Rethinking the Ethnographic Local: Identity, Culture, and Politics at Work in the Global Economy

This article reviews four recent books on workers in the global economy. Taking a range of approaches, these monographs draw on qualitative data to describe workplaces and workers in a variety of economic, cultural, and political contexts. Wilson’s analysis of “intimate economies” in Bangkok brings together economic processes with the multiple social identities of worker-consumers. Adler and Adler offer a deeply grounded portrait of diverse types of workers in Hawaiian resort hotels, who make meaningful selfhoods in an environment of transience and unstable temporalities. Chari brings the politics of production together with history, culture, and identity discourses to explain the particularities of garment manufacture in one South Indian town. Esbenshade evaluates the myriad efforts to monitor garment production worldwide, highlighting the tensions between private models, which are largely ineffective except in the area of public relations for manufacturers, and an independent model that aims to promote worker empowerment.