Dennis Arnold

ATNC Network Annual Research

A purpose of the research is to better understand how globalizing forms of capitalist development are taking root in Cambodia, and how particular social structures and histories in Cambodia have produced a ‘local’ form of capitalism and workers taking part in that economy.

The report will argue that an essential way to understand the global economy is that it is largely based on opening new territories to foreign direct investment and liberalized trade. In Cambodia this includes the elimination of subsistence agriculture, and promotion of privatization, industrialization, and flexible labour markets. Examples of this include structural adjustment programs by the World Bank and Asia Development Bank,  in cooperation with the Cambodian government, with the intent to commoditize agriculture, improve or establish physical infrastructure such as roads and ports, and improve the competitiveness of current industries or sectors of the economy to increase investment and employment (particularly in garments).  A prominent aspect of Cambodia’s industrialization strategy is centered on the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia Program, which promotes Cambodia as an ‘ethical producer’ in the textile and garment industry through factory monitoring and related projects.

The research will address some of the social impacts of these programs and workers’ attempts to promote their interests within these economic transitions, focusing on organizing flexible/precarious labor in Phnom Penh, including moto-drivers, sex workers, hotel and restaurant workers (including beer-promotion women), and factory day-labour. The research will speak with debates on how and why, culturally, politically and socially, these workers are organized in different spaces within the city.

According to common perceptions, labour organizing in Cambodia has been transplanted from the global scale in (at least) two distinct, but interrelated ways: via trade unions complementary to ILO monitoring in garment factories, and the ‘new left NGOs’ linked to broader social movements in the anti- and alternative globalization struggles. Rather than assume that movements in Cambodia are driven ‘from above’, the report will focus on how internationally linked workers’ movements in Cambodia are ‘localized’ to meet the particular demands of flexible or precarious workers.

Dicken, Peter. 2003. Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century. Fourth Edition. New York: The Guilford Press.

Harvey, David. 2003. The New Imperialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pred, Allan R. and Michael J. Watts. 1992. Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent. Rutgers University Press.