Technology, honesty, and work

Abstract

This paper examines the impact that the global economy and local institutional environment had on the rise and demise of the small-scale industrialists movement in Peru. Informed by Alan Lipietz's regime theory, the author argues that as the mode of regulation changes according to major transformations in the regime of accumulation, these macrostructural factors impact social movements' strategy and collective identity. Each mode of regulation has a locus of resource allocation. The small-scale industrialists' movement reoriented its actions and redefined itself in adaptation to the locus of resource allocation, which shifted from the state to international funds. Two periods in the history of the movement are compared in order to test this argument. Under populism (1968–1975), the Peruvian state centralized the distribution of resources, organized the population in a corporate fashion, and ethnicized the language of protest and distributed resources along corporate lines. This institutional framework fostered a class movement which, ultimately centralized in two national associations, advocated an industrialization strategy based on the promotion of small-scale industry. Under delegative democracy the locus of resource allocation was dispersed among dozens of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), while human rights violations multiplied. The dispersion of resources fostered the multiplication of trade-specific, ethnic, or gender associations of small-scale industrialists. The decline of the national movement resulted from its atomization and the intensification of state repression.

Citation

Celle de Bowman, O. (2000), "Technology, honesty, and work", Coy, P.G. (Ed.) Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 22), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 127-161. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-786X(00)80038-5