| Based on 18 months of fieldwork (Sept. 1998–Feb. 2000), this ethnography explores the politics of production in a multinational textile factory in Ho Chi Minh City. The central concern of this ethnography is to understand why the workers in the factory did not show any conspicuous signs of resistance despite their apparent aggravation over their working and living conditions. I argue that the workers' seeming impotence in terms of resistance (or outright non-resistance) against the foreign management of the factory was a product of the social and political processes within the factory. A significant result of these processes was that a subgroup of the Vietnamese workers took a central role in negotiations with and mediating between the foreign management and the factory workers.; To support my argument, I first examine the history of how this specific factory regime was established, paying particular attention to the social, cultural and political tensions between the foreign capitalist managers and the former socialist workers, and reconstructing the history of tensions between the workers themselves. Then, I examine the workers' current social organizations, cultural activities, and household economies as they relate to the politics of the factory, and which contribute to the maintenance and reproduction of the factory regime. Finally, based on my findings, I explain how the politics within the multinational factory regime differentially affected various groups of workers, depending on their genders and other social factors. I discuss the implications of these differential effects documented by my study for the understanding of class consciousness, resistance, and hegemony.; By focusing on the workers' experiences of home and workplace in the broader context of the economic reform policies of Doi Moi which transformed the work environment, social relations, economic conditions and cultural life of Vietnam, my study offers an ethnographic window onto larger socio-economic processes. This ethnography, therefore, demonstrates how the politics of production in multinational factories in Vietnam are significantly dependent upon the everyday politics of culture and social relations among workers themselves, and not only on the relationship of the workers with trade unions, foreign capital, and the state. |
