Shop Floor Culture and Politics in EgyptEthnographic study of textile factory workers in Alexandria, Egypt. In Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt, Samer S. Shehata provides us with a unique and detailed ethnographic portrait of life within two large textile factories in Alexandria, Egypt. Working for nearly a year as a winding machine operator provided Shehata with unprecedented access to workers at the point of production and the activities of the work hall. He argues that the social organization of production in the factories including company rules and procedures, hierarchy, and relations of authority and shop floor culture profoundly shape what it means to be a worker and how this identity is understood. Shehata reveals how economic relations inside the factory are simultaneously relations of significance and meaning, and how the production of wool and cotton textiles is, at the same time, the production of categories of identity, patterns of human interaction, and understandings of the self and others. |
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Abdo Farag activities administration Alexandria asked Aziz cafeteria Cairo CEO’s chapter class formation class structure co-workers company’s director E.P. Thompson economic Egypt Egyptian Egyptian workers engineers ethnography Everyday Forms example fact factory Fathy Fathy’s fieldwork firm floor culture forms of resistance front hierarchy identity important industrial informal interaction interesting Khamis labor power labor process machine counters means mechanic Michael Burawoy MIDIA and Misr minutes Misr Textiles Mohamed muda Nabil one’s organization organizational culture output particular peasant pilfering plastic sandals political problem production requirements public sector question Raghab Ramadan replace the spindles resistance practices Rizq sabotage Safwat Salah Sheikh Darwish shift supervisor shuyukh simply social relations someone spindle changes spinning things tion told union usually Wagdi wages walked Watash white-collar employees winding machine operator winding machine workers wool tape workday Zachary Lockman