Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xviii, 162 pp. (Tables, figures, B&W photos.) US$105.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-19126-6.
In her new book Death of an Industry, author Mallika Shakya offers an in-depth look at the complex socio-cultural and economic factors that drove the rise, reorganization, and eventual collapse of the garment industry in Nepal. The book engages with key international debates about development trajectories in industrializing countries like Nepal while questioning dominant neoliberal narratives about the necessity of creative destruction and labour flexibility for industrial growth as advocated by most government officials and development experts. Shakya develops the concept of an industrial ecosystem through a multi-sited ethnography that takes the reader inside both mass-produced and specialized craft garment shops to trace the rise and fall of the garment industry and how this history is interwoven with the People’s War (1996–2006) and contemporary political struggles to reimagine development and democracy in a new Nepal.
The book is divided into seven chapters, with each chapter building on and developing the story of the rise and fall of the industry, as well as its embedded relationship in the cultural politics of Nepal, from the early days under Rana rule through the later Indian-dominated period in the middle of the 1900s and then into the democratic transition period after 1990, which opened the industry to more local control but also brought new challenges with neo-liberal market regimes. The author’s background in international development practice, combined with her training in anthropology, provides the text with a rich and nuanced reading of the politics of development and cultural politics, and the book clearly shows how each played a role in shaping the industry as a whole, as well as why it is important to disentangle mass and craft garment subsectors and see each as operating within a shared industrial ecosystem but with very different dynamics. “The distinction between the two could not be overlooked, especially with regard to the irony inherent in it: those with access to capital and political connections were part of the ‘mass’ subsector, while those without carved out a space for themselves in the ‘craft’ subsector” (11).
The core argument about an industrial ecosystem weaves together union politics and ethnic identity with global market forces and internal political developments, showing how the decade-long Maoist conflict not only catalyzed a new wave of industrial garment unionism, but was in turn bolstered by these newly radicalized workers following the collapse of their industry. “What this meant for businesses was that a new activism swept through the shop floors, with workers demanding better working conditions on the one hand, and giving rise to new ethic clusterings on the other” (22). These shifts allowed nationalist elites, most of whom were high-caste Hindus (Bahun-Chhetri) to write off the collapsing garment industry as the necessary end of Indian elites’ domination of their domestic industry while ignoring actual shifts in labour force composition towards more ethnic (janajati) Nepalis from the hills. Thus, elite disregard for ethnic political claims made by garment workers demanding greater social and economic justice bolstered popular support for the Maoists and helped to finally bring an end to monarchical rule.
I would argue the author overstates the centrality of industrial labour activism in bringing down the Shah monarchy, and undervalues the historical importance of rural and agrarian unrest in forming the heart of Maoist resistance, but it is clear that existing Maoist scholarship has not paid close enough attention to the role of these industrial garment workers in this period, and this work provides excellent empirical and ethnographic research into these connections.
The author makes a strong case for why an industrial ecosystem approach not only makes sense, but is in fact critical to gaining a fuller understanding of what Nepalis call “source force,” the ability to navigate bureaucracy and patrimonial relations by mobilizing networks of trust and social capital which are often invisible to development experts and do not conform to neo-classical economic models. In fact, the author argues it was precisely this blind faith in a de-politicized model of neo-liberal industrial development that helps explain why the government did virtually nothing to prevent the collapse of the mass garment industry in the lead up to the 2004 expiration of the Multi-Fiber Agreement with the United States, and then after its collapse, blamed the collapse on unionization efforts while continuing to neglect the smaller, ethnic craft garment industry which was still thriving. “The result was that policymakers got away with a complete denial of the fact that a very vibrant and culturally-rooted method of garment making existed and prospered side by side with mass manufacturing of anonymous designs. The anti-politics of development discourse on garment-making essentially pre-empted a valid question about cultural capital in industrial and social production” (79).
Overall, Shakya’s study of the rise and fall of the readymade garment industry in Nepal provides a welcome addition to recent scholarship on political transitions and development in Nepal. Scholars interested in industrial histories, development politics, ethno-political contestations, or shop floor ethnographies will find this book worth their attention. It is accessible and well written and could easily be used with undergraduate students in a range of disciplines. The only area where the book fell flat was its final chapter, where the author tries to engage with contemporary politics in Nepal by tracing recent debates among Maoist and other left-centre parties about the future of development politics. While the link to discourses about development was clear, it still felt tangential to the central story of the rise and fall of the garment industry in Nepal. Despite this, the final question posed by the author is an important one worth noting: “How can cultural and political synthesizing of development be problematized in studying New Nepal? (140).
Chris Crews
California State University, Chico