Flexible Relations and Post-Fordist Globalization

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Very well done and an excellent effort...good remarks and replies frm chowk fellows

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Mr. Rahman,

Well done!

A few ideas that were interesting:

1. Rather than looking to revamped versions of old and ``rigid`` systems of production and wealth that have not addressed the realities of local and global inequities, we need to be looking at more open systems of economic interactions. (The idea of ``open`` and ``closed`` systems, believe it or not, is a theory in Composition Theory and Linguistic Studies.)

2. An open system allows a more dynamic interaction of economic intersections that will lead towards the address of the kinds of social, political and economic imbalances we are witnessing/experiencing. It also sounds like open systems are more negotiable and interactive, that non corporate players (like local communities) can enter the system.

3. The idea of economic theoretical diversities being acknowledged and formally incorporated has a lot of interesting implications-and it would be helpful to explore what kinds of open systems are being proposed. It would also silence capitalistic hardliners who have historically claimed that an equitable society means totalitarianism on one hand.

4. Having read Marx many years ago, I was struck by a concept he used in describing the govts in Asia at the time of his writing; ``oriental despotism``. In addition, Marx wrote that developing nations would need to go through the process of industrialization, exploitation and labor consciousness to be able to transform a more equitable society. Can we understand globalisation to be a subtler/unsubtle form of exploitation of developing world resources?

Thanks for an interesting piece!

April 24, 2003
Pictures of Working Life, Taken by Working Hands
By CHRIS HEDGES


HERE are people who feel invisible. Many of them cook our food, clean our apartment buildings and toil in lonely jobs. Theirs is a world that many do not see or know. And it is a world that Esther Cohen, with the donation of 100 cameras, set out two years ago to record.

She handed Filipino nannies, asbestos-removal workers, building maintenance men, home health care aides and garment workers the 35-millimeter cameras and asked them to document their lives. Thousands of images later, she has gathered a record of a world that these workers, mostly immigrants, see.

``Not only has it taught people how to be seen,`` said Ms. Cohen, executive director of the cultural arm of Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, ``it created a desire by many of these workers to be depicted, to be present in a society where they did not feel present before. They learned how to depict themselves in their own terms.``

The images are staggering in their simplicity and power. A home health care worker, for example, spent weeks taking pictures of the chairs she could never occupy. Another woman shot a picture of her son in his 20`s getting a haircut, explaining that when he was a boy she never had the time to take him to cut his hair, and get a picture, because she was working.

``These people represent a huge segment in our society,`` she said. ``They have something to say about schools, health care and benefits that should be heard. For them life is more problematic. They know how difficult life is for those who are poor and working class.``

Many of the photographs express the loneliness and alienation of those who work two jobs and have long ago given up hope of getting off the treadmill of manual labor. The city, in their eyes, often looks bleak and cold, with empty fire escapes, overcrowded rooms shared by day laborers and shops that sell lottery tickets, the huge neon signs that promise at once the only way out and the despair of not having a chance.

The project, called ``UnseenAmerica,`` has mushroomed. In the last two years, local chapters of the union, the nation`s fastest-growing union, has embraced the program. There are about 1,500 workers nationwide who have taken a 12-week introductory photography class and photographed their lives. On May 13, the federal Department of Labor will display about 40 of the photographs in an exhibition in Washington.

Ms. Cohen, 55, who worked for many years with the late Moe Foner, one of the city`s best-known labor advocates who founded the cultural wing of the union, known as Bread and Roses, believes that art and culture should be an integral part of working class life.

She has skipped from cause to cause in her own life, at one point doing publicity for Bob Marley, then working as a peace advocate in Israel and the occupied territories, and finally in a small publishing house.

``I wish I had a more interesting name,`` she said, her small black-frame glasses perched on the end of her nose and her unruly curls of thick red hair spilling out in tangled triangles on each side of her head. ``I think people walk through my door and expect to see a little old Yiddish lady with posters on the walls with raised fists.``

She is adorned with bracelets that travel up her forearms and antique jewelry, much of it collected in her travels abroad.

``I love stuff,`` she said. ``I love poems, music, human beings, works of art, photography. I love old stuff. I cried when the museum in Iraq was looted. Old stuff resonates with me. I never wear anything someone else did not wear before. I like to think that someday someone will wear the things I have after I am gone.``

She is married to Peter Odabashian, a documentary film editor. They have a teenage son, Noah. Pushed, Ms. Cohen defines herself as a writer. Her one novel, ``No Charge for Looking,`` is set in the Middle East. She is at work, without an advance or any promises of publication, on another called ``The Book Doctor.``

``It is about a character who helps other people write books,`` she said. ``I know its insane to write with no advance, but this is how I do everything. I had no money to do `UnseenAmerica.` I just hoped someone would walk through the door and give me some money to keep going. I still do.``

MS. COHEN, who grew up in Ansonia, Conn., went to George Washington University determined to ``write the great American novel.`` She teaches a creative writing class for workers, many of whom show up after 10- or 12-hour days to pour out their hearts in short stories and poems.

``The stories these people write are amazing and moving,`` she said. ``They are stories that go largely untold. These workers never come to class and wonder if they have something to say. They just want to learn how to say it.``

Ms. Cohen is also an editor for an iconoclastic and obscure literary magazine, called ``Jews,`` which has a circulation of 1,000.

Her blurb in the magazine reads: ``Esther Cohen wants to write a novel or a poem about a Palestinian, a Hasid, a Kurd, an Armenian, a Copt and a kibbutznik. She`s been trying.``

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

Glad to see the Anti-Left reacted more to the mere mention of Marx

in this article than the rest of it.

Ras

what a load of crap..... all this whining is so typical of people I call looser whiners. The loosers don`t realize that communist system is a total failure everywhere. Nowhere in the history a communist welfare handouts system has worked. This is as much a fact as potholes of calcutta. So why don`t they cut the BS and get to work.

A looser whiner -> `` oh!!! they are becoming richer... oh they are taking away everything.... oh my son is a holy cow jihadi..... oh I don`t know how to invent stuff..... oh I can`t control raping around.... oh poor african me .... why can`t they provide free handouts of AIDS medicines..... oh poor me ..... oh pitiful me .... `` bwaaaaah .... bwaaahhhh ....

right on studebaker!

I read the conclusion only, and it makes sense. Human progress wont be complete unless we lift the submerged boats as well. And the US and other developed countries should spend far more for economic development than they do. This spending would be an investment in the future well-being of the descendants of the very rich and the very poor, of people in the US and in the third world.

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