Page date:1 July
2004
Elizabeth C. Dunn. 2004.
Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
The transition from socialism in Eastern
Europe is not an isolated event, but part of a larger shift in world capitalism:
the transition from Fordism to flexible (or neoliberal) capitalism. Using a
blend of ethnography and economic geography, Elizabeth C. Dunn shows how
management technologies like niche marketing, accounting, audit, and
standardization make up flexible capitalismâs unique form of labor discipline.
This new form of management constitutes some workers as self-auditing,
self-regulating actors who are disembedded from a social context while defining
others as too entwined in social relations and unable to self-manage.
Privatizing Poland examines the effects privatization has on workersâ
self-concepts; how changes in ãpersonhoodä relate to economic and political
transitions; and how globalization and foreign capital investment affect Eastern
Europeâs integration into the world economy. Dunn investigates these topics
through a study of workers and changing management techniques at the Alima-Gerber
factory in Rzesz—w, Poland, formerly a state-owned enterprise, which was
privatized by the Gerber Products Company of Fremont, Michigan.
Alima-Gerber instituted rigid quality control, job evaluation, and training
methods, and developed sophisticated distribution techniques. The core principle
underlying these goals and strategies, the author finds, is the belief that in
order to produce goods for a capitalist market, workers for a capitalist
enterprise must also be produced. Working side-by-side with Alima-Gerber
employees, Dunn saw firsthand how the new techniques attempted to change not
only the organization of production, but also the workersâ identities. Her
seamless, engaging narrative shows how the employees resisted, redefined, and
negotiated work processes for themselves.
Elizabeth C. Dunn is Assistant Professor of Geography and International
Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is coeditor of Civil
Society: Challenging Western Models.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
The Road to
Capitalism
Accountability, Corruption, and the Privatization of Alima
Niche Marketing and the Production of Flexible
Bodies
Quality Control, Discipline and the Remaking of
Persons
Ideas of Kin and Home on the Shop Floor
Power and Postsocialism
Bibliography
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