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 capitalism's 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 workers' self-concepts; how changes in "personhood" relate to economic and political transitions; and how globalization and foreign capital investment affect Eastern Europe's integration into the world economy. Dunn investigates these topics through a study of workers and changing management techniques at the Alima-Gerber factory in Rzeszow, 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 workers' identities. Her seamless, engaging narrative shows how the employees resisted, redefined, and negotiated work processes for themselves.

About the Author

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.

Reviews

Privatizing Poland is a study based on participant-observation of the takeover of Alima, a baby-food factory in the medium-sized Polish city of Rzeszow, by the Michigan-based Gerber Corporation.... Dunn succeeds admirably in presenting the clash between the frameworks of flexible accumulation and actually existing socialism.... It stands out as one of the best case studies of the process of privatization in Eastern Europe.

* American Ethnologist *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the 2005 AAASS/Orbis Book Prize for Poli.



Book Information
ISBN 9780801489297
Author Elizabeth Cullen Dunn
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g