 years old and went to live with her husband in Dhaka. After her husband got the job in Gazipur, they moved there. She said that she had to decide to work on her own against the initial disagreement of her parents-in-law. There were no problems, and we had a smooth life. However, after my daughters were born, the expenses of the family grew. Covering the expenses of two daughters was tough. We needed a bigger house. And if we rented a bigger house, we would require more furniture. Many of my relatives had a lot of furniture in their homes.

Salma also wanted to send her daughters to better schools. She said that the idea of working in the garment factory came when she was thinking about all the financial problems. Her husband’s salary was not enough to

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sustain the life she desired. She decided to get a job at a garment factory where one of her neighbors worked. She discussed the idea with her husband, and they both told their parents. Her parents-in-law responded, ‘Why would our daughter-in-law work? Women should stay at home.’ After initial disagreements, she had to tell her mother-in-law that they could not sustain their lifestyle with their son’s income, and then she started working. She said that for the first few months, her daughters lived with her parents-in-law. About the benefit of working and earning money, she said, I could buy different household materials which I wanted, including furniture and a television, because of my earnings. […] Life is better from the perspective that now I can afford to get what we need, but being a mother and taking care of the children has been a tremendous pressure, working a job all day and taking care of the children afterward.

Unlike Jamila, Salma did not have pressing economic needs; instead, her aspirations of a better life informed her decision. From these two cases, I want to stress the workers’ perception of their life conditions both before and after becoming industrial workers. Again, I acknowledge the extreme forms of extraction of surplus-value produced by the workers in the factories. But it becomes a reductive approach if we are to understand the life-­ worlds of people having a distinct value configuration that gives meaning to the things they do in life. Throughout this monograph, I have been exploring that the values that governed the lives of the factory workers in Bangladesh stemmed from kinship and patriarchal social relations with religious sanctions. Here we find that the workers achieved different life goals, which were related to near and distant future life conditions. They achieved these in diverse and fragmented ways. These future goals continuously reformed their work aspirations. Life on Workdays and Weekends During my discussions with the garment workers, it was pretty evident that they did not have much free time. They started working at 8 a.m. and finished at 7  p.m. or later. However, in the off-peak season, sometimes they could leave work at midday or even as early as 9 or 10 a.m. On holidays and weekends, Jamila and Salma had quite different lives. While Jamila, who was single and living with her friends, could wake up late in

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the morning, Salma had to wake up early in the morning to do all the household tasks that had piled up throughout the week. They looked forward to the weekends. It allowed time to reflect on their life without worrying about memories or future uncertainties. Jamila said, Once I had made friends, life in the factory changed for the good and was fun. Sometimes we three girls skip the usual supper and cook better food. We cook dinner early and hang out in the park, then come back after watching a movie in the evening and eat the dinner we made, gossiping the whole night. We share the same dreams and suffer from similar financial constraints, but we have some good times when we are together.

Jamila loved listening to music. She talked with her parents, sisters, or friends on the phone. There were places where she went to watch TV, and she listened to music on weekend afternoons or evenings. When overtime did not run that long, she could return home before 8 p.m. I had seen how after work, they watched TV or played board games together. This leisure time of the workers was in contrast to what Cairoli (1999, p. 40) mentioned about factory girls in Morocco who, she stated, remained faithful to their roles as daughters within the household. This was not to suggest, however, that their work inside the factory had no broader impact on their lives. Cairoli claimed that workers did indeed gain practical freedom, simply because work outside the home took them away from the protective eye of their families. Thus, on their way to the factory and while returning home, and sometimes during the afternoons, working girls gained some freedom of movement. But these liberties existed only by avoiding the gaze of control. My ethnographic materials from Dhaka suggest the development of alternative collective socialities that do represent not only a situation of avoiding patriarchal control, but instead a shift toward more enabling/accommodating forms of relations for the garment workers. I note here that most of the garment workers were of similar ages and similar economic conditions. They lived together or near one another. They knew each other well and helped each other during any social or economic crisis or even physical illness. They seemed happy with their lives and their earning potential (believing that they did not have the ability to do other work and that these employment opportunities were not available to them anyway), and they lived with similar people.

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Contrarily, I accompanied Salma a few times when she and her family went to visit her relatives on the weekend. Once, I noticed that their kids were wearing new clothes, and when I asked her husband about it, he said that they were going to one of his cousin’s house. I also noticed Salma packing up cooked food (meat and cakes). She offered some to me and said, ‘Today we are going to see my brother-in-law. Thus, I made these.’ As we talked, I saw Salma’s husband ask their elder son to buy ice cream from the nearest shop. Bringing food when visiting relatives had religious and social significance as well as indicated that they as a family were doing well. For Salma, it had even more significance, as she had gotten the job without her parents-in-law’s agreement; thus, such gestures helped her to portray the measure of her progress in life. Jamila and Salma’s individual strategies to cope with their life conditions reflect how their aspirations toward a distant future were pursued with different indeterminate horizons along the way. For example, Salma’s role as the ideal wife was broken when she began working outside the home without her parents-in-law’s agreement. She perceived a better life for her children and herself in the long run. But she was also attaining shorter time horizon goals by performing social roles (through visits to relatives) that would reinstate her previous life condition. Guyer (2012, p. 500) remarked, ‘The life course, in all its puzzling and uncontainable [mutuality] and indeterminate time horizons, reinstates itself again.’ This was also evident in workers’ perceptions of payday, shopping, and holiday planning (described below). Workers’ indeterminate and individual horizons reflect the uncertainty that the capitalist processes imparted on their lives in terms of long-term dispossession and daily work relations and deprivations. Further, Jamila’s life on the weekends reflects the emergent socialities of young working women moving around outside of the ideational forms in the social order of the kinship-based Bangladeshi society. It was a sphere of her own where she found fragments of life that she enjoyed, and this rang true also for other workers as well. The Payday A month’s salary was usually paid at the end of the third week of the following month; so, it usually took more than 1.5 months to get the first salary when a person started working. The finance department had to finalize the salary, and from there, it went to the manager of the production floor and was then distributed to the supervisors. The salary was paid

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in cash and disbursed via the supervisors. In terms of a payday, workers had two uncertainties. One concerned the payday itself: when the salary would be disbursed. During my time at the factory, I saw workers struggling with doubts and expectations about the date of the payday being honored (as discussed in Chap. 4). The second uncertainty concerned the ‘piece rate.’ Piece rates were usually declared during the first week of the month. The rates vary according to difficulty levels and whether the production was on the factory’s own contract or subcontracted from another factory. Workers were usually uncertain about the timesheets and attendance cards, as the admin office filled these in. Sometimes there were discrepancies regarding what the workers expected and what they received. Both of the interlocutors that we have been following in this chapter mentioned that the best day of the month was payday. Jamila declared, ‘Payday is the best. However, sometimes it is the worst day too. After working hard for the whole month, it’s frustrating to see how much money is deducted for being late one morning or for taking a half-day off for feeling sick. However, generally, I get the production bonus as well as the attendance bonus.’ She continued, On payday, when I receive the salary from the supervisor, I first go to the bKash agent to send money home. My family really needs the money. On my way home, I pay the grocery owner the money I owe for having bought on credit the whole month. After returning home, I calculate how much money I will have after paying the house rent. If the rate was higher on some months, I could have 3000 taka [BDT] to put toward my expenses, while in other months, it is 2000 taka [BDT].

Salma’s experience of payday was different from Jamila’s. Salma was not in a hurry to send money back home. Instead, she came home, gave the money to her husband, and told him what her desires were for the following weeks and how much money she wanted. Sometimes she wanted to buy new cutlery, furniture, a dress for herself, clothes for the children, or gifts for relatives. The women’s differing approach to the payday relates to the idea of the ‘cumulative time’ of the workers in opposition to the ‘recurring time’ of the factory (see Chap. 4). The factory counts the production of every hour separately as a recurring event that leads to meeting its production target. Conversely, for the workers, this recurring event plays out as a cumulative work target that they must fulfill at the end of the day before going home.

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This cumulative aspect of their time relates both to the way Jamila and Salma responded on payday and to their anticipation of a near future. For Jamila, the very near future held the need of meeting family requirements, including funding younger siblings’ education. Buying land for her family was an indeterminate (near) future target; thus, she was also saving money. In contrast, Salma’s near futures were not that fixed, and she saved up to buy furniture, household goods, or a dress when needed. She also saved money without telling her husband (see Chap. 6). Anticipation of and planning for these near futures were incentive enough for workers to cope with the uncertainties of factory life. This dynamic of the near future can be seen in how they planned for a holiday, to which we now turn. Shopping for Loved Ones and the Plan for a ‘Happy’ Day One of the special times in the life of the garment workers was going back to their villages during holidays. Religious festivals (such as Eid) were especially significant events in their lives. They got leave from work, and mostly all went home. Before going home, they bought gifts for family members, relatives, and their children. During the month of Ramadan, at the end of which comes the celebration of Eid, I saw both Jamila and Salma planning extensively for the upcoming holiday. I witnessed them (and all the garment workers) working on weekends in the month leading up to it so that they could stay four days more than the usual number of days given—9/10 days in total. On a Friday afternoon, I saw Jamila and asked her where she was coming from. She said she was coming from work. I wondered why she was working on Friday. She replied that the next month, during Eid, their factory would allow four extra days of holiday; thus, they were all working on the weekends. For the whole month, they worked on Fridays to enjoy four more days of ‘happiness’ during Eid, Jamila said. During the month of Ramadan and the month preceding it, whenever I met Jamila or Salma at their homes or elsewhere, we talked about their plans for the holiday. They bought clothes for everyone in the family. I saw Jamila buying new cutlery, which she would take back home for her mother. She was also eagerly awaiting the payday before Eid when she would buy food items and a new mobile phone for her mother. Contrastingly, this year Salma was not planning to go to the village but stayed in the city while her parents-in-law came to celebrate Eid with them. Salma’s kids were happy, as their mother

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promised to buy them ‘Doremon’ T-shirts2 and new shoes.3 I had known Salma to work around the clock to clean the house thoroughly and wash the curtains and bedsheets. Her husband also helped occasionally by taking part in the cooking or washing.

Today’s Hard Work Will Remake the Future Through our discussions, I understood that the attraction of city life and freedom of movement influenced them not to go to the villages frequently. Jamila said she did not want to get married quickly; instead, she tried to establish herself and settle into her life. She said she was saving money to buy gold ornaments for herself and contribute to purchasing land in the village. She expressed her desire to build a new house in the village as well. Once, she mentioned, ‘I cannot change my life in one day; I must work continuously toward a better future. If I can make progress little by little, it will add up. Thus, I do not want to get married now. After marriage, I will have to take on a lot more household responsibility, so I want to enjoy myself before then.’ A few of the female workers said they would marry once they had saved up for the expenses. Male workers had to save up to marry off their sisters before they could marry themselves. One of my interlocutors, Selina, a 38-year-old operator, started working in the garment factory 11  years ago. She started working after her husband abandoned her, and she was 26 years old when she returned to her parents’ home. There she lived for one year without doing anything, and her daughters were 5 and 7  years old. After that, she began doing occasional work in affluent households in the village before deciding to start working in the garment factory. She once told me: ‘I had heard from my relatives that a better salary is given in this factory, so I began working here almost three years ago. Before this, I had worked in other factories for almost eight years. I started with only 4000 taka [BDT] per month, but now I get 6500 taka [BDT] a month.’ Whenever I met her in the factory and asked about her work, she always referred back to her life in the village. Once I asked her how the local housing was and whether it was  T-shirt with imprints of a popular cartoon character named ‘Doremon.’  One irony in the planning of a ‘future’ happy day and shopping was that the workers did not have an exact idea of the clothes they were producing in the factory. They used phases like ‘These must be expensive[…],’ but they in a way compared the things they bought with the things they produced and deemed that what they bought was good enough for themselves. 2 3

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expensive to rent. She replied that out of her monthly income, she had to pay 1500 BDT for rent. But the place was too small, she said. The room was barely big enough to fit a bed, and there was no space left to fit anything else. In the village, her house was bigger. She had to bear such material circumstances to ensure a better future for her daughters. She then added that it was too expensive in the area and that she had sent her daughters to live in the village because she could not manage the expenses on her income. Her daughters went to school there. She paid for their expenses (their education and other costs), but they lived and ate with her brothers. One day, I saw Selina going from the admin office to the production floor; I asked how the production was going. She responded, You would not understand; even my daughters do not understand. They do not understand that I must work late, and sometimes I cannot call them or receive their phone calls. One night I was working late and could not call them. In the morning, I saw eight missed calls. When I called back, my daughter said, ‘You did not call yesterday, so we were upset.’ Only we who work in the garment industry know the workload we must handle.

Selina went on, My life has had many turnarounds, and my need for money brought me to the place I am now. However, I crave living with my family, with my children. I can feel how life with my family would be, as I see people around me living with their families. Every day I struggle, I struggle to earn money. Sometimes, the workplace feels like a battle, and my role as a woman becomes very difficult. Many other women have the same living situation as I do, this scenario of being away from home. As a mother, as a wife, and as a human continuously facing moral conflicts, it is a never-ending process for survival; there is no end to our struggle.

I saw garment workers keeping photos of their children with them (especially those whose children lived in the villages). I think the motivation to offer their children a better future is what made them continue working in the harsh conditions of the garment industry. When people came from the villages to the cities to work in the garment factories, the need for money drove their migration. As they became acquainted with the city life of Gazipur, Dhaka, income (cash), and easy access to facilities (the cinema and shopping plazas) and consumer goods,

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they wanted to change their daily life so that it matched the life they aspired to live (which had developed from watching TV and movies). As they sent money back home, their family and parents were also happy because their daughters were doing well in the city and helping them at the same time. Garment work was easily accessible, and workers did not need any skills or experience to enter the sector; thus, many people started working. Thereafter, the regular income and the freedom of city life kept them working at the factories. What I argue is that even though the poor people who worked in the garment industry had a profoundly ambivalent relationship to the dominant norms of the societies in which they lived, they saw and sought their futures in terms of the possibility of constructing a better life for themselves and their families, and they were hopeful for positive changes. Distant Future Scenarios Turnover in the garment industry was high, with the workforce reporting an average of fewer than five years in employment within the industry (Kabeer & Mahmud, 2004, p. 97). For one, garment employers regarded the female workforce as dispensable labor: These workers could be exploited ruthlessly for a period because of the possibility of replacing them by the apparently unlimited supply of young women migrating from the countryside in search of work. It is equally clear that many garment workers did not regard their jobs as a sustainable option for their future. Some left because of the toll the work took on their health; others when they got married or, more frequently, when they had children. However, as long as they were in the industry, they hoped to work as hard as they could in order to accumulate savings for their future. Those who were successful planned to set up their businesses when they left, in some cases using the skills they had acquired in the garment industry. Those who were less successful took up informal wage work where wages might have been lower, but hours were sufficiently flexible to combine with their domestic and childcare responsibilities. I found that all the workers (males and females alike) had come to the factory through a relative/family member or friend, and the reason for taking the job was a sense of economic crisis and a lack of income-­ generating opportunities in the villages. The unskilled laborers approached the factories with their contact person. After getting a gate pass and helper card, they learned to operate the machines and began working as

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operators. However, there were striking differences between the future plans of male and female workers. For the most part, females wanted to go back to the village and assume their previous role as homemakers. Some males wished to continue their work at the garment factory, whereas others wanted to return to the village if they could save enough money to sustain life there (in small business or agriculture). One of the female interlocutors said, ‘After working for a few years, if we can purchase some land or buy 8 or 10 cattle, we would like to go home and live a family life. How long will we have to live elsewhere?’ Another of my interlocutors said that she was saving money so that when her husband retired from knitting (which was an arduous task), they could set up a shop that would sustain them. During my fieldwork, it became evident that all the workers saw the garment factory as a way out of their economic crisis. As I further explore the stories of the people who were still working in the factories, I exemplify how they lived through the uncertainties of the job and their income and planned for a distant future. I found that all the workers had some sort of connection to their family of origin (from where they had migrated). Sometimes they sent money to the family, and sometimes they sent their children to live in the village, as they could not support/take care of their children where they were working. Whenever they managed to save enough money, they invested it in the land in the village or bought cattle for extra income. For the land or cattle management, they were almost entirely dependent on parents or siblings or ‘in-laws.’ They could not easily keep their children with them in Dhaka, as there was no one to take care of them. While their children were with in-laws or parents, they sent money for their expenditures. One of the interlocutors elaborated, ‘The expenditure on education and the price of daily necessities makes it difficult to take care of the whole family. Private tuition in the village can be as low as 100 taka [BDT] (USD 1.2), but here it costs 200 taka [BDT] (USD 2.4).’ Because of the meager income, they could not keep their children with them and left them with parents or in-laws. These present-day strategies of saving money and investing in the rural areas were efforts to secure a distant future of returning to the village and living a stable life after coming out of industrial work as well. In sum, therefore, the life of the garment workers was uncertain, yet their lived realities created hope and aspirations for the better. During instances of uncertain life conditions, garment workers in Bangladesh similarly juxtaposed their suffering with positive aspects of the life that they valued. The fragments of happiness that the garments workers

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experience in fulfilling their responsibilities, visiting relatives during the weekends, planning holidays, and shopping for loved ones counteract their sufferings and uncertainties of factory work. They overcame difficulties and navigated their life toward a better future. The way workers strove toward their imagined future was not a collective effort. The cases of Jamila, Salma, and others indicate that individuals’ understanding of their present informed their understanding of the future and vice versa. The imaginings of the future and the present remained ever-changing in the life of the workers. However, as we saw in Chap. 5, the large-scale disruption of the individual ‘near future’ sometimes led to collective effort and resistance in the factories. Here, the individualized, fragmented, and temporal future was striven toward through collaborative efforts, even though the future itself did not have a collective form. I argue that individuals imagined a ‘future’ for themselves, and collectives were formed if this was disrupted. Further, even though the workers remained uncertain about the distant future, they had an imaginary idea. In addition, amid the diverse life problems, they made their fragmented futures worthy for themselves to live in. This included the very short futures, the near futures, and the long-sighted scenarios. Amid exploitation, workers talked about the imagined future and why they continued working in the factories. The Capacity of Aspirations for the Future In the preceding sections, I described how the workers navigated the uncertainties of their work in the factories (i.e., capitalism and neoliberalism) and the dynamics between near and distant futures, which I argue is individualized and realized in temporality, even though sometimes it took collective effort to realize or eliminate hindrances toward individual futures. Appadurai (2013) insisted on looking at the imagination as a collective practice that played a vital role in the production of locality, providing a feasible map for the future. Based on his work among the slum dwellers and pro-poor housing activists in Mumbai, India, Appadurai (2013, p. 289) further argued that what may be called ‘the capacity to aspire’ is unequally distributed and that its skewed distribution is a fundamental feature; it is not just a secondary attribute of extreme poverty. Appadurai tried to show how collective horizons were shaped and how they constituted the basis for collective aspirations, which may be regarded as

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cultural. I agree with Appadurai regarding constraints that shape ideas of the future, and I also agree that the capacity to aspire is varied. However, I depart from him in treating the capacity as a group dynamic, for I believe the capacity to aspire is individualized and fragmented (which is also a cultural capacity and rooted in the larger social matrix). The two persons I described, Jamila and Salma, envisioned their futures differently, aspired to different things, and sought to achieve what they desired in different ways. The contrasts between these two lives reveal how within the regime of worthlessness and capitalist exploitation, the individual lives of the workers were based on social values and how, individually, they navigated the structuring principles. The acts of taking on family responsibility, self-­ sacrificing, hefting the double burden of life (in the factory and the home), and the constant striving to create happy times reveal how values are shaped and thereby shape the workers’ life. Appadurai treated the capacity to aspire as a social and collective capacity, as a form of navigational capacity through which poor people—who are usually considered to have low skills and capacities—can effectively change the ‘terms of recognition’ within which they are generally trapped and confined. For Appadurai, the capacity to aspire is a cultural capacity, in the sense that it takes its force from within local systems of value, meaning communication, and dissent. Appadurai argued that it is crucial to see the capacity to aspire as a cultural capacity. I diverge from Appadurai’s argument on two levels. Firstly, I contend that the imagination of the future is not a collective practice but an individual one. Secondly, while the capacity to aspire is distributed evenly, it is varyingly sought by different individuals. I think Appadurai’s arguments lead us to treat the capacity to aspire and imagine as a restrictive group dynamic. I would flip his argument and assert that social values continuously inform the aspirations and imaginations and validate their meanings in a state of constant flux. I maintain that aspirations are individual even though they are always formed in interaction and in the thick of social life. Therefore, value configurations can accommodate different tendencies while keeping the whole intact. Aspirations of the good life tend to dissolve into more densely local ideas about marriage, work, leisure, convenience, respectability, friendship, health, and virtue. The workers in Bangladesh, as in other social groups, expressed choices in horizons in terms of specific outcomes. Even though they often showed forms of irony, distance, and cynicism about these norms, there was a moral attachment to these beliefs and ideologies (see also Appadurai, 2004, p. 65). I argue that the aspiration of the future

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remains in a dynamic relation with (social) ideologies but also produces new socialities in people striving toward the future. This contradicts Appadurai (2004, p. 67), who wrote that the complex relationship of the poor and/or the marginalized to the cultural regimes within which they function would become more evident if the capacity to aspire were considered. It seems Appadurai treated the cultural regime to be somewhat static, not a joint becoming. What my cases refer to in formulating the short and distant futures is that women effectively alter their positions. Jamila and Salma had different formulations but shaped their positions in the social structure of relations within the family. On the other hand, the distant futures and nostalgia of returning to village life, and keeping the family name and lineage intact, reveal how individual short horizons may relate to the ideological structure of the society in the long run.

Ideological Totalization and Alternative Collective Sociality This section illustrates the importance of understanding the capacity to hope, or the aspiration that is individually pursued toward temporal futures, and its relations with ideologies and an emerging collective sociality. In writing about the imagined future of the workers and ideologies that inform and transform in each other in a continuous process, I refer to the ethnographic examples in the previous chapters. I believe we must try to understand the components of an ideological whole. As I described in Chap. 5, the factory as an ideological system operated with a different ethos among the various forces of kinship (hierarchical relationality), Islam (ideas of faithfulness and treacherousness), and gender norms (gender roles), creating a strong hierarchical order with support from a robust work ethic (e.g., those who are regarded as loyal to the work are perceived as good workers). These various ‘ethoses’ created a hierarchical order in inter-group interactions. However, in interactions within specific groups of people, that is, in intra-group situations and from the workers’ perspectives, these ethoses played equalizing roles. A work ethic acted as a strong equalizing force. For example, as we have seen, workers formed solidarity groups. When some workers were denied benefits, others protested, and even if they did not get involved in open confrontations, they gave support to fellow workers. In the factory, there were a few weak equalizing forces of Islam (brotherhood or sisterhood among

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workers) and kinship (horizontal kinship relations among workers; or the way managers and owners presented themselves as equal to the workers, as if in a family). The tendencies reflect how the hierarchical values created possibilities to relate and bind the people in horizontal relations in different modalities (see Fig. 7.1). These ideological ethoses created a different situation outside of the factory, and the roles were almost reversed. As I described in Chap. 6, kinship, Islam (religion), and changing gender norms created a strong equalizing force, while the work ethic and consumerism were weak forces that

Strong hierarchical forces (in the work process): Islam, kinship, and gender norms

Weak equalizing forces (in intra-group situations and/or social interactions): Islam, kinship, and gender norms

INSIDE FACTORY

Strong equalizing force (in intra-group situations and/or social interactions): Work ethic

Weak hierarchical force (in the work process): Work ethic

Fig. 7.1  Paradoxical and contextual tendencies of ideological forces operating ‘inside’ the factory

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helped in the equalizing. Kinship and religious ideas about family and responsibility, along with new roles performed by female workers, gave women alternative subject positions in the life-world outside the factories. Similarly, an emerging work ethic and consumerism released workers from constraining gender roles. Nevertheless, in some cases, strong equalizing forces acted as weak hierarchical forces while strong hierarchical forces created weak conditions for equalizing. As we have seen, religious ideas about gender roles created double burdens for women and limited them from controlling their incomes. Those who worked to earn were placed in higher positions compared to those who did not work, thus creating a rise in the working population, and access to consumer goods became a measure of success (as also manifested by gift-giving). In the material presented, we can see that in life outside of the factory, Islam, kinship relations, and changing gender norms played equalizing roles in families, sharing responsibilities, and evaluating worth in relation to other family members and society. However, these also created hierarchies, as people were evaluated based on existing norms and beliefs in terms of their performance in carrying family responsibilities. In the life of workers, the work ethic and consumerism played hierarchical roles in the sense that these would mark their superior positions compared to others in the same social arena. However, if we consider the work ethic and consumerism in an even larger social context, these were equalizing forces, as they enabled the workers to go beyond their immediate social reference points and participate in the larger sociality of the perceived ‘future’ and ‘modernity’ with the use of certain products presenting themselves (see Fig. 7.2). The contextual tendencies of the values in the life of the workers both in the factory and outside of it indicate that there is no outside of the social. Further, the paradoxical nature of it is a way of living with the new economic configurations and reveals how opposed values are encompassed under the totality. The totality has both hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies balancing against each other. It is hierarchical in that it places hierarchical relations between individuals based on values of religion, kinship, and patriarchy but also egalitarian in that there are possibilities of alternative positions in the relationalities. I have discussed in the previous chapters how defiance of values in the activities of women was encompassed in the value system. Here we see their navigation within the hierarchical order. We have also seen the apparent reduction of restrictions on

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Strong hierarchical forces (outside factories): Work ethic and consumerism

Weak equalizing forces (outside factories): Work ethic and consumerism

OUTSIDE FACTORY

Strong equalizing forces (outside factories): Islam, kinship, and gender norms

Weak hierarchical forces (outside factories): Islam, kinship, and gender norms

Fig. 7.2  Paradoxical and contextual tendencies of ideological forces operating ‘outside’ the factory

wage employment and the movement of women from the homestead. However, egalitarian relations were subsumed under the values of religion, relationalities, and patriarchy both in the factory, where the labor process was strongly hierarchical, and outside the factories, through obligations and rights. Nevertheless, these values provided possibilities of women being in worthy positions. For example, the categories of women as daughter, sister, wife, and mother (e.g., Jamila and Salma) at different stages of life performed the role of the ‘men’ for the family. In doing so, even if they dissolved the position of the ideal woman, they had been regarded as

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worthy women who perform the dual tasks of males and females. Sometimes, the daughters were regarded as the sons of the family (see Chap. 3). What emerged was a category of a worthy woman. Therefore, it manifests tendencies of possibilities. In different contexts, the values encompassed people who were hierarchically arranged in their relationalities in different arrangements. I reframe my arguments again in a different way, as new economic opportunities created possibilities of eliminating hierarchical values. For instance, in kinship order or division between male and female responsibilities, we find situations where women neutralized the possibility of dismantling the order by assuming the roles of the ‘man’ in the value systems. These kept the hierarchical value systems intact. There were also tendencies that ensured the customary ideology held its positions, as flexibility in the value system emerged in distinguishing between ‘worthy’ and ‘not worthy’ women. Here the new category of the ‘worthy woman’ assumed the role of the man, whereas the ‘not worthy woman’ was positioned low in the hierarchical order of values. We saw such examples in Chap. 6, where the workers stressed that those who did not give their income to their husbands were divorced, separated, or widowed, indicating that they were not ‘worthy’ wives. Further, in Chap. 3, we found examples where women and their parents regarded their contributions to the family welfare as if they were performing the roles of a son in the household or family. The possibility of becoming equal, in turn, kept the potential hierarchical totality intact. Thus, the system continued in a new configuration. So, in Bangladesh, the advent of work for women in the industries created possibilities of freedom, and different ideologies were transformed, thus creating a new structural setting where the workers aspired for their near and distant futures. I argue that different ideologies and discourses (e.g., gender discourses and structures) limited female workers’ everyday life and ideas of the future. In some ways, these ideologies perpetuated social inequality. However, if we investigate the inverse roles these ideologies had in the different contexts of the factory, and outside of the factory, as well as in inter-group and intra-group dimensions, we can understand the concrete ways through which workers, especially women, navigated the limitations and ideologies that informed the ideas of the ‘future’ of the workers. The existing, transforming aspects of the ideologies as a total system (including inside and outside the factories) reveal how

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ambivalently the workers related with the existing ideologies and how this effectively changes in different contexts. In addition, it is important to understand the ‘capacity to aspire’ as an individualized aspiration about the ‘future.’ The distant future that the workers had of going back to the old village life relates to the idea of the good life that they had. The near future(s) that workers planned and worked toward contributed to the changes of the ideologies that breached their constraining aspects. Therefore, the capacity to aspire is not outside of the total system. The everyday aspects and elements of life continuously changed the culture and/or ideologies, which were influential in forming and reaching near and distant (and more egalitarian) future(s). The geographical and anticipated social mobility of the workers was restricted by hegemonic discourses and ideologies, but these were transformed in daily practices to be less constraining and more enabling for individuals in different contexts. The very work of garment workers enabled them to venture into spaces previously inaccessible both physically and ideologically. Thus, we find an emergent collective sociality.

Concluding Remarks For the garment kormi (mostly migrant laborers), the motivation to join the garment industry was initiated by a desire for a better life. For the most part, workers were school dropouts. However, they had an idea of a better life and held aspirations toward remaking their future. The garment industry presented them the opportunity to pursue this goal to achieve a (particular) life, which they perceived as better because, as they saw it, the ability to earn money enabled them to ‘buy anything.’ This situation can be compared with a different setting, for, as Edward F.  Fischer (2014) ethnographically explained, Mayan farmers engaged with the market to pursue their visions of well-being. He argued that if human well-being is not just being well, then perhaps the good life is not a state to be obtained—but an ongoing aspiration for something better. These aspirations give meaning to our life’s pursuit. Thus, striving for the good life involved the arduous work of becoming, living a life that one deemed worthy, and becoming the sort of person that one desired. As such, the good life was not made up of simple happiness but required trade-offs. Thus, to understand the good life, Fischer (2014, p. 5ff) contended that one should consider material conditions and people’s desires,

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aspirations, and imaginations—the hopes, fears, and other subjective factors that drove their engagement with the world. Aspiration, a hope for the future informed by ideas about the good life, gave direction to the agency—the power to act and the sense of having control over one’s destiny. Fischer stated that, just as the Mayan farmers wanted something more out of life, they saw coffee production as an imperfect but useful medium for their aspirations. Fischer (2014) mentioned that Mayan farmers envisioned a better future, aspiring to achieve something more for themselves and their children. In rural Guatemala, such aspirations involved increasing incomes—paying for children’s education, buying land to provide economic security, and expanding the range of ‘what is possible’—but were no less morally driven. Moreover, he demonstrated that people’s choices were not always their own. That is to say, aspiration alone was not sufficient to effect change. It also had to have a way, the space to operate among a range of substantive opportunities. While a sense of hope or sense of a way out was crucial to the ability to endure, in Guatemala, the market for high-end, high-altitude coffees opened up new opportunity structures for smallholding Mayan farmers and provided a new source of hope. They had no illusions that the opportunities of this new market were perfect or even fair, yet they overwhelmingly valued the choice and the expanded agency in their quest to construct a better future. As I described in the preceding chapters, garment workers constantly talked of their ill-treatment at the factory. They wanted to change the working environment and sometimes spoke about leaving one garment factory to work at another. However, they knew that changing which factory they worked in would seldom offer them improved working conditions. Further, as a factory often kept some salary back (unpaid), if the workers left, they might not get their remaining salary from the factory. Thus, getting a job in a factory initially proved easier, perhaps, than changing to another factory. However, when they knew that a certain factory was providing a better salary during the peak season, workers sometimes quit in groups to start working in the other factory together (as described in Chap. 4). Thus, the workers were constantly navigating and, in turn, had been transforming how ideologies governed their life (also shown in Chap. 6). Migrant workers used simple terms like ‘We do it for our family’ or ‘We dream for a better life’ that defined their willingness to sacrifice in order to

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make a living for themselves and their families. The narratives indicated that the relationalities of kinship, for example, family relations between father–daughter, mother–daughter, husband–wife, brother–sister, brother–brother, or sister–sister, do not create alienation and worthlessness in Bangladesh. These relations produce hope and remain as sites of aspirations where the workers could find ‘worth’/‘value’ balancing out the uncertainties of capitalism. Jesmin noted, ‘There was nothing that I could do at home to help my family, so I started working and will keep working.’ The desire to stabilize an uncertain future was the beginning of the garment workers’ story. Garment work did not offer them an easy living. As I have discussed in Chaps. 4 and 5, the pay for this hard labor was low, and sometimes they were not paid their salary on time and were denied payment for overtime. Work hours usually stretched beyond the legal limit. Often, they did not benefit from the factory’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities or compliance guidelines, and local or international guidelines could do very little to protect workers (see Chap. 8). However, the workers did not see themselves only as silent, suffering subjects. To leave home to work in a garment factory was valuable in itself. What kept them working in the factories was not only dire need but the prospect of a better future(s). I have shown that within the apparent ‘worthless’ conditions of exploitation and inequality, the workers possessed the capacity to imagine and achieve certain ‘worth,’ which they valued and strove to achieve, and in a way, this is what kept the factories running. The ‘value regimes’ that I propose to take into account are related to the kind of people the workers wanted to become. For example, they wanted to buy land and build new houses in the village not only as better living arrangements but because these upgrades would increase their social status in the village—not only of the workers but their entire lineage. If we ignore the value(s) of life, we arrive at a situation (per industrial production) in which humans are only part of the machinery, which we are not. In the next chapter, I argue, by describing practices in the factories, that all the policies that are parts of the global governance, such as compliance audits and corporate social responsibility practices, create conditions for accumulation and add a layer of dispossession from the perspectives of the workers. Finally, through ethnographic information, I illustrate how global governance of factories, rather than empowering workers, generates inequality and restores class power.

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References Appadurai, A. (2004). The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition. In V.  Rao & M.  Walton (Eds.), Culture and public action (1st ed., pp. 59–84). Stanford University Press. Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as cultural fact: Essays on the global condition. Verso. Cairoli, M. L. (1999). Garment factory workers in the city of Fez. The Middle East Journal, 53(1), 28–43. Das, V. (2006). Life and words: Violence and the descent into the ordinary. University of California Press. Das, V. (2010). Engaging the life of the other: Love and everyday life. In M. Lambek (Ed.), Ordinary ethics: Anthropology, language, and action (1st ed., pp. 376–399). Fordham University Press. Fischer, E. (2014). The good life: Aspiration, dignity and the anthropology of well-­ being. Stanford University Press. Guyer, J. I. (2007). Prophecy and the near future: Thoughts on macroeconomic, evangelical, and punctuated time. American Ethnologist, 34(3), 409–421. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2007.34.3.409 Guyer, J.  I. (2012). Obligation, binding, debt, and responsibility: Provocations about temporality from two new sources. Social Anthropology, 20(4), 491–501. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-­8676.2012.00217.x Harvey, P., & Krohn-Hansen, C. (2018). Introduction. Dislocating labor: Anthropological reconfigurations. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24(S1), 10–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-­9655.12796 Kabeer, N., & Mahmud, S. (2004). Globalization, gender and poverty: Bangladesh women workers in export and local markets. Journal of International Development, 16(1), 93–109. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.1065 Kalb, D. (2013). Regimes of value and worthlessness: Two stories I know, plus a Marxian reflection (Working paper No. 147). Max Plank Institution for Social Anthropology Working Papers. Retrieved February 16, 2016, from https:// www.eth.mpg.de/pubs/wps/pdf/mpi-­eth-­working-­paper-­0147 Kapferer, B., & Gold, M. (2018). Introduction: Reconceptualising the discipline. In B.  Kapferer & M.  Gold (Eds.), Moral anthropology: A critique (1st ed., pp. 1–24). Berghahn Books. Mankekar, P., & Gupta, A. (2017). Future tense: Capital, labor and technology in a service industry. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(3), 67–87. https:// doi.org/10.14318/hau7.3.004 Miyazaki, H. (2006). Economy of dreams: Hope in global capitalism and its critiques. Cultural Anthropology, 21(2), 147–172. Taussig, M. (1992). The nervous system. Routledge. Vigh, H. (2008). Crisis and chronicity: Anthropological perspectives on continuous conflict and decline. Ethnos, 73(1), 5–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/0014 1840801927509

PART IV

CHAPTER 8

Paradoxes of Factory Compliance: Auditing, CSR, and ‘New’ Dispossession

Introduction I was on the production floor when the General Manager (GM) came to check it out, as an auditing team was possibly visiting the next day. He was looking at the crochet machines, trying to find loose needles or threads around them. As he left the scene, I saw workers laughing and mimicking the GM’s postures and how he had walked. As I went closer, Jewel (one of the operators) asked, ‘Did you see what the GM was doing here?’ I said, ‘He was here to prepare for the audit tomorrow, right?’ Everyone laughed, and Sharif (another operator) commented, while laughing, ‘The GM knows nothing. He just looked around for needles, and he easily could have overlooked many faults. If the compliance officers briefed us about the requirements, we could prepare the factory floor better than he does. We work here, so we are better at managing the factory floor.’ He continued, ‘These people get such a high salary for nothing!’ This fragment from my ethnographic fieldwork indicates some of the workers’ feelings about factory management, their consideration of themselves as better equipped to deal with and organize the factory floor, and the spectacle of factory auditing that supposedly aimed to shield workers from the exploitative labor conditions of the garment factories in Bangladesh. It was also a matter of recognizing and comparing factory workers’ knowledge of the work with that of the management teams. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_8

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From the workers’ perspective, acquaintance with the machinery and the work being done on the floor created their authority. They considered it the workers’ domain and did not want the intrusion of the factory officials. But the mandatory requirement of factory auditing has stripped away the workers’ control of the factory floor. Since 2012, garment factories in Bangladesh have been transforming with factory compliance principles to ensure better working conditions for the workers. The backdrop of such massive ‘changes’ to the production regime was the scale and severity of accidents in the factories that had killed thousands of workers. Moreover, increasingly, the ethical codes of labor practices imposed worldwide by global buyers are reshaping the organization of production and the regimes of labor deployment.1 For the garment industry in Gazipur, Dhaka, these new regulations took the form of independent company codes of conduct, which were private company initiatives that allowed buyers to select factories based on their relative compliance regulations. Thus, the emphasis on auditing the factories and so-called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices converged in the production regime and governance. These are like the principled economic actions that aimed to create good economic practices through financial regulations after the meltdown of the US economy in 2008 (see also Zaloom, 2006). In addition, CSR practices are represented as the radical reorientation of businesses in promoting an era of ‘humane capitalism’ (Dolan & Rajak, 2016). In this chapter, based on my ethnographic findings, I first illustrate that all global governance policies create conditions for accumulation and add an extra layer of dispossession against the workers. In other words, the regulatory instrument, that is, auditing culture, is a bureaucratic process that only helps accumulate capital for the owners (see Graeber, 2015). Secondly, the situation of Bangladesh exemplifies that even though the liberal-democratic state promoted by globalization advocates fundamental political, economic, social, and cultural rights for everyone and promises equality (at least in the long term), it generates inequality and restores upper-class power. It promises a kind of rhetoric of longterm growth and prosperity through which the crisis came about (see Guyer, 2007).

1  See Barrientos & Smith, 2007; Blowfield & Dolan, 2008; Lund-Thomsen & Nadvi, 2010; Nadvi, 2008; De Neve, 2014.

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Agenda for a Fairer Future: Previsioning Instruments The Bangladeshi garment industry has been undergoing so-called ‘polygonal safety net’ programs since 2012. Government and international buyers tried to enforce factory compliance and CSR practices rigorously after the Tazreen Fashions and Rana Plaza calamities occurred in consecutive years. As many as 117 workers were burnt to death, 200 more were injured during the fire incident at Tazreen Fashions in 2012. Shortly after, the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013 led to the death of at least 1134 workers and injured more than 2000. The Bangladeshi government took initiatives to improve the future of labor in the country. The Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishments (DIFE) started evaluating existing factory conditions and suggesting remedies so that the future could be equitable. The government checklist for factory inspection included building safety, fire safety, safety measures for electricity supplies, salary and leave of the workers, access to safe water and sanitation, and access to personal protective equipment. Besides, different international buyers had their regulations and checklists for factory inspections like factory security, building safety, fire safety, work hours, and so on. To bail out of the crises, multinational buyers had formulated two bodies (1) Alliance and (2) Accord—that would suggest remedy and ensure ethical codes of conduct in the factories.2 They urged public disclosure of inspection reports and corrective action plans (CAP) of factories. Thus, new intermediaries were designed to improve working conditions and rescue global commodity supply chain industries (see Rahman, 2021). After seven years of presence in Bangladesh, these international bodies passed on the baton to the newly formed Remediation Coordination Cell (RCC), RMG Sustainability Council (RSC), and DIFE of the government in June 2020. Overall, audit inspection emerged as a new regulatory instrument to structure factory controls and enhance accountability and transparency about production floors (cf. Shore, 2008; Shore & Wright, 1999; Kalb, 2012). Besides, different garment industries also started to give medical facilities to their workers as part of their CSR practice. These initiatives were undertaken, it was argued, to ensure a fairer labor regime at the factories. 2  See http://bangladeshaccord.org/about/ and http://www.bangladeshworkersafety. org/who-we-are/about-the-alliance

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This effort to control the future of the industry in Bangladesh was not novel. Efforts to promote factory codes of conduct began in the 1970s and gained further momentum in the 1990s and 2000s. Anti-sweatshop campaigns and public opinion against child labor and dismal working conditions in the supply chains were the primary reasons that forced multinational companies to come up with factory codes of conduct and monitoring procedures. Consequently, along with state regulations, non-state regulations became a parallel mode of regulating labor conditions in the factories that maintained the global supply chains. By imposing the ethical codes, standards, and CSR interventions, western buyers strive for influencing their outsourcing networks in terms of the social and environmental conditions of employment at the production end (Nadvi & Waltring, 2004; Nadvi, 2008; Barrientos et al., 2003; Barrientos & Smith, 2007; De Neve, 2014). The new regulations are concerned with producing particular work environments, arguably searching for a profit in every corner of the world that David Harvey has termed capitalistic imperialism (Harvey, 2003, p. 87ff; see also Dolan, 2010; Blowfield & Dolan, 2008). Thus, most of the emphasis had been on physical infrastructures, such as clean, well-lit, and well-aired factories. It had also directed the necessity to maintain a particular work regime, that is, the eight-hour working day, limited overtime, and particular types of workers on permanent contracts with social benefits. However, there were considerable debates regarding the rise, effectiveness, and monitoring procedures of non-state regulations (cf. Saxena, 2014; Oka, 2010). The compliance procedure anticipates producing a highly regulated sphere of production governed by ethics deemed universally applicable. However, there had been a scarce focus on the influences of different production organizations, that is, work regimes, on the working lives and how workers negotiated their positions in export-oriented industries (see De Neve, 2014; Lund-Thomsen et al., 2011). The regulatory mechanisms cannot operate in straightforward ways due to localized forms of production organization, livelihood strategies of the people, social norms, and relations of reproductions that shaped workers’ engagement with Global Production Networks (GPNs) (see Leslie & Reimer, 1999; Dunn, 2004; Neilsno & Pritchard, 2010; Khan & Lund-Thomsen, 2011; cf. Mezzadri, 2017). We must be aware of the ways ethical and fair-trade agendas, aimed through auditing and CSR activities, are incorporated into a production system (see Bear, 2013; De Neve, 2009; Cross, 2010, 2011; cf. Power, 1999; Strathern, 2000). There are ‘unintended’ consequences of the

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mechanism of regulations—which I write about in this chapter, especially from the perspective of the garment industry workers. Following this lead and using ethnographic insights, I argue that the auditing regime and CSR activities, rather than producing benefits for the workers at the factory, generated a process of capital accumulation, adding a layer of dispossession for the workers. Empirically, I present ethnographic information about (a) the mechanism of dispossession that emerged through the implementation of CSR practices and auditing in the garment factories and (b) the influence that the buying practices of international brands had on the labor conditions and production regime. Finally, I argue that these global policies created relations of inequality at different layers of the global production networks.

Auditing in RMG Factories: Performative Rituals and ‘New’ Dispossession To ensure that factories complied with new ethical codes—international buyers wanted audit inspections before placing orders. Audit inspections also occurred during production. Nevertheless, the emphasis on auditing and compliance turned auditing into a business.3 Usually, the third-party companies provide certification of international standards such as Social Audit (SA8000)—to assess the social practices in a workplace and Factory Audit (ISO9000)—to evaluate the capacity and capability. An audit inspection usually lasted between one and two days and investigated workers’ payment, provisions of health and safety precautions such as availability of first aid boxes, fire safety equipment, and other infrastructural facilities. The auditing of factories has taken the form of a ritualized event for which everyone took extensive preparation. Workers and officials were aware that audit inspections might happen anytime. Thus, they prepared considering the requirements of ‘ethical labor practices’ mentioned above. My claim becomes more evident as we investigate the workers’ anticipation and experiences of factory auditing.

3  The well-known business-driven social compliance initiatives are Social Accountability International (SAI), Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP), Fair Labor Association (FLA), Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), and so on, and the largest corporate-controlled auditing firms include Bureau Veritas, TÜV Rheinland, Underwriter Laboratories (UL), Registro Italiano Navale (RINA), ELEVATE, and so on.

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Before an audit inspection, every essential aspect was organized, and materials were correctly set into designated places. For example, once an audit inspection was expected, hence, the paramedic (of the medical center run by the factory) took the expired head balm from the first aid box. Finding no head balm in the box, two workers came to the healthcare area to ask for the medicine—when incidentally, I was present. I saw them use the head balm that the paramedic had taken out of the first aid box. Afterward, she said, Since an audit team is coming, I had to take out the head balm. The MD [Managing Director] knows that [new supplies of] these medicines are not in stock. Therefore, I must take such medications out, so that audit teams do not find expired medicine in the first aid box. If they found any, the factory would be blacklisted.

In general, the tendency was to prepare the factory for audits each time they occurred. Such measures also included exchanging older bedsheets for new ones on the patient beds in the medical center, making sure that safety equipment is in place, no obstructions in the exits, no dangerous tools are loose, every section of the factory are appropriately marked, emergency contacts are visible, name and photo of people to whom the workers could reach out (if required) are correctly displayed, and so on. In line with staging this spectacle for an audit, what one supervisor said is telling: Different buyers want different compliance practices enforced. Some want to ensure building safety, some want workers to wear footwear while working, some want workers to wear masks, and some want bottles of drinking water near the machines. Once, a buyer even wanted to place a board near every machine so that workers could see the amount of work they needed to complete on a specific day. We must comply with all these requirements, and we do so accordingly. They get what they want.

As the comment quoted depicts, the factory was prepared materially for an audit inspection. Moreover, factory officials usually trained—the workers—who attested improved labor conditions during the audit inspection. Workers acted as agents of assurance who verified a ‘positive’ change that the new regulations aimed for. This feature became apparent during the initial days of my fieldwork. When I started, I tried to visit as many places in the factory as I could and meet as many people as possible so that I

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could later meet up with and talk to them. At these meetings, I would introduce myself as a researcher writing about the life of garment workers. Then I would ask them about their work pattern, how they arrived at the factory, what they did on the weekends, their future plans, and so on. Whenever I met the floor manager, he would always say, ‘I have told the workers that you are not from an audit team so that they will talk to you.’ One day, he said, ‘Some of the workers came to me and told me that an auditor had come, and they pointed at you. But you can continue talking to the workers; I have assured them that you are not part of an audit team.’ Later, I realized that workers were briefed to say that they did not work overtime exceeding more than two hours a day. Thus, when I had asked when they started working in the morning and when they finished, they assumed that I was a member of an audit team. During auditing of factories, some workers and other officials were usually called in for an ‘interview.’ Thus, they were always anxious and stressed about performing their roles effectively. The source of stress and anxiety become clear from what the paramedic once told me: They [auditing teams] visit the production area and may call on any worker for an interview in a secluded place. They mostly ask whether the workers get their salary on time and are forced to do overtime. However, every worker is trained to reply that they get their pay during the first week of the month and leave work at 7 p.m. If any worker reveals the actual situation, they are fired.

Since new regulations rendered compliance to specific labor practices mandatory, audit inspections have taken the form of exorcism, which are likely to expel the supposed ill practices from the factories. The factory appeared as the center of exorcism, the auditors were exorcists, and they used different mediums to see if everything was to continue the events of production. The workers and the officials were the agents of assurance who confirmed the existence of malpractices or an improved labor condition. We also find some agents of disruption in the process (workers who did not follow their assigned tasks) that jeopardized the outcome of the ritual for the factory by revealing the practices that violated the laws. On the other hand, there were elements of assurance such as company documents, information visibly displayed on the production floor, and other material things in different parts of the factory. Auditing as a verification ritual (cf. Power, 1999) is performative in nature. Here, the factory remained at the center

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of exorcism. All the workers and officials had assigned tasks that they had to perform effectively. Overall, there are insights to be gained from the process of preparation and the performance during a ritualized event that produced common stress and anticipation of achieving the desired result, that is, the work order (cf. Tambiah, 1979, 2017 [1973]; Turner, 1982; Kapferer, 1986). The ways factory management and workers responded to audit inspections attest that the roles of the workers and the officials in the rituals of verification were structurally determined. There could not be any flaws; otherwise, the outcome of the ritual will be menacing, that is, loss of work for the workers and the factory alike. However, the agents of disruption could have been the mechanism that helped produce a better working condition. But the rituals of verification did not install any safety checks to contain such agents. Moreover, many dissatisfied with the labor practices did not disclose the exploitative practices because it might risk everyone’s job by losing the work order. Overall, the experience of the workers in this process was determined by their structural position in the production system, which the seemingly egalitarian structure of the auditing ritual could not overcome instead reproduced in new forms. The purpose of audit inspections has two dimensions; on the one hand, passing the auditing is necessary for the factory to continue operation. On the other hand, the buyers aim to identify a factory with specific certifications of ethical labor practices. Regrettably, both the purposes are achieved while the workers are further pushed into new forms of dispossession, as the rest of the chapter explains.

Compliance Practices: A Safeguard for Bideshis Bangladesh’s garment factories could obtain certification demanded by the international clothing brands by putting the required production and management systems in place and having their units audited by an independent auditing company. To ensure that buyers selected their factory for production, owners invested in the required physical environments (factory buildings, canteens, toilet facilities, etc.). In addition, they brought their labor-management systems in line with specific standards (including eight-hour shifts, regulation of overtime, and the provision of regular contracts). Audit inspections of compliance to ethical labor codes were introduced to reform the working conditions on the factory floors; however, the workers perceived it very differently because of the way it worked out

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in reality. This section illuminates why the confusion regarding the purpose of compliance emerged; workers believed these practices were designed to safeguard the bideshis, that is, foreigners who would wear the clothes they made. This perception, I argue, is an outcome of the failed exorcism of audit inspections. Due to the pressure of maintaining different standards regarding labor rights, the factory devised strategies to bypass them. Some of the compliance practices became tools for the factories to control the laborers. For example, the particular work regime (an eight-hour working day with limited overtime) intensified pressure on the workers to increase their production rate. Due to the enforced work scheduled until 5 p.m., supervisors became stricter, and workers got fewer breaks during the workday. In addition, the pregnancy benefit, which was recommended for the betterment of workers, resulted in extra pressure on female workers to delay getting pregnant. If found pregnant, they might be fired from their job. An example demonstrates the new exclusionary practices: once, one of the admin officers came to the paramedic’s room with a female worker and asked if the paramedic enquired whether the worker was pregnant when the fitness certificate was issued. The paramedic said that she used to ask this question, but she stopped asking as no one ever said they were pregnant. The admin officer said, ‘The worker lied. She got a job in the factory to learn “linking.”4 After only a month, now she will leave.’ Once the admin officer left, the paramedic said, Even if the factory says that it gives pregnant women benefits, they cannot work in reality. If a worker is found pregnant, she will be sacked. […] There is a false register to show to the auditors. The list is shown to exemplify that the factory does not discriminate against pregnant women and that many benefits are given to them. When they are here, it is said that the pregnant workers are on leave.

This comment reflects why the rituals of verification do not produce results that from the workers’ position are desirable. On the contrary, as mentioned in the previous section, the ‘elements of assurance’ would instead install new forms of exclusions for the workers.

4  In the linking section different knitted panels are linked to produce a complete garment. In this section linking operators link the different panels using linking machines.

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For instance, innovations for improving workers’ bargaining power to some extent disempower the workers. During my stay on the production floor, I noticed a poster of a person who wanted to be elected as a ‘worker welfare committee’5 member (cf. Rahman, 2014, pp. 66–67). There were pictures of labor and social welfare officers and different workers who were part of labor welfare committees on every floor. I asked the workers about these posters, but they were surprised by the question. One of the workers looked closer to see if he recognized ‘the person’ on a poster, then he said, ‘This guy does not work at the factory anymore.’ He continued, Malek is the worker leader now, appointed by the factory. During his selection, the factory manager said, ‘He is a good worker and has been working for many years.’ However, he is not active in raising his voice, does not talk much, and agrees to the rates [of wage] given. Therefore, the labor welfare committee is formed with laborers who do not have organizing and negotiation capabilities. Thus, they support the factory during disputes about on-­ time salary payment or increasing the ‘piece rate.’6

One could say, the worker welfare committee is non-functional. Another worker argued why they could not always protest against the management and instead continued working: ‘We cannot leave work because we have to survive. I do not think of changing factories. If I go to a new factory, I might suffer more.’ It resonates with the workers’ fear of losing the job that forces them to take the side of the factory during auditing—the rituals of verification. In this respect, the auditing of compliance issues has de-­ classed the working class (cf. Narotzky, 2015; see also Rahman, 2014).

5  The Labor Act 2006, which was amended in 2013 (GoB, 2013), stated the following regarding a participation committee: ‘205. 6(a) For an establishment where there is no trade union, until a trade union is formed, the workers’ representatives to the Participation Committee shall run activities related to workers’ interests in the establishment concerned.’ The provision of a participation committee often works as a barrier to establishing trade unions, as the owners liked to focus more on these committees. The law allows a participation committee to represent the workers in negotiation with the employers in absence of a trade union. Participation committees include workers of the employer’s choice and thus cannot ensure the rights of the workers, as is the case with labor welfare committees described in this chapter. 6  In the garment factory, workers are paid by two methods. Some are paid a fixed monthly salary, and some are paid based on how many pieces of the product they produce. The rate of a piece is declared during the first week of each month.

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Another facet of ethical compliance focused on workers’ physical well-­ being. On the production floor, posters hanging on the wall displayed messages regarding the accidents that could happen while working and how to reduce these potentials. For example, some stated that workers should use masks so that dust from the yarn could not enter their respiratory system—a problem that could lead to tuberculosis and asthma. Others read that workers must wear clothes covering their whole body to avoid skin problems. Further, the posters cautioned the workers that they could be injured from the needles used in the machines or the weight of the crochet machine if it fell on their feet. However, no one was using a mask, many male workers were wearing sleeveless T-shirts, and everyone was working barefooted. I asked the workers why they did not follow the guideline and if they suffered from recurring health problems. They mentioned some issues, but mostly they spoke of the physical weakness of the ‘foreign body’ who would be wearing the clothes they made to be the reason for strict production regulations. They referred to the production process, safety maintenance, washing, and metal detection checks of the clothes before shipment as regulations in place because ‘foreigners are weak and might fall sick easily, so all these need to be done.’ From their perspective, the auditing was for the bideshis, that is, foreigners who would wear the clothes. These different scenarios reflect how auditing can become just part of bureaucracy (cf. Graeber, 2015), increasing the number of regulations and the paperwork without favorable effects for the workers. The ineffectiveness of the auditing in creating any substantial improvements in the labor conditions had shaped this confusion about the purpose of the regulations (cf. Bear, 2013). During my time at the factory, the paramedic’s responses and the workers’ experiences of the auditing revealed the flaws of a technocratic system applied to improve the labor conditions. It produced a form of governance (Blowfield & Dolan, 2008; Dolan, 2008) or a ‘gaze’ (Foucault, 1973) that sought to maintain strict control over production regimes and workers’ movements. Garment industry owners aimed to create a public discourse of their public service, one that claimed they were benefiting the workers by creating jobs and better working conditions with the implementation of factory compliance guidelines (see Chap. 3; cf. De Neve, 2014). However, factory compliance had essentially become a tool of and a reason for furthering workers’ oppression. For example, workers did not get their salary on time and sometimes had to work until midnight, but they could not talk about

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this during an audit or else they would be sacked. The worker welfare committee was non-functional, and pregnant women did not get any benefits—instead, they were ruled out of recruitment. Factory owners gained the upper hand because poor laborers had few alternatives and even fewer better-employment opportunities. The uncertainties that failing an audit inspection may bring for the workers generally structure their experience of it. The fear of losing the work order that these new regulatory instruments for improving labor conditions have set forth instead brought the workers and the factory management on the same side, blurring their class positions.

Paradoxes of CSR: Labor Control to Corporate Branding To improve the labor conditions in garment factories, besides compliance issues, CSR initiatives have become another huge global venture. In Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), in their website, declares, ‘We cannot move forward leaving our society backward.’ Hence, with this realization, they have assumed some responsibilities—with ‘true heart and sincere actions’— toward society beyond legal obligations. Therefore, despite being a non-­ profit organization, they have undertaken various CSR activities in the community and environment for the larger good (BGMEA, n.d.). For instance, As part of its CSR activities, BGMEA runs 12 Health Centers that provide[s] healthcare facilities and medicines to more than 60,000 garment workers per year [at] free of cost. The annual expenditure of these centers is around USD 3,00,000 which is funded by BGMEA’s own resources. […] Besides, for RMG workers, a full-fledged hospital is operational in Chittagong, and a 100-bed hospital in Dhaka is under construction. The hospital will provide all kinds of outdoor and indoor healthcare facilities to garment workers [at] free of cost or [at] heavily subsidized charges.

The emergence of CSR enabled the corporations to emerge as moral guardians or mentors, typically promoting the language of ‘universal’ morality (see Knudsen, 2015; Hilgers, 2010). For example, in Bangladesh, a health service for the workers is a significant area of CSR activities. This service took two forms; there were facilities to provide healthcare inside

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the factory, which were equipped with a doctor (visited sometime) and paramedics. In some instances, factories in partnership with donor funder programs participated in projects that established clinics where the workers could receive healthcare at nominal fees. The garment workers could benefit from these initiatives, but structural inequalities in the labor regime produced paradoxical results. During my fieldwork inside the factory, I have regularly seen that whenever workers suffered from dizziness, fever, or other ailments and wanted a short leave, the supervisors brought them medicine from the healthcare center and asked them to continue working. This ‘support’ had become a way of controlling absenteeism among the workers in the factory. Sometimes, the paramedic would say they were fit to work and thus needed to continue working. In one case, a worker was experiencing high blood pressure, but the supervisor said he could only leave after lunch; the paramedic agreed, so the worker had to continue working. The harsh working conditions and pressure they experienced were exemplified by a comment made by one worker suffering from back pain: ‘There is no leave till I pack and load all the packages to be delivered.’ I have also explored healthcare service initiatives that are placed in collaboration with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) outside the factories. Here, workers could get a health card by paying BDT 100. With the health card, they could get medical services of up to BDT 10,000. Workers could get medical assistance from the health center that included counseling on contraceptives, free contraceptive distribution, clinic referral, blood grouping, pregnancy tests, menstrual regulation (MR), pathology, ultrasound, and distribution of iron-folic acid. General prescriptions were also given to the workers, but they had to pay for the medicine themselves. They could get the medicine there at the Health Center at a 5 percent discount off the market price. However, I realized that factory workers visited the health center to obtain an ‘unfit certificate’ when they needed some sort of sick leave and a ‘fit certificate’ when they wanted to go back to work after a medical break. These ultimately acted as elements of assurance during audit inspections. The pattern of workers’ visits to the healthcare center revealed the limited scope of the service. I have observed around 8–10 workers a day coming for health advice. But the patients mostly visited during lunchtime as barring an emergency; workers are not allowed to leave the factory. Thus, the workers visited the healthcare center at lunchtime, splitting their time between eating and coming here for treatment. A service provider once

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mentioned, ‘Workers must do all the tasks before they can do anything else.’ Workers revealed that the main problem they faced was that the health center operated from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., so they could not go there after work. However, the clinic remained open on Friday, their day off, so the workers could use the services then. Further, workers could not avail themselves of all the benefits of the clinic because when they were seriously ill or pregnant, they went home to the village where they could get help from parents or in-laws. Therefore, they preferred family support who could take care of them over the monetary benefit of staying in the city. My fieldwork revealed, firstly, CSR activities like healthcare support acted as a labor-management strategy for the factory. Secondly, factories take initiatives in partnership with NGOs to stand out among the other factories and gain uniqueness to the buyers. Different versions of these coercive and branding initiatives are found at the top of the supply chain where these guidelines were formulated. For example, Rajak (2016, p. 31) focused on the ritualized performances of CSR practices and termed them ‘theatres of virtue.’ Tracking the performance of CSR practices—that is, the circuit of conventions, policy forums, and award ceremonies in London through which transnational corporations produced and authenticated dominant discourses of CSR—Rajak argued that these events aided corporations in establishing themselves as agents of social improvement but were attempts at corporate branding largely ignoring local ramifications. In the same line, the case in Bangladesh reveals paradoxical consequences, the possibilities of which are ignored at the top, where such discourses are established.

The Influence of Buying Practices: Punctuated Times While many production regulations are being deployed to improve labor conditions, buying practices of different brands remain out of focus. In this section, I seek to unearth the effects of global clothing brands’ low-­ cost fast fashion on the sourcing factories and the workers. I again here refer to De Neve (2009), who stressed that CSR policies or standards attempt to impose values and norms that tend to produce particular hierarchies of subjects at the level of individuals, companies, industries, states, and regions. International buyers impose codes of conduct upon their

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suppliers in the developing world (see Uddin, 2021). The opposite is never the case—that is, suppliers from developing countries cannot require their buyers to comply with a given code of conduct, for example, buyers’ purchasing practices. Thus, because of the unequal exchange relations established between the buyers of western countries and suppliers of developing countries, the suppliers remain locked in a vicious repeating cycle of intensifying exploitation (Khan & Lund-Thomsen, 2011, p. 78). During my fieldwork, I found that the buying practices directly impacted the working situations of the garment industry. Big brands demand the factories produce cheaply and quickly. As a result, despite the current emphasis on factory compliance issues, the prices of products had gone down. For example, one floor manager reported that the prices of clothes now are 5 to 10 percent lower than 2004–2005.7 The operators/ workers corroborated this information and added that the factories rarely increased salary, claiming that the prices of the products had gone down and thus could not grant an increase. Another characteristic of the buying practice was that gigantic volumes of orders were placed quickly, forcing the owners to subcontract orders out to smaller factories that did not fall under the mandatory compliance requirements of the buyers. Therefore, an order from a big brand was sometimes channeled through subcontracts to smaller factories. From the testimony of the floor manager, it was clear that buyers often did not assess the actual capacity of the factories when they placed their orders. Without full knowledge of the factory’s production schedule, buyers overestimated the factory’s production capacity and underestimated the potential for subcontracting. During my time on the production floor, I also met a quality controller (a person who inspects products) from another factory talking with the quality controller of the factory in which I was doing my fieldwork. While I was talking with them, they told me that subcontracting was a common practice. The practice of subcontracting was another factor that kept the production cost lower and ensured meeting the deadline of a shipment. One worker said, ‘Sometimes the management lowers the “piece rate” of production because they produce on the subcontract.’ During discussions with buying house officials, it became evident that brands wanted mass quantities of cheap clothing in a short time to be in the fashion season. Therefore, whoever offers the lowest price gets the 7  For the estimates on declining trend of garment product prices and lead time for production see Anner (2020).

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order. Besides, because the fashion season is abridged, the factories are pressured to supply the products quickly. If production is delayed for any reason in the process of design and approval, sometimes the buyers try to find faults to cancel the order. For instance: since the outbreak of COVID-19 in January 2020, around USD 5 billion worth of work orders have been canceled or put on halt (see Choudhury, 2020). Thus, on the one hand, I think the buyers offered ever-lower prices and, on the other hand, created a practice where factories were concentrating more on competing for orders and meeting deadlines than improving working conditions and workers’ rights. Factory management always stressed that they could not negotiate because they feared losing contracts to other garment factories or other countries. I understood from my fieldwork that the garment workers bore the pressure/consequences of low prices and quick shipments. The workers were forced to work extensive hours of 12–16 hours a day or more to meet shipment deadlines, and if for some reason a shipment deadline was missed, the responsibility was placed on the workers and used to justify low salary in the future. Here we can also see how the ‘specific date’ of a shipment could be an ‘important time,’ if looking from the workers’ perspectives (cf. Guyer, 2007). These specific dates of shipment had particular milestones associated with them of either happiness or despair, depending on whether the shipment was on time or not. When the workers could produce and meet the deadline by working continuously, they were given the next day off. Conversely, if the factory failed at meeting a deadline, it created disparate uncertainties for the workers, ranging from the possibility of losing jobs to not getting a salary on time. These aspects of temporal frames, that is, ‘punctuated times,’ affected workers’ planning for the ‘near future’ considering the uncertainties of factory work. The situation at the Dhaka factories reflects that, within the garment sector, corporate codes of conduct and labor standards that suppliers in the Global South are asked to comply with did not change the business practices on the ground. On the contrary, the general business practice might have influenced and helped perpetuate the exploitative labor conditions in the factories.

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The Making of Workers into Legal Subjects Through a study of labor legislations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Anderson (2004) argued that laws regulating employment contracts sometimes gave punitive powers to employers but not reciprocal rights to employees when a violation of the terms of the agreement occurred. Thus, knowledge of the history of labor legislation is essential for the insight it provides into the process of making workers into legal subjects. However, I am not delving into the history of labor regulations in Bangladesh. Still, I instead give an overview of how the current legal framework creates inequality conditions for the industrial workers in Bangladesh (see also Vijayabaskar, 2001). The labor regime of the garment industry in Bangladesh operated under a plethora of labor laws that declared that certain conditions must be met in factories. Moreover, all export-oriented garment factories had to be registered and must follow factory labor laws and industrial relations ordinances. The labor laws and ordinances included the Children (Pledging of Labor) Act (1933), the Payment of Wages Act (1937), the Maternity Benefit Act (1939), the Minimum Wages Ordinance (1961), the Employment of Labor (Standing Orders) Act (1965), the Factories Act (1965), the Industrial Relations Ordinance (1969), the Bangladesh Labor Act (2006), the Bangladesh Labor (Amendment) Act (2013), the Bangladesh Labor Rules (2015), and the Bangladesh Labor (Amendment) Act (2018). However, very few factory owners adhered voluntarily to these statutory requirements. In addition, the government agencies did not apply the rules strictly. The reason for weak enforcement was the little political incentive for the government to interfere on behalf of workers, given that they were not a politically powerful group. This adds that the Bangladesh state has taken a neoliberal stance that further helps powerful classes flourish while workers remain prone to exploitation. Most of the workers told me that because the labor laws were not implemented, this resulted in forced overtime, no holidays during peak seasons, and delays in payment of salaries. At present, labor rights and entitlements are governed by a few policy documents in Bangladesh, that is, the Bangladesh Labor Act 2006 (amended in 2013 and 2018) and the Bangladesh Labor Rules 2015. Although the policies cover a wide range of issues related to the rights and entitlements of the workers, some crucial issues remain either insufficiently covered or not covered at all. The National Labor Policy 2012 laid out a

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broad framework for establishing the rights and dignity of laborers in line with the Government’s Vision 2021 and ILO’s Decent Work Agenda. Although the policy addressed broad issues of labor rights and entitlements for promoting the investment needed for the nation’s development agenda, it did not touch upon some of the fundamental labor rights issues. The list of elements not covered in the regulatory frameworks is quite sizable, including matters related to employment contracts, terms of overtime, medical allowance, welfare fund, and fundamental safety issues like fire emergency, protective kits, building safety, and first aid. The Bangladesh Labor Act 2006 (GoB, 2006) was amended in 2013 and 2018. It was assumed that the new provisions would ensure labor rights. However, the law still has significant gaps that hinder guaranteeing the rights of the laborers. For example, the law is silent on health and safety information and education, alternative skills development, and basic entitlements like accommodation, pension, and long-term treatment and rehabilitation (see for instance: Bhuiyan, 2018; ITUC, n.d.; Chowdhury, 2013; HRW, 2013; see also Chaps. 1 and 2). As we can also draw from the above, current debates on improving labor conditions seem increasingly focused on infrastructure and avoiding factory collapse or fire. This is problematic as it represents infrastructural issues delinked from the overall labor conditions and relations in the garment factories, which are mainly exploitative, as I depicted in this chapter. Further, the review of the auditing practices and the Bangladesh Labor Act (2006) reveals how in the absence of major accidents, garment work has profound implications for the well-being of the workers, producing humans as waste in the process (cf. Yates, 2011; Ashraf, 2017; Mezzadri, 2017). This also reflects how the pattern of accumulation might imply a complete disregard for the social reproduction of the workforce (O’Laughlin, 2013) in the absence of worker-friendly legal bindings. The growth of the auditing culture (see Strathern, 2000) and legal bindings (policy, acts, and laws) also reflects how the technologization produces explanations and assumes remedies that are antagonistic to the social explanations of the marginalizing processes (cf. Graeber, 2015). I believe that compliance rules and ethical codes disempowered the workers. The administrative procedures were, in sum, a fusion of private and public power that became a means of surplus extraction.

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Concluding Remarks Since the rise of neoliberalism, the production of commodities is increasingly diffused into the global arena. Nonetheless, the labor process remains highly localized; thereby, the new regulations such as ethical and social compliance guidelines and new instruments such as auditing and CSR for controlling the future of labor have turned out to be paradoxical. Aside from increasing bureaucracy, the new regulations and instruments can be approached as creating punctuated time. The use of audits, CSR, and business practices of international buyers turn attention toward specific date events, enabling anticipations toward them, including the discipline and stress they impart and the opportunities or dilemmas they create for different actors. One of these events for individual workers can change their circumstances drastically, as because of audit failure, they can lose their job, and in case of shipment failure, they might lose their job or salary. In the punctuated times of the audit culture, the effects ripple into the domain of the life of the workers. State policies are crucial in backing and promoting the existing exploitative business processes. At the same time, factories and business owners also override international conventions to make more profit out of the expense of the laborers. Moreover, auditing and CSR practices create multiple subjectivities, including confusing their purposes and establishing an ordered disorder in factories. These forces culminated in producing a layer of ‘dispossession’ in garment workers’ experiences at the factory, who could not even reveal the actual labor conditions. The previsioning instruments thus became tools for ethicizing and validating exploitative business practices. In the next chapter, as a conclusion to the monograph, I reflect on the relations between neoliberalism and the state, and the multiple realities of women who inhabit the social world that emerges at this intersection.

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PART V

CHAPTER 9

The Multiple Realities of Neoliberalism and Garment Kormi

The Overarching Context In this concluding chapter, I comment on neoliberalism as a process and how we can comprehend its place in the larger totalization of the social that is particular to Bangladesh. David Harvey sees neoliberalism as an ideology that rests on the idea that human welfare is best served if the state withdraws from welfare policies (Harvey, 2005, p. 64). However, this view easily separates the state from its purported impacts under which neoliberalism exists and operates. Contrarily, Aihwa Ong has argued that neoliberal governing relies on calculative choices and techniques in the domain of citizenship and of governing by subjecting citizens to act under the market principles of discipline, efficiency, and competitiveness (Ong, 2006, p. 4). Similar processes that Ong describes, I believe, are identifiable/relatable in Bangladesh, including the national discourses and narratives on the garment industry relating to the economy, work ethic, and family welfare. Further, the government runs donor-like institutions (e.g., PKSF1) that  Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF)—Rural Activities Assistance Foundation—an apex development organization, was established by the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) in May 1990 for sustainable poverty reduction through employment generation (PKSF, n.d.). As of June 2020, PKSF has 278 partner organizations, 14.24 million members, and 10.95 million borrowers. The cumulative amount of loans disbursed from PKSF to its partner organizations stood at BDT 38.67 billion (USD 1 = BDT 84) in FY 2019–2020 (PKSF, 2020). 1

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fund national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to run microcredit programs. The emerging concept of ‘free individuals’—free from patron–client obligations and cultural institutions—that the ‘social engineering’ programs in Bangladesh aimed to create have played crucial roles in the garment industry and in the economy. However, as I have argued in previous chapters, it has also created value configurations; they are not ‘free’ individuals, per se, but can instead be seen as reoriented individuals in the emergent social order. Therefore, I see neoliberalism as the subjection of targeted populations to certain rules that inform and regulate their behavior. It also enables the subjection of targeted segments of the people to new technologies of market-oriented disciplinary mechanisms by nonstate actors such as NGOs. Neoliberalism includes governance by NGOs that act like a state, which has been termed graduated sovereignties (Ong, 2000, 2006) and shadow state (Karim, 2008), and these non-state actors seek to implement social engineering programs (population control, health services, employment generation, primary education, reduction of gender-based violence, voter education, etc.) that were formerly under the domain of the state. However, I argue that policy shifts, a new labor regime, and market relations developed over the last 30  years did not occur in an economic and social vacuum. Instead, I suggest that the conditions for expanding women’s employment were deeply rooted in government policy, social campaigns, and the reinterpretations of social relations and values. Following this, I comment on two aspects: firstly, the relationship between employment and women’s empowerment that creates multiple realities for garment kormi, and secondly, the multifarious forms of relations between the state and neoliberalism in Bangladesh.

Employment and the Multiple Realities of Garment Kormi As explored throughout this monograph, the garment industry has created a major employment opportunity for women who migrate in search of work to urban areas in Bangladesh. With the rapid expansion of the garment industry in the urban areas since the 1980s, there has been a boost in the migration of young women in Bangladesh. A form of social mobility has thereby sprung up with the entry of women into the formal labor market and their transition from the private sphere to the male-­ dominated public sphere. This new group of economic actors in

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Bangladesh, that is, the women working in the garment factories, especially in Dhaka, has not only been visible in statistics. Every morning the streets of Dhaka are flooded with thousands of female workers. The poor women who migrated to the cities in quest of paid employment opportunities (aside from accessing microcredit) became a desirable option for employers as a commodity. This pool of low-skilled, rural migrant women possessed limited choices in the workplace and was available even for part-time work under perilous conditions (Jahan, 2014, p.  35f). Factory owners used the image of the young and uneducated female garment worker with a rural background whose life is improved by the money she makes to justify the low salaries, working conditions, and even the organization of the production process as a whole. For instance, in Chap. 1, I quoted the social and labor welfare officer. She stated that garment workers earn ‘a lot’ but constantly complain about not getting enough salary. Further, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and the government publicly declare that they promote and protect the interests of the industries, which help generate employment, empower women, and alleviate poverty.2 Interestingly, NGOs often used similar imagery to raise international attention to the need to improve garment workers’ condition through life-skills training, training on collective bargaining, workplace safety, and labor law (Dannecker, 2002). Various studies explored the contributions of the garment industry in increasing women’s participation in salaried employment. In general, it is argued that the garment industry facilitated women’s empowerment by breaking the social norms of purdah that restricted their economic capabilities, and through this new economic engagement, women are becoming empowered. Afsar (2000) stated that female workers have gone beyond breaking out of the inherent social norm of being only a daughter, wife, or mother by taking on what was 2  The president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) stated, ‘Since its inception, BGMEA has been working relentlessly to promote and protect the interests of the apparel industry that has brought about revolutionary socio-­ economic changes in Bangladesh by generating employment, empowering women and alleviating poverty’ (BGMEA, n.d.). Further, Karim (2014a, p. 57) in her work on the labor conditions in the garment factories in Dhaka argued that despite women workers’ contribution to the country’s foreign income, the government has been indifferent to plight of workers. In this regard, she quoted the Finance Minister of Bangladesh, who once remarked, ‘[T]hese foreign manufacturers cannot move so easily. Where else can they find such cheap wages and an infrastructure already in place?’ (Karim, 2014a, p. 57).

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once only a male role, that of a primary earner (see also Dannecker, 1999). Availability of paid work in the factories placed greater responsibilities on many of these women to meet the survival needs of their families (Bacchus, 2005). Paul-Majumder and Khatun (1997) showed that about 30 percent of women who worked in the garment industry were the primary earners of their families, while others were secondary earners. Without female workers’ earnings, 80 percent of these families would have slid below poverty (see Paul-Majumder & Begum, 2000). These studies reflect that despite discrimination and irregular wages, even earning below the minimum wage, female workers in the export-oriented garment industry contributed immensely to their family income. Further, Bhattacharya et  al. (2002) and Zohir (2001) indicated that women’s participation in income-generating activities gave them a better status within the family and provided them with considerable freedom. A job ensured equitable access to household resources (nutrition) and substantial investment in female human capital (health and education). They further maintained that as income earned by the female member reduced dependency on male income, women’s vulnerability decreased, as did the possibility of domestic violence against them. Zohir (2001) further showed that female workers spent their earnings, in part, on their marriage, thus taking a significant burden off their families. The independent earnings also allowed these women to have a greater share in household decision-­ making. Therefore, it has been widely disseminated in developmental and political discourses that women are becoming primary earners in the family and, increasingly, the decision-makers of the household liberated from the male-dominated/patriarchal norms of Bangladeshi society. On a different note, Karim (2014b) argued that empowerment among the female garment workers in Dhaka was also evident in the changes in the family roles that they held. Many garment workers met their spouses through self-orchestrated romantic relationships, and their marriages did not require dowries. Further, she explained, often when women had to work late at night, their husbands prepared the meals and fed the children. She indicated that garment workers formed family units based more on shared responsibilities, a model that was rare in rural areas where gender ideas strictly segregated the roles of men and women. Karim (2014b) suggested that garment workers’ ability to earn wages created forms of practical freedoms. They walked the streets in groups, exercised more choice in choosing their partners, and their families adopted new gender roles. They earned their wages, and even if they sent most of the money home to help

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their families, they still kept some of it for themselves. They went to the markets, the cinema, and restaurants and made small purchases for themselves with the money they had earned. One can argue that these are positive transformations that working women have brought to Bangladesh—as also depicted by the public campaigns discussed in Chap. 3. The rhetoric of women’s empowerment through salaried employment is also evident in the liberal ideas of the Women in Development (WID) policies, such as the National Women’s Policy of Bangladesh (GoB, 2011), which encourages women’s participation in paid work to enhance gender equality. Similarly, the Seventh Five Year Plan of Bangladesh mentions, ‘Notwithstanding strong progress on the gender agenda, there are few unfinished agenda which need most attention concerning economic empowerment’ (GoB, 2015, p. 12). Further, development narratives produced by local and international NGOs use gender as a signifier of modernity and development by referring to statistics of the levels of female education, contraceptive use, employment, income, engagement in politics, and women’s visibility and mobility (White, 2010; see, e.g., UNICEF, 2007). Closely related to conventional development indices, any change toward more equal gender scores is considered ‘empowerment’ and indicates progress toward development. However, White (2010) emphasized the ‘personal’ dimension of empowerment, which involves self-confidence, self-esteem, the scope for autonomy, and dignity in the broader community rather than only within the family. This consists of a woman’s reputation and command of respect, her connections beyond the household, and her ability to negotiate the terms of these relationships. However, in this description, what remains unnoticed, as I have described in Chap. 6, is that the household responsibility remained mainly on women, males were the primary decision-makers regarding household finances, and marriage choices were often a strategy to avoid the attentions of the other males. These tendencies exist despite there being examples in which the structure and roles were altered and modified. Family and other networks helped women access jobs and survive the work regime. However, there were also instances where women started work against the family’s will. Moreover, during my fieldwork, many garment workers told me that the reason for their migration had been to ensure their household’s welfare. When the household was in crisis, they had decided to undertake labor migration and start working in the garment factories. Instead of attempting to increase their own status within the household and wider community, they undertook industrial work to

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stabilize the household economy and the well-being of close family members. There were instances when women told me that they worked for themselves; nevertheless, they generally considered their family as the unit of evaluation; because of their roles as daughter, sister, wife, or mother. Many young women accepted work in the factory mainly to aid in the advancement of their households. Workers needed money for their children’s education, repaying debt, and/or overcoming the loss of damaged crops and homesteads by natural disasters. Others chose to work because their husband’s income was insufficient to maintain the household. In particular, women’s preference to find jobs in the same factory where their husband or another relative worked as well as their preference regarding marriage choices indicated their consideration of themselves, no longer merely victims of patriarchy (and social values) but also beneficiaries of it, viewing male guardianship as their strength and support in the unknown social settings (of the factory, especially, as I depicted in Chaps. 4, 5, and 6). Further, people at the grassroots level also effectively manipulated the subjectivities of neoliberalism in accordance with the socio-cultural value regimes. Through discussions with garment workers, it became evident that all of the motivations were inspired by the desire, at the most basic level, to earn money, with which they could buy anything. They argued, ‘If you can earn your status in the family [by contributing to pay microcredit debt, to buy land or to build a new house], then the status of the family in the locality will improve.’ This was also reflected in the social world of the family, and one garment worker stated that because of her income, her husband and mother-in-law labeled her as worthy and a good wife. Still, she had to continue to perform all of the responsibilities she would always have as a woman after returning from working outside the home. Similarly, the obligation to give a kin/relative a part of the loan that a woman was granted in the case of microcredit was considered, by the working woman’s lineage, to be her responsibility of a higher order and more important than her need of that money (for a similar argument, see also Karim, 2008). Many women said that when they began working, they were concerned about what people would say. However, they could not just sit back and do nothing during economic needs. They decided that taking paid work outside the household was not shameful. As I see it, this reflected a change in women caring less about the patriarchal gaze than before. Their choices were in some ways supported by the ideological state apparatus, as seen by the specific emphasis on the involvement of women in economic activities.

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Some women from different occupations also said people still comment on women’s character when they are working outside of the home, but they do not care. They further affirmed now women could overlook and ignore such comments. As expressed in the national campaigns, garment workers considered paid work an expression of modernity and development. Moreover, traditional purdah prohibitions on women doing work ‘outside’ of the household had shifted with the increased need for cash income and increased diversity of options for employment. While some still maintained that women should not work outside of the home, for most people, the major issues had become the kind of work, the nature of the place of the work, and how women conducted themselves within it (see also White, 2010). While work in this way could be considered an expression of freedom and progress, the process was, nevertheless, internally conflicted. While it is argued by the government, the industry owners, and even some researchers that women’s participation in paid work improved women’s status (see Chap. 3 and earlier discussions), the variations in women’s experiences of work challenged such a claim. Given these dimensions, I, therefore, argue that women navigated within multiple realities. For instance, in the context of working at the garment factories, work was stressful, and its effects were different for different workers. Work had created alternative positions and more variety. It referred not simply to making things better for women but was a more fundamental, structural transformation in the constitution of gender relations—within the family and in personal relationships. However, this needs to be understood considering the exterior that the representation of ‘self’ constructs. The idea of a ‘worthy/good’ wife is constructed against a not-so-worthy wife. We should also recognize that the domain within which this identity was constituted, the category of ‘not worthy wife’ itself becomes co-opted in some way or another, in terms of work ethic, consumerism, or other relational roles of women as daughters and sisters (see Chap. 7; cf. White, 2010). The high number of married women who chose to work indicated the increasing economic pressure to work and the inability of rural families to survive on the earnings of one family member. Social conventions of purdah could not be met because of economic need; thus, alternative explanations circulated, such as ‘If you are good then nothing bad can happen to you’ and ‘If you do not harm others, you will not encounter any problems, as mentioned in Chap. 6. Work also allowed for luxuries, as with a salary, one could buy

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different scarfs to use (as various campaigns referred to in Chap. 3 portray; see also McCarthy & Feldman, 1985, p. 15; Feldman, 2009, p. 283). If the worker–industry relation is looked at from the position of the industry owners, the apparently unlimited supply of women in the female workforce not only permitted the garment factory owners to exploit women workers (Kabeer & Mahmud, 2004, p. 108) but also helped them to keep production costs down. To maximize profit, factory owners decreased employee benefits and utilized migrant women’s labor by employing or dismissing workers according to the labor demand of the factories, guided by the international market and production orders. Moreover, because a large pool of female laborers was readily available to the garment factories, factory owners often preferred to place women in low skills-based jobs and to pay them low wages (Paul-Majumder & Begum, 2000). Therefore, I argue that measuring women’s empowerment through the incorporation of women’s labor in economic activities and as part of the production process (for example, by garment factory owners) only demonstrates enhanced capitalist wealth accumulation and reflects the devaluation of women’s labor as it only became ‘valuable’ once incorporated into capitalist production circle but not adequately paid (see Chap. 3). Further, if we do not consider the different social contexts that led to women’s involvement in work and the social relations that were co-­ opted into the system and transformed, our understanding of women’s empowerment will be flawed. Following Shiva (1989, p. 4), I suggest that emphasizing the commercialization of women’s labor under global capitalism reflects a form of patriarchal bias because it considers women’s subsistence work, which does not produce any surplus, as unproductive. It is also not often recognized that participation in wage-earning work in garment factories does not always free women from performing household work and childcare. For example, most factories in Bangladesh did not provide childcare facilities (Alam et  al., 2011). Consequently, women workers had to separate from their children, leaving them with their grandparents in the village. I want to be clear here: I do not claim that capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization manifested through industrial work always negatively affected women. There are opportunities and possibilities that paid employment created for them, including the restructuring of the social order and an emerging idea of the ‘worthy woman,’ apart from the

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consumerism and material changes that were on offer. Instead, I emphasize that globalization and neoliberalism’s effects on women were not uniform but highly uneven and inconsistent (see also Siddiqi, 2003, p. 18). In one way, it brought changes into women’s lives, helping them become self-­reliant, increasing their agency, and enabling them to bargain with patriarchal authority. Besides, working women also became subject to neoliberal ethos and governance, endowing them with multiple realities. These multiple realities indicate how the popular understanding of neoliberal reform as a generalized phenomenon failed to account for how such reforms are planned, implemented, and followed up on in particular places. It is particularly vital to draw attention to how specific practices, ideologies, and policies concerning labor force participation, and the labor market prior to the boom of export production, contributed to the construction of the female labor force. To understand how these women effectively challenged the oppression of a patriarchal society and family, we should recognize how women resist structural barriers in less collective but individual, subtle, and subversive means within a patriarchal society. We also should consider empowerment in terms of freedom, as I argued in Chap. 5, as collective change might happen only if different individuals on their own start striving beyond the collective ethos (by recreating it), for any form of the organized collective might run into the problem of creating another constraining ethos (Sloterdijk, 2016, p. 14f). Thus, ideology forms a system with no possible outside to which it might be compared (Althusser, 2017 [1988], p. 128). Furthermore, we must consider more than simply the statistics—the number of women and their income—and look at the value of the work itself and the social relations created. The work at the garment factories was more than a means of income for the workers. It was a job/occupation for earning cash/subsistence to fund expenditures of one kind or another. The more critical value(s) for the workers was in their relations to family and the larger community. In Chap. 6, I argued that garment workers undertook different actions in accordance with social and religious values, and the social life spanned more than the industrial premises. To understand how the workers conceptualized their work, we ought to seek the answer in the social arenas where neoliberal capitalist logic did not work.

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Conclusions: Women, the State, and Neoliberalism(s) in Bangladesh As Bangladesh is continuously entangling with the global supply chain, at the receiving end of new technologies and raw material for agriculture and industrial production, as well as at the producing end of finished products such as textiles and leather, the Bangladeshi state continuously re-­engineers its population, trying to install neoliberal ethos among its citizens. This state involvement helps sustain the country’s production regime in enhancing economic growth. Bangladesh can therefore be seen as a prototype example of what Althusser (2014 [1995]) has written about regarding the reproduction of production conditions, which is ensured by two systems. One system requires reproduction of the means of production; no production is possible unless it ensures the reproduction of the material conditions of production in strictly regulated proportions. In the more globalized world, everything has to happen in harmony such that, in the national and even world market, the demand for means of production (for reproduction) is satisfied by the supply, which entails an endless spiral. Therefore, to understand the reproduction of the material conditions of production, we need to think beyond the level of enterprise for comprehending the whole mechanism. However, this is only one side of the coin. On the other side, the reproduction of labor power is to be ensured by essentially taking place outside economic enterprises. Labor power is reproduced through wages, which gives the workers access to fulfilling their needs; therefore, workers must be enabled to return to the factories again the next day and the next. However, meeting the material conditions of its reproduction is not enough to guarantee labor power. Labor needs to reproduce itself as ‘labor power’ that is ‘competent’ for specific tasks so that this labor power can be put to work in particular forms of cooperation and into complex arrangements of the productive forces. In a capitalist regime, reproduction of the qualification of labor power no longer tends to be ensured on the job but outside production, by capitalisms’ school systems and institutions (Althusser, 2014 [1995], p.  50). These ensure that alongside the ‘know-how’ of different techniques, people also learn the rules of good behavior—that is, the proprieties to be observed by every agent in the division of labor, depending on the post each is holding in it. These are the rules of the professional ethic and professional conscience, as well as the rules of respect for the social–technical division of labor, that is, the rules of order established by class domination.

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The state’s role in this process needs to be understood, as neoliberalism does not necessarily lead to a retreat of the state. Instead, trans-­nationalism and privatization transform the state and the particular ways governance is performed (Randeria, 2003; Ferguson, 2004; Gupta & Sharma, 2006; Ong, 2006; Sharma & Gupta, 2006; Gardner & Gerharz, 2016; Misra, 2017). Before neoliberal ideas became widespread, development initiatives were regarded as initiated by the state for the development of the entire nation. Those were, thus, legitimized with the notion of ‘public purpose’ (Mehta, 2009; Gardner & Gerharz, 2016), but the involvement of (if not the exclusive roles of) corporate actors has provoked a shift in perspective (see Harvey, 2005). The Bangladeshi experience might also indicate that while nation-building may be the characteristic rhetoric of any state, it does not inevitably lead to a stronger state. Instead, different non-state actors along with the state exercise sovereign power. Analyzing the microfinance schemes of NGOs, Lamia Karim observed that in postcolonial countries like Bangladesh, ‘the notion of citizenship as a set of entitlements that are bound up with a nation-state that guarantees those rights, is lacking’ (Karim, 2008, p.  6); thus, populations are served by non-state actors instead. Just so, Bangladesh is characterized by an exceptionally high number of NGOs who govern the poor section of the population in rural areas, and they are accused of operating as a ‘shadow state’ (Karim, 2011). In such contexts, corporations produce a social license to operate to improve the lives of the poor and attempt to forge relationships with NGOs and the state. However, the examples showed that neoliberalism does not lead to the replacement of the state by market forces or corporations. Instead, we find multiplications of sites for regulation and domination through the creation of autonomous institutions and bodies of government that are not essentially part of the formal state apparatus (cf. Gupta & Sharma, 2006, p. 277; see also Gardner & Gerharz, 2016). The Bangladeshi state, thus, selectively shared its power with NGOs, evident from the fact that in 2011, the government of Bangladesh launched an investigation into the financial dealings of Grameen Bank. The form of disciplining of this large-scale NGO by the state indicates an altered relationship between the state and NGOs in general, who have been partners in development since the 1980s. The state of Bangladesh has, more generally, also recalibrated the relationship with western-funded NGOs. The state accepted NGOs as development actors but not as political contenders. In 2007 Professor Muhammad Yunus (the founder of Grameen Bank) declared his intent to launch a political party called Nagorik Shakti

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(Citizen’s Power), a decision he later withdrew when he failed to gain public support. This event took place during the military-backed government of Bangladesh (2007–2008). After the current political party was elected into power in 2009, the regulation of NGOs, and Grameen Bank, in particular, neutralized the possibility of non-party political contenders for state power. Professor Yunus was removed from the position of managing director of Grameen Bank, his age cited. He was 70 years old at that time, while the mandatory retirement age was 60 years old for the position of director of a bank having shares owned by the government (the government of Bangladesh had a 5 percent share of the bank). Consequently, the financial matters of the Grameen Bank were put under scrutiny (see Karim, 2018 for details). Since 2010, the Bangladeshi government has increased the monitoring of NGO activities. In 2014, the government introduced the Foreign Donations Regulation Act (revised in 2015). The Act allows the NGO Affairs Bureau to inspect, monitor, and assess the activities of groups and individuals. Further, the Act requires NGO officials to get permission from the NGO Affairs Bureau before traveling overseas for meetings or other activities. State officials view NGOs as development organizations that should remain accountable to the state and not to their donors (Karim, 2018, p. 3). Therefore, as mentioned earlier, the state has also become a ‘donor’–like entity, operating institutions such as PKSF that fund national NGOs to run microcredit programs. Perhaps paradoxically, in the neoliberal governance regime, the state has retracted from different aspects of governing life but at the same time has become ever more present. The privatization and the retraction of state agencies from the public sector have made the state ever more present in different narratives and discourses of life through development imagery and campaigns. Far from bringing less government, neoliberalism, as it unfolds in Bangladesh, has thereby brought a different type of government and inserted it at a different site; it is a new application of power with a new set of demands of conduct. Neoliberal techniques of power produce a range of ‘freedoms’ from which no one is excluded— individuals are caught up in the process without ever explicitly wanting to participate (see Foucault, 2008). In this way, the state manages social risks that had formerly been the responsibilities of the state by recasting them as individual problems (see Foucault, 2003 [1982]). Similar processes are seen in the privatization of government roles by the auditing and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in garment factories, where roles of

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protection, regulation, and services are arranged through private enterprise for the betterment of workers and business practices (see Chap. 8). Here, the state remains at the center of the activities, formulating policies while assuming that private enterprises will perform the tasks laid out. To critically analyze neoliberalism as a concept, I have positioned myself with Aihwa Ong (2007) as opposed to David Harvey (2007). The latter presented neoliberalism as an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets, and free trade that would produce the same political results and social transformations everywhere (see Chap. 1). On the contrary, Ong (2007) argued that neoliberalism is not a fixed set of attributes with predetermined outcomes but a logic of governing. Consequently, it migrates and is selectively taken up by governments of diverse political contexts. Ong (2007, p. 4ff) used examples of China as being deviant where neoliberal policies are combined with state authoritarianism. In their respective views, both Harvey and Ong assumed that transnational organizations, capitalists, or the states play transforming roles and subject the population to a specific governance regime. However, I argue that in the bio-political production process, the neoliberal exceptions and also exceptions to neoliberalism are taken up by social beings at different levels. The configurations of varieties of institutions, programs, actors, and technologies governing ‘free subjects’ are knotted into complex interrelations in Bangladesh. Ong (2007) described Chinese neoliberal practices, where the majority of the Chinese population outside the loop are not groomed for self-authorization but serve as a reservoir of cheap labor power and are frequently abused by the self-enterprising elites. Neoliberalism in the Chinese environment, thus, manifests conditions that engender both self-reliant yet state-dominated professionals, on the one hand, and workers seeking protection against capitalist dispossession, on the other. Contrarily, the case of Bangladesh reveals that a dispossessed working population can also influence the mutations of neoliberalism in concrete ways. For instance, in this monograph, I have discussed that instead of material collateral, rural women’s existing ideas of ‘honor and shame’ worked as economic reassurance and collateral of the credit they received from microcredit institutions, and rural men’s preference of jobs for women that would give them a guaranteed income facilitated the migration of working women (see also Karim, 2008, p. 17). Furthermore, the garment workers also reinterpreted purdah and their duties (both familial

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and at the factories), and inside the factories, workers developed a work ethic fitting the neoliberal ideology. These examples both indicate that locally, at the grassroots level, the working people can influence the forms of neoliberalism. They also reveal how prevailing value(s) can accommodate the new configurations of the economy in the hierarchical system of values where kinship responsibilities are placed higher than roles as working citizens. I have discussed so far how the state and other non-state actors claim the power to regulate and govern human life during neoliberal reconfigurations of the economy. In the process, people who are subjected to different forms of regulation have also contributed to the form that neoliberalism shapes into locally. Now I discuss another aspect of these dynamics, that is, the emergence of the work ethic and individuality. In this process, people are becoming ever more entangled in the repressive and ideological apparatuses that govern their lives. The state coordinated different activities, which could be seen as deliberate and explicit elements of the ‘ideological state apparatus.’ In this regard, microcredit institutions and industrial factories trained the population to follow a specific time regime, measure the value of their activities in economic terms, and be consistent with self-management, which was required to function in the economic practices of the state. This brought unintended consequences for local populations (also for the state and corporations). As part of the nation-making process, there were collaborations between state and non-state apparatuses, and repressive and ideological apparatuses were mixed, blurring, and working in tandem. In this process, microcredit groups formed by the people endorsed applications for individual loans to the NGOs, but the fellow members of these microcredit groups also performed the ultimate violence of tearing apart the house of any loan defaulter (which brought dishonor for the family and led to homelessness). Thus, NGOs enacted an ideology that normalized individualized profit-seeking individuals. The mixing of ideological and repressive apparatuses, as well as how people were incorporated into these systems, reflects the flexibility of the social. This complements my argument that the ideology of kinship relationality in the factory had a double role. Firstly, it was something that the workers were willing to have for support in the factory regime so as to adapt to the work regime. Secondly and contrarily, it facilitated harsh working conditions in the factory, and protest against the relational authority was unlikely because of patriarchal customs (see Chap. 5). Further, religious values, relationality, and customary patriarchal authority in the factories

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contributed to the current state of affairs. The everyday negation of the hierarchical structure and inversion of ideologies reflects how in creative ways, people challenged the individualistic tendencies of the newer, individual, and ‘free’ citizens. We find that a ‘fictitious kinship structure’ developed in the factories, where new subjectivities and social meanings for people were created. With the changing exterior in terms of economic reconfiguration, the people and the representation of ‘self’ were constructed, and these contributed to the changing exterior. Thus, historically specific gender relations and normative practices are constitutive of global production rather than its mere effects or outcomes (see Foucault, 1978 [1975]; Pearson, 1998; Althusser, 2006; Feldman, 2009). The ideas of prosperity, autonomy, and freedom of the workers were contextual and exercised in different ways. Values in the life of the workers were not fixed, and they were perpetually reinvented through their choices and actions. But again, we have found instances of individualized consumerism, but it did not dissolve other social relations. Certain statuses, which were customarily occupied by men, could be achieved by women. For instance, we find that in neoliberal Bangladesh, gender roles for women such as daughter, sister, wife, and mother were valorized; however, in different contexts, one role underplayed another. In Bangladeshi Muslim society, mothering used to be the pinnacle social position for a woman. ‘Mother’ was a respectable position in the social order even though a son eventually took over the role of the head of the household from his father. Becoming an ideal mother was now related to becoming a worthy mother. It was the highest social position a woman could achieve. From an ideological standpoint, these worthy mothers could undermine men’s position. However, one should also consider that in the neoliberal valorization, the roles of the daughter/sister could take the imagery of both ‘mother’ in respect to their siblings and ‘son’ in respect to their parents. The social values relating to the ideal woman also played a part in this transformation; a woman needed to be married before having the socially respectable position of being a mother. Therefore, in this transition, a woman needed to pass through the roles of daughter/sister and wife. We have found situations in Chaps. 6 and 7, in which women chose between different roles, balancing responsibility and opportunity. Many young women were reluctant to be married and preferred to be a ‘worthy daughter,’ which provided them with the imagined position of a ‘son’ and a ‘mother.’ For divorced and/or abandoned women, mothering remained important. In different contexts, inverse roles of daughter–mother were significant, and

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women became the ‘whole social system,’ representing both the males and females of the social order. Thus, neoliberalism benefited women when it came to the idea of a ‘worthy woman’—be it the daughter, sister, wife, or mother. Capitalism does not operate only through fragmenting, destructing, or cannibalizing social values and structure; we can also find new relational orders. Here I introduce the last point in regard to the continuity between old and new ideas. Capitalism and neoliberalism in Bangladesh did not eliminate or transform the historically produced society in a unidirectional way. Instead, we can identify a dynamic process of joint becoming. It is generally argued that neoliberalism is focused on commerce and the redistribution of wealth. Thus, it plays a role in restoring class power (cf. Harvey, 2005, p. 159). Neoliberalism’s weakness was identified as its incapacity to present a schema for stimulating and organizing production (Hardt & Negri, 2009, p. 266). However, in Bangladesh, neoliberal strategies have influenced the way capitalist accumulation and production are organized. This happened because capitalist appropriation and neoliberal strategies were simultaneously implemented. It is as if neoliberalism as an exception and exceptions to neoliberalism (cf. Ong, 2006) concomitantly operate in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, industrial capitalism emerged and flourished as neoliberal reconfigurations of the economy were implemented. As the state reconfigured its policy to establish industries, women in Bangladesh started gaining visibility and recognition as economically productive working subjects. Consequently, governments also recognized and promoted equal rights for women. However, an exception for neoliberalism can be seen in the form of the policy benefits the industrialists received: tax concessions, not giving workers the right to unionize, and less strict labor laws in favor of factories (see Chaps. 2 and 8). The ways the state has begun regulating NGOs and removed Professor Muhammad Yunus from the position of managing director of Grameen Bank reflect that the state still could exercise its power and create exceptions to neoliberalism. The production of humans as citizens with a specific ethos was essential in the process. I argue that women’s wage employment, while dramatically increased with the development of export production since the mid-­1980s, is part of the long process of capitalization of the country that started long before and was associated with the nationalist project of Bangladesh. However, one can argue that NGOs and various government development programs subsidized the export sector through their training of

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different life skills as well as literacy programs, thereby increasing capabilities and opportunities for women to engage with other women (and men) in ways that socially prepared and disciplined them for factory work. Initially, as members of microcredit groups that depended on each woman’s loan repayment to ensure the conditions for all group members receiving future loans, women were taught to organize budgets, develop and implement individual strategies for entrepreneurship in production, and adjust the demands of the time and attention of their ‘new work’ activities to fit in with their ongoing familial responsibilities and obligations. In these ways, gender roles and relations, and their legitimation through religious and kinship values, remained neither fixed nor homogeneous. It was not simply a response to a restructuring of the economy. Instead, social relations were negotiated through engagements with regimes of moral regulation to constitute the possible ways that enabled export production and labor markets to flourish. These negotiations and contestations not only provided a source of labor but also allowed the imagining of a new value configuration. In other words, even under conditions of growing poverty and declining subsistence, labor was not available for incorporation into the market in a straightforward way. Instead, workers needed to be disciplined and technically trained to meet the requirements of the factories or other employment opportunities that characterized the emerging labor market. In some instances, both women workers and entrepreneurs took part in the constitution of the regulatory regime through negotiations and practices on the production floor. In this process, both the worker and the employer creatively used and transformed normative meanings and practices through ideas relating to a ‘good operator’ and ‘fictitious kinship structure.’ This kind of negotiation was entailed in constructing a labor market where there existed no ready and available labor force. From the position of the workers, it was affected by microcredit and the reinterpretation of norms and values. In developing wage labor in an agrarian-based society, moving women out of the house and into the factory and its surrounding social networks, family relations played crucial roles. Religious and kinship ideology governed how the workers related with others. Employment opportunity played a crucial part in the relations of production in the garment factories. The workers who remained related with wider networks of lineage never became entirely dispossessed from the means of making a living. These created hybridity in the relations of production in the advent of labor-intensive industrialization. Thus, in a

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totalization process, continuous production of the ‘whole’ went on merging the social and the individuals. There were changes in how the workers acted and valued their work, with the possibility of becoming joggo (worthy) for the family. I want to add here my critique of the technocratic solution of labor exploitation in the factories. My findings in Chap. 8 also indicate how informalized work relationships are reproduced within the contemporary economy through the combined activities of bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, and international firms. Since the 2000s, auditing had become a tool for the neoliberal process to ‘responsibilize’ and ‘modernize’ services and benefit the claimants (Kalb, 2012, p. 326). However, I argue that implementing auditing and CSR practices in the garment factories has become the mechanism of dispossession against the workers. Even in the absence of major accidents, garment work has profound implications for the well-­ being of the workers, producing humans as waste in the process. The use of auditing, CSR, and the business practices of the international buyers has brought attention to specific date events, converging anticipations, discipline, and the stress it requires, creating opportunities or dilemmas for the different actors involved. Based on the discussions in this chapter, I would like to make three final comments on the nature of neoliberalism in Bangladesh, the rhetoric of development imagery, and the creation of new citizens and state apparatuses. Firstly, the processes of economic reconfigurations creating new worlds were not only a mixture of agricultural or industry-based physical worlds but social relations, obligations, and ideas of development that created these synergies. However, the process weakened the sovereign power of the patriarch and the state; it was distributed at different levels through markets, NGOs, and various state and non-state apparatuses. People at the grassroots level also contributed to the form of neoliberalism. Secondly, there was an emerging concept of a work ethic and individuality; however, the workers who were even more entangled in the state-like apparatuses (repressive and ideological) helped further the development of neoliberal capitalism in Bangladesh as well as opportunities for ‘new worlds’ for the people of Bangladesh. It reflects how the totality of the social can accommodate contradictory elements as individual work ethics and familial relations in the factories. Further, the same social persons in different contexts played ideological and repressive functions. Thirdly, there was no social vacuum into which the new ideas were forced; instead, a concentrated effort had been ongoing which worked upon the existing social values,

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financialized those value(s), and eventually a form of profit-seeking individuals emerged that helped reproduction of the production conditions of neoliberal capitalism in Bangladesh. We see a continuity between old and new ideas. For instance, there was a transformation from patron–client relations to contractual agreements (in accessing microcredit or industrial jobs), but the way contracts were enforced remained dependent on personal social relations. Globalization, neoliberalism, or capitalism did not make the existing social processes obsolete, and there was no absolute criticism against corporate capital, donors, NGOs, and the state; instead, there were social interdependencies. In a way, throughout different chapters of this monograph, I demonstrated how sociality manifests itself in people (through their actions and agencies) in the ongoing configurations of the social, which as a distinct ideological whole are to be historically understood for particular populations—as in this monograph I addressed the social reconfigurations of the Bangladeshi (Muslim) population. Here we can also identify that economic reconfigurations under the globalized capitalist order and neoliberal agenda were concretely drawn upon by the social processes and in turn, the social processes were transformed and reshaped (e.g., in terms of women’s value and roles in social relations). Women as social beings have alternate positions in the social, which are established based on Islam, kinship, and patriarchy, where they are both subjects and objects simultaneously. The sociality of becoming garment workers in Bangladesh that came about through the changing roles and positions of women in the social order (as a result of historical dispossession from means of production, as an entrepreneurial woman through microcredit, and as individual working citizens of the state) had changed the multiple relationalities that existed. Hence, we find instances in the lives of the garment kormi that reflect structural openings that are conventionally treated as a bounded system. These workers generated difference—not as representation but subjective appropriation (Hage, 2012; Bertelsen & Bendixen, 2016)—in ideas and practices surpassing confining socio-political-economic structures and points of view that they continuously encountered everyday lives in the evolving neoliberal order of Bangladesh. I argue that the social and the people who inhabit it are always transforming. Thus, they remain in a constant process of joint becoming. In different configurations, the religious, the relational (kinship), and the customs and norms (patriarchal) enforced these social relations, binding together the multiple exchanges and transactions of the expanding neoliberal state of Bangladesh. The

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social remained immanent in the experience of the people, though in the process of continuous becoming. The social process is always working toward manifesting social relationships. Under capitalism in the neoliberal era, it has become even more evident and prominent. Even though individual positions of women have changed, their social positions in the totality continuously bring meaning to their existence. To identify the processes, we have to be more open in understanding and comprehending the social process and not limit ourselves to the partial process of class analysis, gender analysis, analysis of non-state institutions and the state in their relations to individuals devoid of the social that remains beyond the immediate control of the individuals. There are also tendencies of movements of an individual’s place up in the hierarchy of new value configurations, leading to different practices of people in different contexts, as a historically ongoing process. The case of Bangladesh, I argue, makes it evident that capitalism, neoliberalism, or economic reconfigurations cannot be defined and analyzed in isolation from the rest of the social. The expanding capitalism(s) and neoliberalism(s) in the world do not always hinder but make the social extend or transfer the value systems into new configurations, which are situational, transforming constantly, and emerging in different ways. Thus, the future lies in the social.

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CHAPTER 10

Epilogue: During the Pandemic

Garment Kormi and Coronavirus: Events of Abandonment1 On the morning of April 4, 2020, many of us were shocked to see a rush toward Dhaka. This rang an alarm as the country was supposed to remain under lockdown to minimize the risks of spreading Coronavirus. Why did all these people try coming to Dhaka by any possible means—even by walking hundreds of kilometers? Because Bangladesh is the second-largest ready-made garment (RMG) exporting country globally, and Dhaka is the center of around USD 28 billion worth of production hub (BGMEA, n.d.). It indicated what a treasure hunt of profit entails for more than four million garment kormi in neoliberal capitalism. To win a share of the market opportunity—the garment workers—were supposed to start production soon. Late in the evening of April 4, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) president had requested the closure of all the factories during the lockdown period. But by then, many had traveled to Dhaka, and many were stuck in between. Thus, they were again trapped in uncertainty. Even then, as an institution,  Elizabeth Povinelli (2011) argues, the schemes used to attribute value and measure risks, costs, and benefits in late liberalism also distinguish the people of value and the people who could be  spared. Additionally, she contends, the  abandoned people could nurture forms of ‘living otherwise’—overcoming the exclusionary social orders. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5_10

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BGMEA restated that they could not force any factories to remain closed. Unfortunately, the government also did not ask the factories to shut down; instead, only talked about measures to ensure the workers’ salaries were on time to justify their questionable actions. The workers went through this toil as many did not receive their pending salary before the lockdown started on March 26 and were likely to lose their jobs if they would not report to the factory as and when instructed. The testimonies of the returnee garment workers revealed such concerns. As per news reports, at least two workers died during the rush to Dhaka on April 4, and many were injured. Whom should we hold responsible for such losses? Indeed, not the Coronavirus. Before the lockdown began, authorities always suggested that factories might continue production if they could ensure World Health Organization’s (WHO) health guidelines. But anyone who ever visited a garment factory can readily understand that maintenance of social distance is nearly impossible given the labor intensiveness of the production lines. During my fieldwork, I have seen that thousands of workers did not use masks because of discomfort even though it is highly suggested to reduce respiratory diseases (see Chap. 8). BGMEA had asked factories to install handwashing points; unfortunately, only handwashing would not protect the workers from virus transmission. Anyone who has seen the mass of workers in the streets and enters or exits from a factory knows social distancing is impossible in the cramped staircase or roads. If workers try to leave the factory during the lunch hour, maintaining the suggested social distance, many workers might not be able to get out of the factory in time. All workers are even body-searched by security guards while exiting the factory—these factors limited social distancing and, thus, increased possibilities of virus transmission. While the Coronavirus is highly contagious, why were the workers asked to report at factories for work? Most likely and regrettably, these workers comprise a section of our population that the current economic philosophy may risk abandoning in a treasure hunt ensued by the COVID-19. As most garment workers are young, many might overcome the possible infection with mild symptoms, but why was the risk taken? The answer is again an eagerness to participate in the global gold rush. Naomi Klein (2020) has argued that Coronavirus capitalism showered aid in the interests of the wealthiest population but offered nothing for most workers. According to Penn State Center for Global Worker’s Rights, around 1 million workers were fired or furloughed amid the Coronavirus crisis (see

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Anner, 2020). In a lay-off situation, workers get half of the basic salary and housing allowance. Whereas other salaried employees have gotten paid leave for the lockdown period. According to newspaper reports, since the lockdown began on March 26, many factories were operating even on March 28. Hence, the workers protested for a shutdown, and some of those factories were declared closed under section 13/1 of the existing labor law, stating illegal stoppage of production by the workers. Hence, the workers would not get any wages (see Leitheiser et al., 2020). Even after widespread criticism, as many as 130 factories were operating on April 7 in Dhaka’s Savar and Ashulia areas, according to a report of the Daily Star (2020a, 2020b). There were also reports of workers’ protests demanding factory closure and salary of March. Hence, many workers would lose their jobs having allegations of ‘creating disruption’ in production and face legal actions. The events occurring over the first few weeks once the lockdown was announced also revealed the nature and extent of the coercions RMG workers go through to keep the apparel supply chain of the world on track. Previously, the workers paid the price of the unrelenting profit-seeking— manifested by the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013 that killed more than a thousand workers. In 2020, the workers were again forced into extreme risks. Global brands—the retailers cannot shed off the responsibilities for risking the workers’ lives. When many retailers came forward to announce that they would not cancel orders, the suppliers were stirred to open the factories as payments are made only after the products are shipped. As the shops closed, many retailers had put production on hold; thus, uncertainties loomed over the factories and the workers. The retailers and factory owners were unwilling to bear the Coronavirus’s cost. Hence, the RMG workers were rendered into a helpless situation. Considering the new market situation, many of the factories delved into producing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) and facemasks as these became high-demand products. The president of the BGMEA had announced that they are eyeing to export PPEs, and they want to do it fast (see Ovi, 2020; BSS, 2020). It reflected a growing demand for products where our garment factories could vie for a share. However, for this to happen, even after facing widespread criticism, many factories started production while the country was under shutdown, and events of abandonment unfolded before us. The crises caused by the pandemic had yet again exposed the vulnerabilities created by tendencies to expand, accelerate, and scale-up production and profit—ardent features of neoliberal

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capitalism. If the situation of March 2020 was unexpected, the situation of August 2021 was even more shocking. With the rising number of Coronavirus infections and deaths, Bangladesh went into a new lockdown phase starting from July 23 till August 5. However, upon repeated requests from the industry owners, the government suddenly decided on the afternoon of July 30 to reopen export-oriented industries on August 1, including the garment sector— while the entire country would follow the lockdown till August 5. Therefore, people rushed to get back to the industrial cities to save jobs, but there was hardly enough public transport (The Daily Star, 2021a). Hence, these workers had to pay five to ten times higher fares to reach their factories on time. During the negotiations with the government, factory owners claimed they would start operation with the workers living near factory areas, and workers who traveled to the villages would join later. However, many workers said factory supervisors have contacted them over the phone and asked them to join work on August 1. Ignoring health and social distancing directives, hundreds of thousands of workers traveled in crammed goods transports, auto-rickshaws, rickshaw vans, and even walked to their workplaces in Dhaka, Narayanganj, and Gazipur to save their jobs with factories set to reopen on Sunday (The Business Standard, 2021a).

Global Brands Must Do Their Part Our obsession with factories and their working conditions is the major loophole in our understanding of the global commodity supply chain. As a result, we forget to analyze the impact of the business practices of international brands and our consumption practices. In an open market economic system, the production bases earn an extremely low rate of profit while the capital owners take the maximum surplus-value. Despite the current emphasis on factory compliance issues, Oxfam has revealed that workers’ wage accounts for 4 percent of the retail price. Their estimates of 2017 indicate the global supply chain can ensure a living wage for garment workers by reallocating 17 cents per product (Oxfam, 2017). Perplexingly, international brands keep faltering from their commitments and responsibility. For instance, H&M had declared in 2013, it would guarantee a ‘fair living wage’ for workers of 750 supplier factories by 2018. However, it has moved away from its supposed ‘shared responsibility’ in 2017 by revising the goal to have an ‘improved wage management system’ (see Hendriksz,

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2018; Clean Clothes Campaign, 2019). Because the retailers evade their responsibility, the manufacturers remain locked in a vicious repeating cycle of intensifying exploitation. Western retailers emphasized factory remediation, but their search for profit continued, ultimately pushing the workers more into exploitation. In a study of the Bangladeshi garment industry, Mark Anner (2018) found a 13 percent decline in the unit price at the manufacturing end since 2013. Moreover, lead time for production decreased by 8.14 percent between 2011 and 2015. The existing business practices guided by low price and quick shipment lead to extensive working hours of 12 to 16 hours a day or more to meet production deadlines. Any missed deadline generally renders uncertainty over workers’ unpaid and future salaries (see Chap. 8). During the pandemic, the situation of garment industries exposes inequalities at different layers of the world economic order—an ardent feature of economic flexibilization under globalization. For example, the British retailer Debenhams has gone under administration and plunged its overseas employees and suppliers into crisis. Debenhams terminated all of its employees in its Bangladesh office following British regulations. However, it overruled the local directives of the Bangladesh government, demanding no laying-off or furlough of workers during the pandemic. Moreover, at the manufacturing end, Debenhams has USD 69 million in liabilities (see Uddin, 2020). The bankruptcy would make provision for Debenhams to be rebranded and continuing business perhaps under a different name, but the suppliers incurring losses would hardly receive any compensation. This illustrates power inequality between the western retailers and manufacturers based mainly in the developing world. International buyers impose codes of conduct upon their manufacturers in poorer countries (see Uddin, 2021). On the contrary, manufacturers cannot require western buyers to comply with a given code of conduct, for example, specific purchasing practices. The condition of the RMG sector proves that legal bindings and regulatory bodies poignantly produce explanations and assume remedies that are antagonistic to the processes of overcoming existing exploitations.

A Big Appears While Many Smalls Disappear In the RMG sector of Bangladesh, the larger factories are getting bigger, while many smaller factories cease to exist. In October 2020, one of the larger RMG companies expressed interest in buying factories through

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advertisements in national dailies. The company wanted to increase its production capacity, and the pandemic offered them a reasonable opportunity (Alam, 2020). Due to the pandemic, while the smaller factories are in dire need of cash, big conglomerates have gotten a chance to monopolize their existence further. The following fact also reflects this tendency: In 2019–2020, of the USD 19.326 billion export income by the BGMEA members, 63 percent was contributed by 26.31 percent of the RMG companies. At the same time, the rest could contribute only 37 percent (Alam, 2020). Economies of scale at factories are achieved by a capitalist work process that has led the technological advancement and minute division of labor, letting capitalists hire and fire workers as and when needed. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the callousness of the ‘hire and fire’ strategy under capitalism. BGMEA estimated that due to the pandemic, around 70,000 workers lost jobs (The Financial Express, 2020). Although in October 2020, industries started to re-recruit workers but reportedly offered lower wages than before (see Karim, 2020). As many workers were desperately looking for work, factories could offer low compensation packages. But, capitalists/industrialists usually claim, workers are free to decide and work; nobody forces them to work for a low salary. However, these workers, not having alternative opportunities, must work even if they are offered lower wages. Industrialists’ power generates from the fact that poor laborers hardly have any alternative income opportunities, as reflected by the high youth unemployment rate that doubled in 2020 from 11.9 percent in 2019 (Byron, 2020).

Whose Sustainability Is It Anyway? The BGMEA has published its first Sustainability Report 2020. This report on the part of the BGMEA is a consolidated effort to assess its performance in overhauling general business practices that would ensure positive social, economic, and environmental impacts. The report contains information about supposedly improved governance structure, stakeholder engagement, economic implications, care for the society, and environmental sustainability. This report also acknowledges the changing business landscape following the COVID-19 pandemic. BGMEA followed Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) sustainability reporting framework that industrialists use worldwide. These detailed reports are widely

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publicized and usually display capital owners’ efforts and commitment to ensure a fair world. However, a look at the media reports of the first week of 2021 revealed that workers of A-One BD Limited—an Italian RMG factory—demonstrated demanding unpaid salaries and allowance. The factory has reportedly been closed since April 18, 2020, without paying wages and arrears of 1100 workers (The Business Standard, 2021b; Islam, 2021). The National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) claimed that the workers did not receive any support from the Department of Factories and Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA) about receiving their compensation. The irony in industrialists’ efforts for sustainability is clear from the fact that while the appalling situation of workers continues, BGMEA has been requesting the government to extend the moratorium on the COVID-19 stimulus package and the tenure of the loan on repeated occasions in January and September 2021 (see bdnews24, 2021; The Business Standard, 2021c). Unfortunately, however, the workers’ appeals for getting their rightful salaries stay unheard. Although a stimulus package of BDT 50 billion was announced for the RMG sector, during April–May 2020 alone, 18,000 workers were dismissed as per estimates of the Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishments (DIFE) (Ovi & Alif, 2020). Moreover, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) has found that as much as 42 percent of the RMG workers, primarily employed in micro-, small-, and medium-sized factories, did not receive help from the stimulus package (see The Daily Star, 2020c). The insensitive approach of the industrialists is further proven by the fact that about 43 percent of female garment workers in Bangladesh suffer from malnutrition (Dhaka Tribune, 2021). So why do they not eat enough nutritious foods? Among many reasons, the primary issue is the level of income—with which RMG workers cannot afford their food requirements. If a billion-dollar industry is being run by workers who suffer from malnutrition, we can easily imagine how meager the salaries of these workers are. The legal minimum wage for garment workers in the country is BDT 8000 (USD 95) a month. This is insufficient if we consider it compared to the poverty line income or the cost of basic needs. According to the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016, the minimum amount required to stay out of poverty is USD 26.84 per month (BBS, 2019). Frankly, a family of four members struggles to survive with only one worker’s monthly income.

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Ultimately, any wage growth is distributed through house rent, medical care, education for children, or living. The scenario becomes even more dismal if we consider the higher thresholds of the poverty line benchmarked by the World Bank, which is USD 3.2 or USD 5.5 per person per day, instead of USD 1.9—typical of lower-upper middle-income countries. With such low wages, RMG workers often feel compelled to take on large amounts of overtime to make ends meet. Consequently, overtime income continues to be a significant portion of the workers’ monthly salary. During the COVID-19 pandemic, workers’ pay was significantly reduced due to lack of work orders and consequent curtailment of overtime. The reduction in income made it harder for workers to survive the pandemic days. Worryingly, Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) had requested the government to suspend the 5 percent annual increment of garment workers’ wages for the next two years, deepening the workers’ hardship even more (Mridha, 2021). The effect of low salary is widespread; it creates a cycle of exploitation—workers find it hard to make a living and cut expenditure on all the essential needs, including food and education, hence depriving the generations to come. As such, the fallen-back generations are forced to continue working cheaply in these industries. It can be argued that the low salary of workers ensures ‘sustainability’ of the industry, enabling global market competitiveness as the industrialists usually claim—but it does so in a very unsustainable manner. The fallacies promoted by the large-scale ‘Sustainability Report’ are also proven by a review of the ‘Care for the Society’ chapter of the report: The report flaunts RMG industries’ contribution in generating over 10 million direct or indirect jobs, including workers in the backward and forward linkage industries, and claims that nearly 40 million people are dependent on this sector, but does not talk about workers’ meager salaries (see BGMEA, 2020). Besides, the report claims: ‘Workers can also lodge complaints to BGMEA if they face any discrimination regarding maternity leave’ but does not provide any further information on whether they received any complaints and how they remedy the issues (if any) in support of the workers. Workers’ suffering is evident as the report mentions: The main reasons for owner and worker disputes are unpaid wages and overtime claims. The other major causes of industrial disputes center around the increase of salary and benefits, employment contracts, and lay-­ offs. Though industrialists talk about sustainability and workers’ benefit, the truth is that workers are always at the losing end. Because of the unsafe

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working conditions, many have died in the past. In addition, those who are not directly hurt in accidents continue to suffer due to low income, resulting in a lack of food, shelter, clothing, health care, and education. If we want sustainability, we must put workers’ issues at the heart of the discussion. Without ensuring workers’ justifiable share from the overall income of the industry, any talk of sustainability is just a façade and fallacy.

Work Comes at a Price A blazing fire killed at least 52 people on July 8, 2021. The massive fire in a food processing factory building of Hashem Food Ltd, a concern of Sajeeb Group, was referred to as an accident. Moreover, the factory owner denied any responsibility for the workers’ deaths, stating that it was an ‘accident’ and that an accident may happen anytime in a factory. However, it is not a one-of-a-kind incident; in Bangladesh, the track record of industrial working conditions is abysmal. Similar ‘accidents’ have occurred before, and many workers were killed in different factories. Recent infamous ‘accidents’ were the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013 and the fire in Tazreen Fashions in 2012. Immediately after the tragic course of events, the district administration of Narayanganj declared compensation packages: BDT 30,000 for each dead and BDT 10,000 for each injured worker. In addition, the district administration would also provide BDT 25,000 to incur the cost of the burial of the deceased workers (Rita, 2021). The declared compensation package also includes financial assistance and medical aid from the Workers Welfare Foundation fund of the Ministry of Labor (The Daily Star, 2021b). Tragic events in the country’s industrial sector are usually followed up with the declaration of compensation to the victims and survivors (see Sumon et  al., 2017). Compensations for the affected workers consider that workers suffering an industrial tragedy need financial support to reorganize their lives and overcome the immediate shock. The need for financial support attests to the fact that workers have meager income and savings, and when suddenly unemployed, injured, or dead, they require help even to meet their basic needs. Moreover, the workers who sustain long-term injuries or become disabled require lengthy treatments costing a lot of money. And families of the dead workers need financial support, having lost future possibilities of earnings. Recognizing these needs, besides government efforts, industries, private enterprises, and NGOs assume various initiatives to organize cash transfers and other supports

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such as treatment and rehabilitation. Of course, there is nothing wrong with providing financial help to those affected. But shockingly, we somehow stop only after giving some support, and we do not take enough initiatives against those responsible for the deaths of the workers. So, now it is high time to ask: Does the conventional approach of compensating the workers’ loss suffer from a narrow focus that hinders the possibility of a safer workplace in industries? Are those responsible for overseeing the safety and security of workplaces getting impunity? The overall responses to the calamities only seek to compensate the victims. This draws attention away from the negligence of the factory owners and relevant institutions in ensuring the safety protocols that would otherwise reduce the human cost during any industrial accidents. For example, videos of the recent factory fire show many workers jumping out of the windows in a desperate attempt to save their lives. Accidents indeed happen, but could the deaths and injuries of the workers be prevented? The testimonies of those who survived revealed, many workers could have been saved if the factory’s fire management features had been better. Survivors and relatives alleged the only entry and exit point factory—the front gate—was locked. Besides, the factory building did not have proper fire safety measures that could have saved the workers. The surface area of the building was 35,000 square feet; ideally, it should have four or five emergency exits, but there were only two which were unusable due to the raging fire. The situation that the survivors described extraordinarily resembled the Tazreen Fashions factory fire of 2012. The nine-­ story building lacked proper fire exits. The ground floor of the building was used as storage. Hence the main exit point was blocked. There was also insufficient firefighting equipment. Despite knowing all this, somehow, we keep failing to make sure that workplaces are safe. The emphasis on compensation reduces the possibilities of a structural shift and complete justice. An exclusive focus on victims’ compensation means that factory owners or those responsible for overseeing the working conditions could remain indifferent toward the unsafe structural conditions of factory buildings. More importantly, it contributes to commodifying workers’ lives and labor. The monetary compensations for irreplaceable losses swing our attention away from the possibility of a fairer future. Compensation can hardly ensure better fire safety in the factories. But only structural improvement will not save the workers. Unfortunately, the practice of keeping the factory gate under lock and key plays a critical role during these terrible events. Therefore, we will need a complete overhaul

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of how industrial factories are managed and regulated in and beyond export-oriented sectors. A compensation-based restoration model diverts attention from all the vital factors and exempts the owners from ensuring the safety of workplaces. Otherwise, their negligence could be treated as a criminal act. What remains absent is a more sustained call for accountability, holding all the responsible parties liable. Many factories have similar working conditions, but we choose not to intervene before some working-­ class people with financial hardships get killed or injured. Unfortunately, our inaction may lead to similar tragedies in the future. This is appalling how we have gotten used to seeing the numbers of deaths and sufferings. We move on without caring for the human lives underneath the numbers of death or injuries—we have tagged a price for the working lives. So many numbers and statistics come before us every day, and we take note of the numbers of ‘progress’—increased Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Per Capita Income (PCI), foreign reserve, export income, and so on. Yet, on the flip side, suffering working lives are being reduced to just numbers. When will we care?

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The Daily Star. (2021b, July 10). Narayanganj fire: Ministry of labor provides Tk 50,000 financial assistance to each injured worker. https://www.thedailystar. net/news/bangladesh/accidents-­f ires/news/narayanganj-­f ire-­m inistry-­ labour-­provides-­tk-­50000-­financial-­assistance-­each-­injured-­worker-­2126611 The Financial Express. (2020, September 30). 70,000 RMG workers lose jobs since COVID-19 hit Bangladesh. https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/public/ trade/70000-­r mg-­w orkers-­l ose-­j obs-­s ince-­c ovid-­1 9-­h it-­b angladesh-­1 60 1484479 Uddin, J. (2020, May 14). Debenhams’ Bangladeshi staff, suppliers in trouble. The Business Standard. https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/debenhams­bangladeshi-­staff-­suppliers-­trouble-­81160 Uddin, M. (2021, December 13). It’s time to talk about the cost of compliance in RMG sec-tor. The Daily Star. https://www.thedailystar.net/views/opinion/ news/its-­time-­talk-­about-­the-­cost-­compliance-­rmg-­sector-­2916021

Index1

A Absenteeism control of, 263 Accord, 253 Accumulation by dispossession, 76 Accumulation of capital, 11, 18, 19, 51, 62, 73, 75–78 Adorsho nari, 200, 205 Agents of assurance, 256, 257 Agents of disruption, 257, 258 Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), 69 Alliance, 253 Alternative collective sociality, 225, 230, 240–245 Appropriation of surplus, 54 Aspiration expressions of, 224 Auditing, 9, 10, 34–38, 40, 41, 128, 143, 255–264, 288, 294 of factories, 251, 255–258

spectacle of, 251, 256 as verification ritual, 257–261 Autonomy, 171–176, 189–190, 201–205, 210, 213, 216–217 B Bad behavior of supervisor, 128–134 Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC), 63, 64 Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), 94–102, 262, 301–302, 305–309 Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, 96–97 Becoming, 24, 114, 213 of garment kormi, 4, 5, 39, 113–121, 153, 218, 227, 278 joggo, 212–216, 294 joint, 5, 11, 41, 292, 295

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. T. Hasan, Everyday Life of Ready-made Garment Kormi in Bangladesh, Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99902-5

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316 

INDEX

Better life, 115, 225, 229, 231, 236, 245 Bio-capitalism, 18 Hardt and Negri, 18n3 Bio–power, 146 Foucault, Michel, 145 Boundaries of women’s work, 196 BRAC, 90 British colonialism, 51, 58–62, 72–75 Buying practices, 264–266 C Capacity Appadurai, Arjun, 239 to aspire, 224, 239, 240, 245 Capital accumulation, see Accumulation of capital Capitalism, 14–23, 51, 76–78 Graeber, David, 19 Harvey, David, 14–16 Kalb, Don, 17–20 Kasmir, Sharryn, 19 Mezzadri, Alessandra, 21–23 Tsing, Anna, 16–17 universal approach to, 14–18 vernacular approach to, 12, 18–23 Wolf, Eric, 18 Capitalistic imperialism, 254 Harvey, David, 254 Capitalocentrism, 21 Gibson–Graham, 20 Charter Act of 1813, 62 of 1833, 61, 62 Citizenship, 88 Class, 160–163 experience, 24, 113 Thompson, Edward P., 24, 113 working, 113 Collective bargaining (CB), 68, 279 Collective ethos, 150, 285

Collective resistance, 150, 165–168, 184 Compensation packages, 306, 309–310 Compliance, 34, 37, 129, 133, 141–144, 251–262, 304 confusion regarding, 258–262 of factories, 131, 141, 142, 252, 261 Consumerism, 103, 211–212, 241, 242 Contradiction of capital, 15–18, 20 Cooperation among workers, 140 See also Solidarity Coronavirus capitalism, 302 Klein, Naomi, 302 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), 9, 10, 252, 262, 288, 294 paradoxes of, 262–264 COVID–19, 6, 266 and garment kormi, 301–304 D Date events, 40, 269 De-class Narotzky, Susana, 260 of working class, 260 Dependency in autonomy, 171–176 Desire, 194, 199, 214, 218, 223, 282 negotiated, 223, 226–229 Development plan in Bangladesh, 88–91 Difference, 9, 10, 295 Discipline, 114, 139, 146, 153–154, 168, 183, 184 Dispossessed labor, 65, 75 population, 57, 64, 74 workers, 40 Dispossession, 64–67, 73–76, 114 new, 252, 255, 258, 269 partial, 65, 74–78

 INDEX 

Division of labor, see Gender roles; Gender segregation Diwani, 58 Drain of wealth, 56–58, 62, 72 E Economies of scale, 306 Egalitarian boss, 157 Egalitarian tendencies, 242–245 Elements of assurance, 257, 259, 263 Empowerment as freedom, 285 of women, 93, 99, 277–281, 284–285 Engineering of citizens, 29, 39, 87, 99 Entrepreneur home based, 92 Equality, 155, 159, 161–164, 184, 241 as family in factory, 156 Equalizing force, see Egalitarian tendencies Events of abandonment, 301 Everyday communism, 20 Graeber, David, 20 Everyday life, 12–14 Das, Veena, 224 remaking, 223 Exclusions new, 259 See also Dispossession Export processing zones (EPZ), 67, 68 F Factory life, 177 Family factory as, 154–157, 159–163 name, 192 network of, 204

317

Financialization of social life, 90–94 of social values, 102 See also Value Five Year Plan, 89, 96, 99, 281 Flexibility in factory, 154 in relatedness, 176–179 in the structure, 174–179, 184 Freedom, 189, 190 expressions, 283 fragmented, 229 new, 223 practical, 230, 280 range of, 288 and unfreedom, 190 Freedom of association (FOA), 68 Future alternative, 224 Appadurai, Arjun, 225, 240 distant, 145, 223–225, 229, 231, 236–238 indeterminate, 224, 231, 233 life, 231 near, 145, 225, 227, 233, 238, 245 remaking, 234–236 temporal, 225, 238, 240 G Garment industry contribution of, 4–6 Garment kormi, 3–5 Gender equality, 281 Gender roles, 25, 26, 191, 193–197, 240, 242, 280, 291, 293 Gender segregation, 193, 197 of work, 10, 25, 40, 115, 122 Generalized System of Preference (GSP), 68, 71–72, 76 Global Production Networks (GPNs), 254, 255

318 

INDEX

Global supply chain, 254, 264, 286, 303–305 Golden Bengal, 86, 87 Good daughter, 122, 134, 175–176, 183 Good operator, 128, 129, 132, 134 Good wife, 197, 282 Good worker, 134, 140, 147 Graduated sovereignty, 29, 278 Ong, Aihwa, 29, 278 Grameen Bank, 90, 91, 93, 100, 287, 288, 292 Green revolution, 63, 92 Grihalakshmi, see Adorsho nari H Harsh behavior of supervisors, 130, 134, 138, 157, 168 See also Bad behavior Health service for workers, 262 Hierarchical force, 241–243 Hierarchy, 155, 159 of relationship, 155–165, 176–177, 182 Honor, 100, 289 See also Ijjot Hope, 165–168, 170, 189–190 expressions of, 224 Horizontal relationships, see Equality Human-machine relationships, 25 I Ideal categories of woman, 199–200 Idealized model of woman, 204 Ideal woman, see Adorsho nari Ideological categories, 197 Ideologically contradictory events, 190

Ideological state apparatus, 98, 190, 282, 290 Althusser, Louis, 135, 190 factory as, 135 Ideological whole, 218, 240, 295 Ideological world, 39, 145–147, 149–155, 176–177, 189, 194, 200, 206 Deleuze and Guattari, 150 Ideology Althusser, Louis, 164 of kinship, 149–150, 155, 164, 176–179, 204 of relatedness, 149 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 177–179 Ijjot, 201 Inclusive outside, 78 Indigo, 61, 62 planters, 61 Inequality, 4, 9, 10, 12–14, 223, 225, 244, 247 J Jaigirdar, 54 Joggo nari, 5, 191, 194, 200, 205, 212–216, 244, 284, 292 K Khud–kasht, 56 Kinship, 149 fictitious, 39–40, 155, 160–165, 171, 173–179, 190, 213, 291, 293 geography, 192 hierarchical relationality, 39, 161–165 hierarchy, 155, 181 relations, 152–155 terms, 152, 156, 159, 177–179

 INDEX 

L Labor free labor, 21, 22, 27, 39, 51, 73–75, 113 power, 19, 23 process, 10, 23–25, 27–29, 114n1, 133, 145–147 Labor conditions, 7–9, 35 exploitative, 251, 258, 266, 294, 304–305, 308 Labor theory of value, 15, 17 Landlessness, 59, 64 Land polarization, 60, 63, 65, 66 Latent reserve, 77 Law of Distrain, see Regulation 07 (Haftam) Law of eviction, see Regulation 05 (Panjam) Lead time of production, 265n7, 305 Legal subjects workers as, 267–268 M Market participation, 91 Mechanism of supervision, 134 Metropolitan Marxism, 74 Microcredit, 90–93 operational model of, 93 Microregion, 191 Minimum wage, 6–8 Model citizen, 85, 88 Money, 191, 195–197, 209–215, 258, 279–282 as convertor of values, 210 as disciplinary tool, 210 Money economy, 55 Moral debt, 154 Moral subjects workers as, 134 Mughals, 53 Banquet of reconciliation, 54

319

Multi–Fiber Agreement, 68–69, 76 Multinational companies role of, 91, 253–254 Mutualities of being, 176–179 Sahlins, Marshall, 176–177 N Neoliberal citizens, 39 Neoliberalism, 28–30 in Bangladesh, 93, 95, 100, 277, 289–293 definition of, 277, 278 as exception, 289 exception to, 289 Harvey, David, 28–30, 277 Ong, Aihwa, 28–30, 277, 278, 289 person-hood in, 143 subjectivity in, 282 New categories of social persons, 134, 135, 143 New Woman, 97 O Ordered disorder, 224 Taussig, Michael, 224 Oriental despotism, 72 Overtime, 40, 120, 124, 131, 135–137, 141–144, 146, 157–158, 168–169, 173, 199, 207, 254, 257–259, 267, 268, 308 P Patriarchal bias, 284 Patriarchal gaze, 202 Patriarchal society, 6, 193, 227, 229, 285

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INDEX

Patron–client, 39, 99–101, 155, 161–163, 171, 181, 184, 192, 278, 295 Payday, 233 Permanent Settlement Act of 1793, 61 Piece rate, 125, 135, 137, 138, 232, 260, 265 Plan Bangladesh, 93, 94 Possibilities created, 189–191, 201, 241, 244 egalitarian, 40 found, 225 of freedom, 244 new, 201 open-ended, 189 Power, 145–147 Previsioning instruments, 253, 269 Primary earner, 280 Privatization of agricultural inputs, 92 Production bonus, 125 Production cost at the manufacturing end, 265, 303–305 Production quota, 128, 129, 141 Production target, 127, 130–134, 142, 143, 153–161 See also Production quota Professional identity, 3, 5 Kibria, Nazli, 4 Proletarianization, 113 Marx, Karl, 113 progressive, 113, 182 Protest, 7, 10, 129, 131, 133, 135–138, 146, 147, 150, 158, 161, 165–171, 303 Public campaigns, 30, 87, 92–99, 101, 102, 280–284, 288 Public discourse, 95, 97, 100, 102 Punctuated time, 264–266, 269 See also Time

Purdah, 38, 89, 124, 184, 191–194, 204, 206, 218, 279, 282–284, 289 R Rana Plaza, 8, 253, 303, 309 Recruitment of workers, 118, 121, 126, 154–155, 158, 171 Regulation 5 (Panjam), 61 Regulation 6, 61 Regulation 7 (Haftam), 61 Relationality in the factory, 150–155, 170 ideologies of, 149–150, 182 from kinship based on origin, 154, 155 paradoxes of, 180–182 Relational structure, 152, 183 Relations of authority, 156 Religiosity ideologies of, 149–150, 168–171, 184 Rent offensive, 61 Reproduction Althusser, Louis, 181, 286 of labor, 180, 181 Ong, Aihwa, 181 of production conditions, 286 Resistance, 128, 138–141, 144, 150, 165, 167, 168, 184 covert resistance, 128, 140 everyday resistance, 140 Foucault, Michel, 141 Scott, James, 141 symbolic resistance, 141 See also Protest Role models working women as, 205 Ryot, 60–62

 INDEX 

S Salaried employment, 279–281 Salvage accumulation Tsing, Anna, 16 Samaj, 192 Save the Children, 94 Sexual harassment, 4–5, 7, 140 Siddiqi, Dina M., 5 Shadow state, 278, 287 Karim, Lamia, 278, 287 Social, 5, 295, 296 ever changing frame, 150 flexibility of, 290 no outside of, 242 order, 5, 184, 189–194, 216, 217, 224, 228, 231, 278, 284, 291–292, 295 production of, 149 totality of, 294 whole, 218 Social engineering, 29, 38, 39, 278 Socialization process among fellow workers, 152 Social mobility, 278 Social norm, 279 Social reproduction, 15–19, 27 Social safety net programs (SSNP), 63, 66, 76 Society of control, 146 Hardt, Michael, 146 Hardt and Negri, 146 Solidarity of workers, 129, 139, 154, 158, 163–167, 169, 183, 184 Sonar Bangla, see Golden Bengal Spatio–temporal fix, 15, 73 Spy workers, 161–163 Sromik, 3 States’ experimentation, 12 Stigma, 5, 202–206 Siddiqi, Dina M., 5

321

Structural Adjustment Facility (SAF), 63 Structural adjustment program, 87 Structural transformation, 283 Structure–agency opposition, 194 Subcontract of orders, 265 Subjectivity, 114, 115, 134, 135, 139, 141, 145, 146 Deleuze, Gilles, 146 Hardt, Michael, 146 politics of, 160 of workers, 113, 114, 122, 134, 139–140, 145, 146, 190 Surplus accumulation, 15–19 Surplus extraction, 23, 38, 268 Sustainability, 306–309 T Tazreen Fashions, 9, 253, 309–310 Temporal totality, 190 Temporary crisis period, 117 Theatres of virtue, 264 Rajak, Dinah, 264 Time, 115, 118, 120, 154 cumulative, 142–145, 232 model of, 141 recurrent, 142, 144, 232 as resistance, 144 Thompson, Edward P., 144 Totalization, 184, 191, 200 ideological, 244–246 Total system, 211 U Uncertainty, 165–168, 223–225, 230–233, 237, 238, 247, 266, 301–302, 305 Union labor, 3, 8, 263

322 

INDEX

Unrest, 137 See also Protest Uruguay Round, 69 V Value configurations, 94, 229, 239, 278, 293, 296 confrontations of, 217 financialized, 295 reconfigurations of, 224 regimes, 225, 225n1, 247, 282 set of, 204 of work, 212–216 Value system, 190 Vertical relationships, see Hierarchy Village council, see Samaj W Wage dependency, 64 Wage labor, 11, 14, 18, 23, 39, 57, 64 increase of, 64 role of, 189 Welfare committee, 166, 167, 260, 262

Work, 23–28 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 23–28 ethic, 240, 242, 277, 283, 290, 294 as extension of kinship duties, 207 as freedom, 212–216 Marx, Karl, 23–24 as responsibility, 206–209, 213 secular history of, 25 as value, 23 value(s) produced by, 23 Workers’ federation, 3, 138 Workers’ responsibilities, 131–133, 169 for family and factory, 206–209, 226–229 Working citizen, 11 Working woman discourse of, 94–103 Work process, 114, 131, 134, 144, 145, 149, 155, 156, 160, 164 Burawoy, Michael, 160 See also Labor, labor process Worthy woman, see Joggo nari Z Zamindar, 54, 54n3