Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic and Political
Weekly.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 128.220.8.15 on Tue, 09 Feb 2016 03:19:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Dualistic
Labour
System?
1905
This content downloaded from 128.220.8.15 on Tue, 09 Feb 2016 03:19:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
December 4, 1976
AND
SCARCITY
1906
This content downloaded from 128.220.8.15 on Tue, 09 Feb 2016 03:19:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
This content downloaded from 128.220.8.15 on Tue, 09 Feb 2016 03:19:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
proved.45 But this does not imply that gon that, in Latin America, as in numbers of the urban poor
are caught
marginal categories in the production other conutries of the Third World, up in a competitive struggle for
their
process actually represent an industriai the expansion of non-agricultural pro- mere existence. The tensions
to which
reserve army. Such a hypothesis can duction is no longer dependent-on the this gives rise often
follow particube rejected without further ado if the quantity of available manpower but laristic lines. These are
then
highdistinction between formal and infor- rather on the quality of the technolo- lighted as isolated and
self-sustaining
mal sector is accepted as valid, in gical improvements which are intro- social and political
phenomena withwhich the
non-competitive character duced.
out any proper identification of the
of the two circuits of the economy is
From this point of view, the man- economic background and its dynamics.
taken for granted. According to this
power available in the market no During the last few years, conflicts
of
longer constitutes a
'reserve' for this nature have become
view, the more educated and specialismore
severe
those
hegemonic levels of industrial
ed workers in the formal sector who
production, but an excluded labour and more numerous in many cities of
are recruited on the basis of standard
force, which as changes in the tech- the Third World, and there is every
nical composition of capital pro- reason to assume
and impersonal procedures, represent
that these contracts
gress, loses in a permanent and not
an elite, with whose interests the trade
a transitory way, the possibility ofi will continue to intensify in the future.
unions are exclusively concerned. It
being absorbed, into those hegemo(To be continued)
nic levels of production, and espeis maintained that casual and mostly
cially,
in
urban-industrial
production
unorganised workers in the informal secwhich has hegemony within the
Notes
tor are quite unable to compete with
overall economy.48
such an elite, and emphasis is someIn view of the shortage of highly- 34 For a detailed report, see Breman (1975).
times placed on the lack of affinity and qualified manpower and the need for
substitutability by reference to the un- stable and continuous relations in lar- 35 Todaro (1969), 139, note 3, and
(1973), 50.
employable poor, i e, an approxima- ge-scale enterprises, there is little 36 Weeks
(1973), 62.
tion to the conception of the lumpen chance of an industrial reserve being 37 Mliller (1971) uses
the term
proletariat.
'balkanisation' to describe this siformed for this sector of the economy.
tuation.
If, contrary to this view, the funda- On the other hand, in small-scale
mental unity of the entire production workshops, artisan establishments, re- 38 "Modernisation and Social Change
in South Gujarat" is the working
system is emphasised under rejection tail shops, and similar types of activititle of a forthcoming volume editof the idea of urban dualism, it can- ties, people have to work
ed by Baks, Hommes and Pillai.
under con39 Standing (p 2) "...
not be automatically hypothesised that ditions which are in
it is intricomplete agreeguing that in Kingston where open
the unskilled and uneducated do form ment with the classical
concept of
employment is over 20 per cent
an industrial reserve army. I have 'exploitation', a situation
of the active labour force, even
aggravated
already posited that the employment by the fact that workers are
core or primary employers complain
subject to
of shortage of suitable workers
system is organised on a particularistic arbitrary and immediate dismissal. In
in all grades, not just highly skillbasis. The attempt to fence-off parti- many cases, relations
ed workers. This is even more
between emcular fields of work is intended to ham- ployers and
evident in the peripheral formal
workers in these small
sector." See also Breman (1975),
per external access, but it also prevents workshops and enterpn'ses
in the disChapter II. .
people taking steps in the opposite di- tributive sector are
standardised, to a 40 "Employment, Incomes and Equalirection. This contradicts Meillassoux's certain extent regulated
ty", Technical Paper No 23, 509by legal staassumption of an almost inexhaustible tutes. However, under
510.
conditions of
41 Cf Papanek, 15.
reservoir of free and mobile workers.46 a surplus labour
market, the unskilled 42
Bhattacharya (1969),
Mioreover, employers and brokers are nature of most of the
work, the unor- 43 This hypothesis is 167-174.
rebutted by
able to control labour through depen- ganised nature of the
work force, and
Bienefeld (1974), 21, 44 and 69;
dency relationships - wage advances, the
by McGee, 34-35, and also by
non-implementation of protective
debts, housing, and other forms of measures, labour
Temple, 79.
relations have gra44 Cf Breman (1975), Chapter II,
'favouritism'. True, the linkage be- dually become
informalised. And the
Bienefeld (1974), 15.
tween supply and demand on the la- hypothesis that an
industrial reserve 45 Dasgupta (1973), 72. Gerry (p
bour market is regulated within a exists at this level
42) comments that a proportion of
thus becomes more
single institutional framework, but the acceptable.
the small self-employed in Dakar
have formerly been in wage emchannels involved are many and aie
I have earlier tried to explain that
ployment but that they lost their
very often only indirectly related to there is good reason for
jobs as a result of economic remisgivings on
each other.
cession.
the undiminishing absorptive capacity
On the other hand, the fragmenta- which is supposed to characterise the 46 Meillassoux's interpretation- (1974)
is regarded as outdated by other
tion of the labour market should not lower regions of the urban economy.
Marxist authors due to the debe unnecessarily exaggerated. My own Adherents of this view consider that
velopment of a new international
division of labour. See
research has shown that a surplus of mechanisms of shared poverty will
Frobel,
casual labour, which is also characte- make it possible in some malleable 47 Heinrichs and Kreye (1976).
Breman
(1975),
Chapter III;
rised by fairly high mobility, exercises fashion to provide a living - however
Gerry, Chapter VIII.
a negative influence on conditions in marginal and insecure - for growing 48 Obregon (1974), 418.
large enterprises, and can increase the numbers of small self-employed and 49 Friedmann and Sullivan, 400401; Papanek, 14.
tendency to 'informalise' labour rela- casual labourers. If this assumption
tions; particularly at the lower eche- has ever had any validity, this is cer- [References will appear at the .ed of
lons.47
However, I agree with Obre- tainly-no longer the case.49 Growing the concluding part of the article next
week.]
1908
This content downloaded from 128.220.8.15 on Tue, 09 Feb 2016 03:19:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions