Abstract
In Made in Egypt, Leila Zaki Chakravarti provides a rich ethnographic analysis of power relationships in “Factory Express,” a garment assembly factory in Port Said, Egypt. Chakravarti’s ethnography, based on more than a year of participant-observer fieldwork, explores three particular questions: first, how the distinct environment of the factory is determined by the interaction of the global economy and local factors; second, how managers manipulate categories of class, gender, and religion in order to maintain a competitive workforce; and third, how workers comply with and contest management control.
Chakravarti takes care to situate Fashion Express as a site of production within competitive global and local economic markets. Globally, Fashion Express had to compete for international contracts. Locally, there was competition for skilled workers, given what she describes as Egyptians’ preference for public sector employment. The strength of Chakravarti’s ethnography, however, is how it brings to life Fashion Express as a site of power relationships between and among management and the assembly workers. These particular power dynamics at Fashion Express flourished because the factory was managed according to the principle of “firm as family,” which structured labor relations in terms of what Chakravarti describes as “mutual dependence.” Accordingly, the proprietor expected loyalty and adherence to exacting performance standards and to particular norms for behavior and dress. This was enforced through complex, formal and informal, systems of monitoring and discipline and by filling vacant positions with relatives of current employees. On the other hand, workers were given latitude to engage in “extracurricular” activities within the work site. In one chapter, Chakravarti describes the brisk, intra-factory trade in consumer goods, driven by young women using their wages to purchase goods for their gihaaz (furnishings for their future marital home). Moreover, workers had the space to engage in collective action against management—such as the work stoppages that they organized if wages were not paid on time—without retribution.
Through her exploration of power dynamics in Fashion Express, Chakravarti makes a number of interesting observations about gender, religion, and factory work. Consistent with other literature on women’s employment, she illustrates how work can be empowering for women, who came into their own as both economic agents and as workers. As one female supervisor told her, “For all of us, our first selves when we first started work—that’s gone now. We have ceased to recognize that part of ourselves” (p. 158). Even so, traditional practices and gender roles remained important, even if women had become more empowered and independent. The market for gihaaz goods was robust because marriage is still expected of Egyptian men and women. Indeed, Chakravarti notes that for many workers, not to be married remained unthinkable, which is why the factory was also a site of matchmaking. Religion, too, was an important part of the workers’ lives. Women in particular used religious dress to signal their marital status, with single women veiling with the shorter hijab and engaged or married women more likely to wear the longer khumar or the robelike abaya. Finally, though it is not a central focus, Chakravarti makes a robust case for understanding garment assembly work as skilled labor. Throughout the text, she draws attention to the skill that is necessary in performing particular tasks, whether using the cutting machines, detecting damaged products in Quality Control, or in the theatrical performance of women in supervisory roles. Although the labor shortage in private factory production partly explains why proprietors would define their workers as skilled, Chakravarti recognizes the skill of the workers in a celebratory way that is uncommon in the literature on assembly work, even if it is not fully theorized here.
Although her text provides an excellent account of life in the factory, Chakravarti’s efforts to situate the agency of Fashion Express workers in the context of Egyptian labor activism, particularly in years leading up to the demonstrations that led to Hosni Mubarak’s 2011 overthrow, are less well developed. This is partly a limitation of her ethnographic method, which by definition focuses on the location of study. However, Made in Egypt left this reader wondering about whether the “firm as family” labor relations model was unique to Fashion Express or more widespread, how workers in Port Said’s export processing zone were linked to the broader Egyptian labor movement, and whether the political agency of Fashion Express’ workforce stopped at the factory door. Nevertheless, Made in Egypt presents a rigorous, accessible, and insightful ethnography that brings life to the factory floor.