UCSB Anthropology Brown Bag Lecture Series Presents:

Disorganized Capitalism: A Case Study of the Textile Industry of Surat, India

By Garrett Menning

ABSTRACT: In my presentation, I examine the social and physical organization of production in the flourishing synthetic textile industry of Surat, India in order to critique assumptions about patterns of socioeconomic development found in many strands of neo-classical economic and modernization theory. These models have suggested that the spread of centralized, vertically-integrated firms and impersonal relationships based upon market and legal-bureaucratic principles are the inevitable, rational concomitants of modernity. Yet the organization of textile manufacturing in Surat reveals the continuing importance of personalized ties based upon family firm organization and economic specialization according to caste and religious community membership. The case of Surat, I argue, supports newer paradigms of development that emphasize the importance of flexible or disorganized enterprises in today's fast-changing global capitalist system.



Wednesday May 14, 1997
HSSB 2001A, The Anthropology Conference Room

	Wish to contact this person? Send a note through e-mail.
	Back to list of Brown Bag talks
	Back to main UCSB Anthropology page