‘Lifescaping’ toxicants: Locating and living with e-waste in Tanzania

Based on fieldwork in an informal scrap recycling workshop, this article explores how unregulated electronic waste (e-waste) handling activities in Dar es Salaam expose workers to toxic substances as part of their livelihoods. These informal economic activities are situated in the urban landscape within the surrounding global flows of e-waste and recycling and demonstrate how workers reflect on and seek to mitigate the toxic exposures they encounter as part of daily life. The concept ‘lifescaping’ is used to show how, while informal workers may be aware of toxic exposures and make the best of tricky situations in various ways, they have limited access to information about the dangers and must develop their own strategies by performing various micro-actions through which they hope to protect themselves.     

‘Classes of Labour’ at the Margins of Global Commodity Chains in India and China

This article deploys the concept of ‘classes of labour’ to map and compare non‐factory labour relations in the garment chain across Delhi and Shanghai metropolitan areas. It contributes to commodity studies by unpacking the great complexity of mechanisms of ‘adverse incorporation’ of informal work in global commodity chains and production circuits. Field findings reveal the great social differentiation at work in informalized settings in the two countries, and suggest that while the margins of garment work are characterized by high levels of vulnerability, they may also open up new possibilities for workers to resist or re‐appropriate some degree of control over their labour and reproductive time. While these possibilities depend on regional trajectories, informal labour arrangements do not only result from capital's quest for flexibility. Workers actively participate in shaping their own labour geography, even when exposed to high employment insecurity. The conclusions more broadly discuss the merits of comparative analysis to study labour in global production circuits.     

Labour Control in the Tobacco Agro‐spaces: Migrant Agricultural Workers in South‐Western Ontario

International labour migration programs provide a vulnerable workforce that services various sectors in developed economies. The agriculture sector is one arena in which the employment of migrant workers has become more pervasive. Annually, approximately 30,000 workers are employed in the Canadian agriculture sector through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In this paper, I focus on the SAWP workers in tobacco farming, and investigate the ways that labour control is achieved on two small‐scale farms. I draw upon original empirical evidence from interviews with three Mexican and nine Jamaican workers, two union representatives, and two farm owners in South‐Western Ontario, Canada. My findings show that various factors at multiple scales shape the labour control regime and significantly advantage farm owners over workers. Based on my findings, I argue that the labour control regime is conditioned exogenously by multi‐scalar factors and generated endogenously at the point of production.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 4. August 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 4 Front cover TOXIC FLOWS: E-WASTE RECYCLING A worker starts a fire to burn off the insulation from electrical cables to extract copper at an informal e-waste recycling site in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Open fire is one of the methods used here to mine metals from defunct electronics devices and their components. Electronic waste is one of the fastest-growing types of waste worldwide. However, many countries lack the formalized infrastructures necessary to collect and handle e-waste safely. The informal sector has stepped up to fill the gap. E-waste attracts urban dwellers seeking to extract value from these discarded materials while releasing toxic compounds detrimental to health and the environment. In this special issue on toxic flows, Samwel Moses Ntapanta follows Dar es Salaam's informal e-waste recyclers to find out how they understand the toxic nature of their work and what measures they take to minimize exposure. The number of informal e-waste recycling workshops in Dar es Salaam has skyrocketed in recent years. High demand for metals, like copper, offers a stable livelihood for e-waste recycling workers. Scavenging spare parts from the electronic afterlives is primarily driven by a vibrant Tanzanian local market, giving an impetus to repurpose certain materials. During these activities (mining, repurposing, restoring and reusing), workers are exposed to many toxic chemical compounds. With little or no knowledge about these, workers in informal e-waste recycling face unknown risks of exposure as they make a dangerous living in urban environments. Back cover TOXIC FLOWS: GLYPHOSATE Launch of the #StopGlyphosate campaign supported by the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) and 37 European organizations in front of the European Parliament, 8 February 2017. Across the globe, grass-roots movements against glyphosate, the world's most used herbicide, have encouraged regulators to re-examine its safety assessments. In Europe, a drawn-out process is widely expected to conclude that glyphosate is harmful to health and should be banned across all 28 member states. If so, this would likely lead to similar decisions in other markets, representing a blow to the agrochemical industry. More than any other pesticide, efforts to ban glyphosate have become tied up with questions of national sovereignty. From Vietnam and Thailand to Colombia and Mexico, the US government has threatened ‘trade disruption’ should a ban go ahead. The message is clear: chemical regulation is an international, not a domestic, matter. Nevertheless, glyphosate has become a standard for emerging populism. In post-war Sri Lanka, banning glyphosate became a mission of Buddhist nationalist movements seeking to purify the national body. In the UK, Brexit supporters argued an independent UK would have the freedom to stop glyphosate (another ‘Vote Leave’ promise quickly broken). As politics the world over has re-engaged with questions of national identity and autonomy, halting the free flow of glyphosate has become a goal for those on the left and right of the political spectrum.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Structure and Behaviour of Food Trading Networks; The Case of Collecting Wholesalers in Dar‐es‐Salaam and Arusha, Tanzania . Bakar J. Nnunduma. Nature‐based Tourism in Peripheral Areas: Development or Disaster? C. Michael Hall and Stephen Boyd (eds).     

The Emergence of a Working Poor: Labour Markets,Neoliberalisation and Diverse Economies in Post‐Socialist Cities

Abstract: This paper examines the transformations of urban labour markets in two central European cities: Bratislava, Slovakia and Kraków, Poland. It highlights the emergence of in‐work poverty and labour market segmentation, which together are leading to a reconfiguration of the livelihoods and economic practices of urban households. The focus of the paper is on the growing phenomenon of insecure, poor‐quality, contingent labour. It examines the ways in which those who find themselves in, or on the margins of, contingent and insecure labour markets sustain their livelihoods. We ask how such workers and their households negotiate the segmentation of the labour market, the erosion of employment security and the emergence of in‐work poverty and explore the diverse economic practices of those who cannot rely solely on formal employment to ensure social reproduction. Further, we assess the articulations between labour market participation and exclusion, and other spheres of economic life, including informal and illegal labour, household social networks, state benefits and the use of material assets. We argue that post‐socialist cities are seeing a reconfiguration of class processes, as the materialities and subjectivities of class are remade and as the meaning of work and the livelihoods different forms of labour can sustain are changing.     

Incinerating hazardous waste for the public good

Incineration outside of the health sector has started to become a growing business in Tanzania recently. The following article reflects on how internationally and locally formulated concerns about pollution from incineration unfold in the context of Dar es Salaam. More precisely, it looks at civil servants authorized to monitor incineration activities. How do they translate their mandate into practice? What are the public goods at stake in the monitoring of incineration? The article concludes with reflections on incineration as a highly ambivalent waste management technology for those responsible for monitoring it.     

The Economic Logic of Persistent Informality: Artisanal and Small‐Scale Mining in the Southern Philippines

This article critically evaluates existing causal explanations for the persistence of informality in artisanal and small‐scale mining (ASM). These explanations share a legalistic focus on entry barriers and political impediments that prevent or discourage the formalization of poverty‐driven ASM operators: however, they fail to fully explain cases such as that of the Philippines, where ASM is characterized by differentiation between a poverty‐driven workforce and a dominant stratum of ASM entrepreneurs. Even where limited formalization frameworks provide ASM with a degree of legal recognition, this recognition is usually restricted to these more powerful ASM interests, while excluding the workforce at large. This article therefore proposes an integrative approach to analysing informality in ASM, which complements the existing legalistic focus on entry barriers with a structuralist concern over the exploitation of informal labour. Seen from this perspective, the massive expansion of ASM in the Philippines can be seen as the product of a transition away from capital‐intensive large‐scale mining to a flexible regime of accumulation built around the exploitation of informal ASM labour. This observation highlights the need to pay more critical attention to the economic logic and the vested interests underlying the (selective) persistence of informality in the workforce.     

Mining Workers or ‘Opportunist’ Tribesmen?: a Tribal Workforce in a Papua New Guinea Mine1

This paper looks at the formation and working of a ‘green mining workforce’ in a Papua New Guinea (PNG) mine. It describes and analyses a group of tribesmen whose entry into the modern wage‐earning workforce has resulted from the establishment of a large mining project in their area. The Porgeran tribesmen 2 2 This paper uses ‘tribesmen’ as a generic concept to also include Porgeran women mining workers, many of whom did domestic chores around campsites. However, they represented only a very tiny portion of the Porgeran segment of the entire mining workforce.
, of the Highlands of PNG have embraced the concept of monetary employment and quickly assimilated into the mining work environment. However, their admission into wage employment has been achieved through a series of personal and workplace challenges, as anticipated of any transitory workforce. The paper discusses those challenges and also takes into consideration the views and perceptions of non‐Porgeran mining workers towards them. Hence, one of the major objectives of this paper is to address the transformation of this tribal people into a modern wage‐earning workforce. It concludes by identifying possible avenues for anthropological studies of such groups of people to record their peculiar perceptions of, and attitudes to, an alien but promising new alternative to their subsistence life style.     

Employment Change in Occupations in Urban India: Implications for Wage Inequality

This article analyses employment and wage change patterns in India for a period spanning almost three decades, from 1983–84 to 2011–12. Using data from the National Sample Survey Organization, the study finds evidence of job polarization (employment growth in low‐ and high‐skill jobs and decline in middle‐skill jobs) in urban India during the 1990s and 2000s, and employment upgrading in the 1980s. Consistent with the literature on job polarization, the article finds a reduction in employment share in routine task intensive occupations. The author argues that this reduction is a result of both mechanization and technological upgrading within Indian industry. On the other hand, an increase in employment share in both low‐skill and high‐skill occupations is argued to be a result of growing self‐employment and informal sector employment in urban India. The wage change patterns are largely consistent with the employment change patterns. The analysis suggests that structural change in occupation is an important factor for understanding earnings inequality in India.     

Mental maps,segregation, and everyday life in Dar es Salaam,Tanzania

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, has a long history as a segregated city. Starting in 1891 the German and then later the British colonial government enacted a series of building ordinances that outlined the styles of construction allowed within different areas of the city. Although these policies applied only to the structures themselves, ultimately they served to divide the city into European/Expatriate, Asian, and African areas. In spite of official attempts to integrate the city, postcolonial Dar es Salaam remains a racially segregated place. This segregation extends beyond residence location and affects all aspects of everyday life such as shopping and recreation. This article uses mental maps drawn by some of Dar es Salaam's residents to illustrate the lingering effects of colonial segregation on the knowledge, perception, and experiences residents have in and of today's city. Expatriate, Asian, and African maps include vastly different locations within the city. Those places considered important enough to map demonstrate that colonialism has continued impacts on the spaces and realities of everyday life in contemporary Dar es Salaam.     

Economic Policy and Women’s Informal Work in South Africa

This article examines the gender dimensions of the growth in informal and flexible work in South Africa and the government’s policy response to this. It outlines the growth in informal and flexible work practices and, as illustrative examples, analyses how trade and industrial policies and labour market policies are impacting on the growth of informal and flexible work. It is argued that the South African government’s trade and industrial policies are shifting the economy onto a path of capital intensification. Allied to this, firms are undergoing a process of extensive restructuring. These developments are further promoting the growth of flexibilization and informalization, and thereby disadvantaging women. The article demonstrates that whilst the government offers a vast package of support measures to big business, its policy is largely irrelevant to the survivalist segment of small business, where most women in the informal economy are to be found. The picture for labour policy is more diverse. Aspects of the labour legislation are promoting the growth of a dual labour market, whilst there seems to be some tightening up of practices aimed at bypassing aspects of the protection provided to workers.     

Minimum Wage Policy,Rural Development and Poverty Alleviation in Malawi

This article examines the pattern of minimum wage changes in Malawi and some of their effects, and considers more generally the appropriateness of a minimum wage policy in developing country situations similar to that of Malawi. After a progressive decline in the real value of the minimum wage during the 1970s there is evidence that the government is attempting, through periodic and rather erratic corrective action, to maintain something like a constant real wage. Data from a Ministry of Labour survey demonstrate that such changes in the minimum wage do have a direct effect on wages paid, but that this is concentrated in specific sectors: outside these, minimum wage policy is ineffectual, and the effective coverage achieved in terms of the national work-force is very narrow. Since the most significant influence on the wages of hired workers is the elastic supply of unskilled labour available at very low wages from the smallholder sector, efforts need to be concentrated on raising the supply price of labour through positive policies pursued in the rural sector. Some special features of the rural labour market are therefore examined. Various measures could be taken here: one which seems likely to be effective in producing immediate results is the progressive transfer of burley tobacco quotas to smallholders.     

Heterogeneity and Labour Agency in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This article considers the broad question of how to improve the conditions of workers in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM), which relies on predominantly informal activities. While acknowledging that formalization can provide ASGM miners with tenure security and protection of labour rights, it is important to highlight that not all workers are likely to benefit from formalization in the same way, and that decent work ambitions should extend to all workers, regardless of whether or not they are formalized. It is therefore crucial to understand the heterogeneity in the ASGM workforce. This article describes working conditions for different categories of workers based on a survey carried out in the Watsa and Shabunda territories in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It analyses labour agency and shows that workers are diversely integrated in the labour process and may use power resources in various ways. The discussion reflects on ways to consider the heterogeneity in ASGM labour and to push the ASGM agenda beyond formalization.     

Equality‐led Development and the Demand‐ and Supply‐side Effects

This contribution to the Forum Debate on global development focuses on the dimension of functional income distribution between labour and capital and its demand‐side and supply‐side effects. The article summarizes recent literature that has sought to explain the reasons behind the global fall in the labour share. It then discusses the demand‐side effects of the declining wage share on growth, based on the post‐Keynesian/post‐Kaleckian literature. The author presents an alternative policy scenario for the G20 based on a mix of increasing wage share and public investment, before discussing the supply‐side effects of rising inequality. The article concludes with some policy implications for equality‐led development.     

The Restructuring of Labour in the Automobile Industry in South Korea

Based on a case study of the South Korean automobile industry, this article explores the qualitative shift in employment practices implied by the expansion of contract labour from peripheral services to the main production activities of firms. This new phenomenon involves the greater integration of labour contracting into the production process, together with changes in employment practices and the rights of workers, which poses a challenge to our conventional understanding of labour contracting. The findings of the present study address the importance of investigating the issue of employment relationships and analysing the roles played by workplace actors in order to better understand the process of change in labour contracting and the consequences of increased numbers of non‐standard workers in the workplace. By revealing both the cooperation and the conflicting interests between workplace actors, the study highlights the sources of tension and contradiction associated with changes in labour contracting arrangements and the subsequent restructuring of the workplace.     

The assassination of Eduardo Mondlane: FRELIMO,Tanzania, and the politics of exile in Dar es Salaam

This article uses the city of Dar es Salaam as an urban lens for understanding the politics of FRELIMO in exile and the assassination of its first president, Eduardo Mondlane, in 1969. By adopting a multiarchival technique, these narratives can be broken down to a micropolitical level, shedding light on the distribution of agency in the confluence of superpower rivalry and decolonisation in the Third World. The splits within the liberation movement can be explained via the intersection of internal disagreements, Cold War dynamics, and relations with the Tanzanian state, within the context of Dar es Salaam’s cosmopolitan public sphere.     

An ethnographic exploration of food and the city

This article describes an ethnographic exploration of the food system that feeds the majority of the over 4.6 million residents of the fast‐growing city of Dar es Salaam, along with the key findings of this research. Such a study is important in the context of an increasingly unsustainable corporate food system that many in more affluent countries are beginning to assume is essential for feeding the world's growing and urbanizing population. Following key foods from urban eaters back to primary producers reveals a symbiotic food system made up of a multiplicity of small‐scale actors who together deliver on a city‐wide scale.     

“We Make it Work”: The Cultural Transformation of Hotel Workers in the City

This article explores the “cultural project” of a hotel workers’ union in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is an examination of the efforts of HERE (now UNITE‐HERE) Local 75 to transform the identity and image of hotel workers through the promotion of cultural activities involving rank‐and‐file members. Part of a larger union renewal project, the cultural project attempts to build solidarity by connecting with members’ lives beyond the workplace. Furthermore, the union's cultural strategies are linked to the development of the city's tourism sector, situating the union's efforts in broader processes of place promotion. The investigation seeks to identify how worker engagement with the cultural implicates organized labour in contradictory processes producing both emancipatory and oppressive economic landscapes.     

The new face of development: The ‘bottom of the pyramid’ entrepreneurs (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In recent years, ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP) initiatives – from Grameen Phone Ladies and Solar Sister, to Women First and Living Goods – have captured increasing attention, not only in corporate boardrooms where the desire for untapped revenue streams looms large, but also in the arenas of development policy and practice, where entrepreneurship is celebrated as a way to repurpose ‘informal’ and/or ‘subsistence’ workers through new forms of private sector engagement. Based on fieldwork with BoP schemes in Bangladesh and South Africa, and cases drawn from other regions, this paper explores how development is outsourced through the figure of the BoP entrepreneur, the ‘poor’ woman who travels door‐to‐door delivering a range of branded manufactured goods across the ‘retail black spots’ of developing countries. These women are actively converted into entrepreneurial subjects through a set of ideological and material practices that aim to produce and hone the requisite traits of industry, market discipline and entrepreneurial distinction to succeed in global business; subject positions that can bring tangible rewards to those who successfully assume them. However, the process of outsourcing development to a reservoir of ‘informal labour’ unsettles BoP claims of ‘inclusive capitalism’, as an ethos of meritocracy and individual responsibility not only deflects the responsibility for development onto the poor themselves, but remakes their subjectivities in service to global brands.