International Labour Studies, vol. 14. Frankfurt; New York: Campus Verlag; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press [distributor], 2016. 244 pp. (Tables, illustrations.) US$48.00, paper. ISBN 978-3-593-50644-9.
The subject of Indonesian labour is situated at the intersection of several areas of research that feed and explore the notion of a Global South. When it comes to Indonesia and labour, it is hard not take notice of Indonesia’s young population—hungry for work while experiencing the modern conceptualization of economic involvement and active engagement in identity building and the dynamic political development of being a postcolonial nation. Against this background, Felix Hauf’s book, by employing a series of cultural political economy (CPE) frameworks, explores labour struggles in Indonesia, most significantly from the perspectives of “decent work,” and attempts to address whether or not the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Decent Work Agenda is a mechanism for building a neoliberal framework and reproducing neoliberal hegemony.
Hauf dedicates a larger section of the book to the theoretical exploration of CPE, emerging from regulationist theory (30–35). Regulationist theory suggests that subjects act in ways that reproduce certain fundamental structures of capitalism despite their inherent antagonisms and contradictions. The theory considers cultural norms and values as a key approach to governance, and attempts to explain how accumulation regimes are stabilized through modes of regulation. Aided by Sum and Jessop’s work on CPE, Hauf then begins to unfold his argument around the production of meaning through a structuration process and suggests that economic categories are semiotic, thus making the production of hegemonies strategic and relational.
In conducting field research, Hauf engages Belfrage and Hauf’s Critical Ground Theory (CGT), which applies CPE and Ground Theory coupled with data generation and evaluation that is informed by decentred critical discourse analysis (CDA). Critical Ground Theory looks at the field with predeveloped theories, and then goes through a retroductive process of iterative revisions. As examples, Hauf focuses on three labour-intensive industries—garments, textiles, and shoes—and two case studies. The first case study is Better Work Indonesia (BWI), conceived as a monitoring project, while the second case study follows the Play Fair Alliance (PFA).
Hauf acknowledges BWI as a representation of a hegemonic global labour regulation mechanism (149–158) in alignment with corporate social responsibilities (CSR) strategies of multinational corporations. Play Fair Alliance, as a multi-stakeholder initiative, deals with wages, contracts, and freedom of association, matters not addressed through BWI. Hauf argues that confrontational strategies—a popular method of mass political statement-making in Indonesia—increase the political power of unions, thus making up for the lack of economic power in transnational supply chains (220–221). In turn, the author finds that private dispute resolutions can weaken unions in a hostile environment. Ultimately, his discourse analysis points to the counter-discourse of labour unions and activists in response to “decent work.”
While these case studies do provide a valuable perspective on Indonesian labour struggles, the book might have proven more beneficial had it used a case study of domestic work as an important contribution to the discourse on labour rights in Indonesia. Though “care economy” is discussed very briefly (99), migrant workers take up a significant portion of the Indonesian labour discourse, and as Wayne Palmer (2016) has pointed out, are tangled in the bureaucratic complexities between the Ministries of Labour and Foreign Affairs and Migrant Workers Agency. Migrant workers also lead a number of key labour movements vis-à-vis bringing recognition to domestic work as work, and migrant rights activists have formed unions in addition to playing a leading role in Indonesian labour movements at large. In fact, with the cultural turn to CPE, an examination of the thriving activist culture in Indonesia—both rural and urban—would have enriched the analysis, amplified by the voices of the workers and activists themselves. From Diane Wolf (1994) to Michelle Ford (2008), it has been noted over the years that most of the factory workers in Indonesia are female, and therefore a feminist perspective remains a crucial gap in the book’s analysis (78). Engaging with women’s experiences on a deeper level, considering how gender plays out in Indonesian labour, would have provided a richer exploration. Finally, the discussion of the Decent Work discourse within a local context (75) would have benefited from a more engaging analysis. While the field work provided access to some Indonesian workers, more in-depth interviews with a wider range of interviewees would have added an appreciation of the unique labour dynamics in Indonesia.
Hauf’s work is a welcome addition to the body of work that examines Indonesian labour from various perspectives, including those of Michelle Ford, Johan Lindquist, Rachel Silvey, Carol Chan, Wayne Palmer, Olivia Killias, and Pratiwi Retnaningdyah. Though its theoretical grounding at times creates distance between the lived experience of workers and the conceptualization of a fair work environment, Beyond Decent Work provides an apt analysis of labour movements in Indonesia.
Kilim Park
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada