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Papers by Bridget Kenny

Routledge eBooks, Mar 19, 2024

International Labor and Working-Class History, Dec 31, 2022

International Labor and Working-Class History, Dec 31, 2022

From the nineteenth century, when the new social question of women's factory labor came to preocc... more From the nineteenth century, when the new social question of women's factory labor came to preoccupy the (middle-class) public imagination, to the present times of globalized labor chains, discourses on gendered labor have been at once fluid and constitutive of labor hierarchies. 1 These discourses and social relations affirm their centrality within processes of industrialization and workplace restructuring as well as in development policy, urban formation, and indeed, nation building. 2 Depending on the political economy of the labor market, the images of laboring women accordingly oscillated between, for instance, helpless and exploited victims to national heroines in the service of developmental projects. At the same time, since the early nineteenth-century, the steadily accumulating social reform, labor inspection, or social scientific accounts of women's paid and unpaid labor testified to states' and employers' growing comfort with hiring what was and is still, in many ways, a cheap, easily exploitable category of workers, one whose profitability increased the more precarious their employment became. Such discourses and labor control practices were deeply racialized and classed. 3 On the other side of the public imagination and employer's surveillance, women who engaged in paid work sometimes appropriated the discourses and reshaped the practices that were used to characterize their labor and judge their choices. 4 The articles in this special section examine these processes from four places considered "peripheral" to debates and to capitalist developments across the twentieth century. We frame this issue through three considerations. First, the variability and variety of discourses, and the centrality of women's paid and unpaid work to economic projects of state and nonstate actors, demand further careful investigation. Second, the impact of global patterns and cultures of inequality on women's work, and the impact of women's work on (re)shaping patterns of inequality have very seldom been conceptualized from the vantage point offered by (post)colonial and semiperipheral geopolitical locations and attendant historical experiences. The specificities engendered by colonialism and geopolitical (semi)peripherality have not been

Reconstruire le modèle politique? Les comités de centre commercial et les travailleurs précaires ... more Reconstruire le modèle politique? Les comités de centre commercial et les travailleurs précaires d'Afrique du sud Bridget Kenny Résumé Cet article examine le comité de centre commercial, un nouveau modèle organisationnel introduit par le SACCAWU (South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union) pour faciliter l'accès aux employées précaires du secteur des commerces de détail et leur représentation. Les comités de centre commercial devaient fonctionner comme lieu de rassemblement permettant aux employées de ces centres de discuter de questions dont la portée dépasse le lieu de travail. Dans la pratique, là où ces comités (ou les réseaux informels opérant sous ce nom) ont opéré, ils ont fonctionné selon les structures hommes/femmes traditionnelles au sein du syndicat. Cet article est basé sur des entrevues préliminaires menées auprès d'employés et de délégués syndicaux à Ekurhuleni, près de Johannesburg. Il interroge les politiques de cette nouvelle stratégie, en termes de modèle organisationnel, de portée géographique, et de l'agence et de la subjectivité des employées. L'auteur révèle les efforts persistants de travailleuses) militantes pour confronter les conditions au sein de leur contexte élargi, mais soutient que dans la pratique, le mode d'émergence de ces réseaux peut aussi signaler la reproduction de hiérarchies marginalisantes pour les travailleuses précaires. L'article conteste l'argument normatif selon lequel il faut chercher des solutions de syndicalisation dans des modèles de forme ou d'échelle.

Springer eBooks, 2018

In this chapter, the constitution of the retail sector in and around Johannesburg through the lab... more In this chapter, the constitution of the retail sector in and around Johannesburg through the labour of white women from the 1930s to the 1970s in service to a “white public” is examined. A gendered and racialized notion of service became central to directing expanding consumption under apartheid. Working-class white women organized into their union to contest poor conditions in stores, but a class identity became harder for them to maintain under apartheid. Their experiences were individualized, and they reproduced social hierarchies within shops while securing these spaces of consumption for their customers.

INTRODUCTION In public debate throughout 2011 and much of 2012, Wal-Mart's entry into South A... more INTRODUCTION In public debate throughout 2011 and much of 2012, Wal-Mart's entry into South Africa's economy sparked fierce debate. The Competition Tribunal and Competition Appeal Court processes became a match between the formidable US multinational – the world's largest private employer with some 2.1 million employees in fifteen countries2 – and what appeared to many as activist ministries within the state, fighting to uphold ‘public interest’ in its merger with Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed Massmart Holdings, Inc., trading as subsidiaries Game, Dion, Makro, Builder's Warehouse and Cambridge Foods, among others. South African unions, most notably the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu), with support from global union federation UNI Global and the US union the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW), put up a resolute defence against an uncomplicated and quick merger approval (Kenny 2012b). Wal-Mart/Massmart claimed to offer cheap goods to a growing middle and working class consumer base, and as such their ‘everyday low prices (EDLP)’ would bring the majority of South African consumers, previously excluded from consumption, into participation in this market. The chief executive officer (CEO) of Wal-Mart International, Doug McMillon, wrote in an op-ed in Business Day on 26 January 2011 that the company's ‘core mission – to save people money so they can live better’ would be its contribution to South Africa. He concluded, ‘Walmart looks forward to earning our credentials as a responsible and productive citizen of SA.’ But the protracted merger approval process was to belie any easy acceptance of Wal-Mart. In its report in February 2011, the Competition Commission recommended, in what can only be acknowledged as a political misstep, that the deal be approved with no conditions. When the Competition Tribunal in March and May of 2011 rolled around, the hearings had become the terrain of battle. The state's representatives, led by the minister of economic development, Ebrahim Patel, became increasingly frustrated with the merging parties’ unwillingness to provide information or come to informal agreement over conditions for the merger. The Departments of Economic Development (EDD), Trade and Industry (DTI) and Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) were concerned about the effects of Wal-Mart's entry on South African manufacturing and agricultural jobs in the context of the power of this global buyer to import through its supply chain the most competitive commodities from around the world.

BRILL eBooks, Dec 19, 2022

Consumption Markets & Culture, Oct 7, 2022

This article analyses a 1991 documentary about the 'black middle class' in South Africa, called N... more This article analyses a 1991 documentary about the 'black middle class' in South Africa, called Nowhere to Play: Conversations with Sowetan Golfers, commissioned by Channel 4 (UK). Drawing on interviews with the filmmaker, Angus Gibson, and one of the individuals featured in the documentary, Peter Vundla, the article critically discusses the film's representation of the black middle class at a crucial point in South Africa's liberation struggle. Examining the discursive construction of the 'black middle class', as well as its claims to agency and affordability, the article contributes to broader debates on class, race, consumption and empowerment in the South African context.

Wits University Press eBooks, Aug 23, 2018

XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018), Jul 20, 2018

Servicing a Nation: White Women Shop Assistants and the Fantasy of Belonging I enjoyed my custome... more Servicing a Nation: White Women Shop Assistants and the Fantasy of Belonging I enjoyed my customers because they always came back. Those years we used to even scrub our floor and polish it and shine it up. Mr. Levine used to come and stand at the entrance of my [department] and he says, 'You could eat off this floor!' But it was such a pleasure because we put everything into our work.

Wits University Press eBooks, Aug 1, 2021

University of Texas Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018

Springer eBooks, 2018

This chapter examines the US multinational Wal-Mart’s acquisition of South African listed Massmar... more This chapter examines the US multinational Wal-Mart’s acquisition of South African listed Massmart Holdings. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, is well known for wage theft, work intensification, eroded benefits, and anti-union practices. This chapter examines the current conjuncture of retailing in South Africa, with globalization of retail capital, supply chain management, corporate consolidation, and expansion into new working-class markets. The chapter explores how nation is now modelled in the market and through consumption and juxtaposes this to the low-wage service worker, employed through labour brokers and as general workers. It concludes by examining the reproduction of retail worker politics redefining abasebenzi, race, and skill in a fraying relationship of labour to nation.

Anthropology and humanism, Jul 5, 2023

Corona and Work around the Globe, 2020

I live in Johannesburg, a city with deep inequalities that manifest as its harsh yet heady edgine... more I live in Johannesburg, a city with deep inequalities that manifest as its harsh yet heady edginess. There is no pastoral wool to pull over Jozi's10 eyes. It is from this place that I write of three interconnected 'coronavirus conjunctures' that locate our present and its grim futures. The virus has wound its way into the South African terrain in ways that intensify existing rifts. Hunger and wagelessness have increased; those in employment, such as service and care workers, have faced further precariousness; and young people at school and university have seen their futures contorted. Still, there are lineaments threading outward as people adapt to the changes that in fact reproduce alreadyknown relations and conditions. On the eve of the pandemic shutdown, South Africa was already nervously predicting an unprecedented increase in unemployment and recessionary conditions. The year began with sobering calculations of the shrinking economy. Indeed, in the first quarter of 2020 the economy had contracted by two percent and the (official, narrow) unemployment rate had expanded to 30.1 percent, even before lockdown.11 Stock-makers and takers offer newer predictions that GDP will be down by as much as ten percent by December, exacerbated by COVID-19. As the Minister of Finance put it in late June in his supplementary budget address, he expected "the largest contraction [of the economy] in nearly ninety years."12 The IMF approved a 4.3 billion dollar emergency loan to South Africa in late July.13 South Africa had already introduced austerity measures in mid-2019, and the Minister of Finance has continued on this path in adherence to future possible demands. This macroeconomic picture sets the scene for the everyday experiences of coronavirus. On March 27, 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a countrywide strict lockdown (later to be called Level 5). This included no mobility unless you were an essential service worker. Residents were meant to be contained to the parameters of their own homes, not allowed outside, including for exercise, except for the most basic of errands, such as getting food or medicine. Already the lockdown conditions posed contradictions of inequality-the suburban middle class has large properties and yards while informal settlement dwellers live multiple people to a few small rooms with the neighbors closely abutting. In fact, many could not feasibly 'distance' themselves from others. The police and later the army (the South African National Defence Force) patrolled townships for those breaking lockdown conditions. Within the first week of lockdown, police had arrested more than two thousand people for infractions of the regulations for the new State of Disaster, and

Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 2019

This paper considers the discussion of the growth of service jobs in arguments around inequality ... more This paper considers the discussion of the growth of service jobs in arguments around inequality in greater Johannesburg. It provides a conceptual reframing by imbricating service jobs with the expansion of malls and retail property development through Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), an instrument of financial capital investment. It posits a conjunctural analysis bringing together low wage service jobs with transformations in urban geography in relation to property investment and local government practice. Thus, the site of the 'mall' becomes both a place of unequal relations and a conceptual node to think through the articulation of social relations reproducing inequalities of race, gender and class. 1

Ethnic and Racial Studies

Routledge eBooks, Mar 19, 2024

International Labor and Working-Class History, Dec 31, 2022

International Labor and Working-Class History, Dec 31, 2022

From the nineteenth century, when the new social question of women's factory labor came to preocc... more From the nineteenth century, when the new social question of women's factory labor came to preoccupy the (middle-class) public imagination, to the present times of globalized labor chains, discourses on gendered labor have been at once fluid and constitutive of labor hierarchies. 1 These discourses and social relations affirm their centrality within processes of industrialization and workplace restructuring as well as in development policy, urban formation, and indeed, nation building. 2 Depending on the political economy of the labor market, the images of laboring women accordingly oscillated between, for instance, helpless and exploited victims to national heroines in the service of developmental projects. At the same time, since the early nineteenth-century, the steadily accumulating social reform, labor inspection, or social scientific accounts of women's paid and unpaid labor testified to states' and employers' growing comfort with hiring what was and is still, in many ways, a cheap, easily exploitable category of workers, one whose profitability increased the more precarious their employment became. Such discourses and labor control practices were deeply racialized and classed. 3 On the other side of the public imagination and employer's surveillance, women who engaged in paid work sometimes appropriated the discourses and reshaped the practices that were used to characterize their labor and judge their choices. 4 The articles in this special section examine these processes from four places considered "peripheral" to debates and to capitalist developments across the twentieth century. We frame this issue through three considerations. First, the variability and variety of discourses, and the centrality of women's paid and unpaid work to economic projects of state and nonstate actors, demand further careful investigation. Second, the impact of global patterns and cultures of inequality on women's work, and the impact of women's work on (re)shaping patterns of inequality have very seldom been conceptualized from the vantage point offered by (post)colonial and semiperipheral geopolitical locations and attendant historical experiences. The specificities engendered by colonialism and geopolitical (semi)peripherality have not been

Reconstruire le modèle politique? Les comités de centre commercial et les travailleurs précaires ... more Reconstruire le modèle politique? Les comités de centre commercial et les travailleurs précaires d'Afrique du sud Bridget Kenny Résumé Cet article examine le comité de centre commercial, un nouveau modèle organisationnel introduit par le SACCAWU (South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union) pour faciliter l'accès aux employées précaires du secteur des commerces de détail et leur représentation. Les comités de centre commercial devaient fonctionner comme lieu de rassemblement permettant aux employées de ces centres de discuter de questions dont la portée dépasse le lieu de travail. Dans la pratique, là où ces comités (ou les réseaux informels opérant sous ce nom) ont opéré, ils ont fonctionné selon les structures hommes/femmes traditionnelles au sein du syndicat. Cet article est basé sur des entrevues préliminaires menées auprès d'employés et de délégués syndicaux à Ekurhuleni, près de Johannesburg. Il interroge les politiques de cette nouvelle stratégie, en termes de modèle organisationnel, de portée géographique, et de l'agence et de la subjectivité des employées. L'auteur révèle les efforts persistants de travailleuses) militantes pour confronter les conditions au sein de leur contexte élargi, mais soutient que dans la pratique, le mode d'émergence de ces réseaux peut aussi signaler la reproduction de hiérarchies marginalisantes pour les travailleuses précaires. L'article conteste l'argument normatif selon lequel il faut chercher des solutions de syndicalisation dans des modèles de forme ou d'échelle.

Springer eBooks, 2018

In this chapter, the constitution of the retail sector in and around Johannesburg through the lab... more In this chapter, the constitution of the retail sector in and around Johannesburg through the labour of white women from the 1930s to the 1970s in service to a “white public” is examined. A gendered and racialized notion of service became central to directing expanding consumption under apartheid. Working-class white women organized into their union to contest poor conditions in stores, but a class identity became harder for them to maintain under apartheid. Their experiences were individualized, and they reproduced social hierarchies within shops while securing these spaces of consumption for their customers.

INTRODUCTION In public debate throughout 2011 and much of 2012, Wal-Mart's entry into South A... more INTRODUCTION In public debate throughout 2011 and much of 2012, Wal-Mart's entry into South Africa's economy sparked fierce debate. The Competition Tribunal and Competition Appeal Court processes became a match between the formidable US multinational – the world's largest private employer with some 2.1 million employees in fifteen countries2 – and what appeared to many as activist ministries within the state, fighting to uphold ‘public interest’ in its merger with Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed Massmart Holdings, Inc., trading as subsidiaries Game, Dion, Makro, Builder's Warehouse and Cambridge Foods, among others. South African unions, most notably the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu), with support from global union federation UNI Global and the US union the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW), put up a resolute defence against an uncomplicated and quick merger approval (Kenny 2012b). Wal-Mart/Massmart claimed to offer cheap goods to a growing middle and working class consumer base, and as such their ‘everyday low prices (EDLP)’ would bring the majority of South African consumers, previously excluded from consumption, into participation in this market. The chief executive officer (CEO) of Wal-Mart International, Doug McMillon, wrote in an op-ed in Business Day on 26 January 2011 that the company's ‘core mission – to save people money so they can live better’ would be its contribution to South Africa. He concluded, ‘Walmart looks forward to earning our credentials as a responsible and productive citizen of SA.’ But the protracted merger approval process was to belie any easy acceptance of Wal-Mart. In its report in February 2011, the Competition Commission recommended, in what can only be acknowledged as a political misstep, that the deal be approved with no conditions. When the Competition Tribunal in March and May of 2011 rolled around, the hearings had become the terrain of battle. The state's representatives, led by the minister of economic development, Ebrahim Patel, became increasingly frustrated with the merging parties’ unwillingness to provide information or come to informal agreement over conditions for the merger. The Departments of Economic Development (EDD), Trade and Industry (DTI) and Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) were concerned about the effects of Wal-Mart's entry on South African manufacturing and agricultural jobs in the context of the power of this global buyer to import through its supply chain the most competitive commodities from around the world.

BRILL eBooks, Dec 19, 2022

Consumption Markets & Culture, Oct 7, 2022

This article analyses a 1991 documentary about the 'black middle class' in South Africa, called N... more This article analyses a 1991 documentary about the 'black middle class' in South Africa, called Nowhere to Play: Conversations with Sowetan Golfers, commissioned by Channel 4 (UK). Drawing on interviews with the filmmaker, Angus Gibson, and one of the individuals featured in the documentary, Peter Vundla, the article critically discusses the film's representation of the black middle class at a crucial point in South Africa's liberation struggle. Examining the discursive construction of the 'black middle class', as well as its claims to agency and affordability, the article contributes to broader debates on class, race, consumption and empowerment in the South African context.

Wits University Press eBooks, Aug 23, 2018

XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018), Jul 20, 2018

Servicing a Nation: White Women Shop Assistants and the Fantasy of Belonging I enjoyed my custome... more Servicing a Nation: White Women Shop Assistants and the Fantasy of Belonging I enjoyed my customers because they always came back. Those years we used to even scrub our floor and polish it and shine it up. Mr. Levine used to come and stand at the entrance of my [department] and he says, 'You could eat off this floor!' But it was such a pleasure because we put everything into our work.

Wits University Press eBooks, Aug 1, 2021

University of Texas Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018

Springer eBooks, 2018

This chapter examines the US multinational Wal-Mart’s acquisition of South African listed Massmar... more This chapter examines the US multinational Wal-Mart’s acquisition of South African listed Massmart Holdings. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, is well known for wage theft, work intensification, eroded benefits, and anti-union practices. This chapter examines the current conjuncture of retailing in South Africa, with globalization of retail capital, supply chain management, corporate consolidation, and expansion into new working-class markets. The chapter explores how nation is now modelled in the market and through consumption and juxtaposes this to the low-wage service worker, employed through labour brokers and as general workers. It concludes by examining the reproduction of retail worker politics redefining abasebenzi, race, and skill in a fraying relationship of labour to nation.

Anthropology and humanism, Jul 5, 2023

Corona and Work around the Globe, 2020

I live in Johannesburg, a city with deep inequalities that manifest as its harsh yet heady edgine... more I live in Johannesburg, a city with deep inequalities that manifest as its harsh yet heady edginess. There is no pastoral wool to pull over Jozi's10 eyes. It is from this place that I write of three interconnected 'coronavirus conjunctures' that locate our present and its grim futures. The virus has wound its way into the South African terrain in ways that intensify existing rifts. Hunger and wagelessness have increased; those in employment, such as service and care workers, have faced further precariousness; and young people at school and university have seen their futures contorted. Still, there are lineaments threading outward as people adapt to the changes that in fact reproduce alreadyknown relations and conditions. On the eve of the pandemic shutdown, South Africa was already nervously predicting an unprecedented increase in unemployment and recessionary conditions. The year began with sobering calculations of the shrinking economy. Indeed, in the first quarter of 2020 the economy had contracted by two percent and the (official, narrow) unemployment rate had expanded to 30.1 percent, even before lockdown.11 Stock-makers and takers offer newer predictions that GDP will be down by as much as ten percent by December, exacerbated by COVID-19. As the Minister of Finance put it in late June in his supplementary budget address, he expected "the largest contraction [of the economy] in nearly ninety years."12 The IMF approved a 4.3 billion dollar emergency loan to South Africa in late July.13 South Africa had already introduced austerity measures in mid-2019, and the Minister of Finance has continued on this path in adherence to future possible demands. This macroeconomic picture sets the scene for the everyday experiences of coronavirus. On March 27, 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a countrywide strict lockdown (later to be called Level 5). This included no mobility unless you were an essential service worker. Residents were meant to be contained to the parameters of their own homes, not allowed outside, including for exercise, except for the most basic of errands, such as getting food or medicine. Already the lockdown conditions posed contradictions of inequality-the suburban middle class has large properties and yards while informal settlement dwellers live multiple people to a few small rooms with the neighbors closely abutting. In fact, many could not feasibly 'distance' themselves from others. The police and later the army (the South African National Defence Force) patrolled townships for those breaking lockdown conditions. Within the first week of lockdown, police had arrested more than two thousand people for infractions of the regulations for the new State of Disaster, and

Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 2019

This paper considers the discussion of the growth of service jobs in arguments around inequality ... more This paper considers the discussion of the growth of service jobs in arguments around inequality in greater Johannesburg. It provides a conceptual reframing by imbricating service jobs with the expansion of malls and retail property development through Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), an instrument of financial capital investment. It posits a conjunctural analysis bringing together low wage service jobs with transformations in urban geography in relation to property investment and local government practice. Thus, the site of the 'mall' becomes both a place of unequal relations and a conceptual node to think through the articulation of social relations reproducing inequalities of race, gender and class. 1

Ethnic and Racial Studies

Retail Worker Politics, Race and Consumption in South Africa: Shelved in the Service Economy, 2018

This book argues that we need to focus attention on the ways that workers themselves have investe... more This book argues that we need to focus attention on the ways that workers themselves have invested subjectively in what it means to be a worker. By doing so, we gain an explanation that moves us beyond the economic decisions made by actors, the institutional constraints faced by trade unions, or the power of the state to interpellate subjects. These more common explanations make workers and their politics visible only as a symptom of external conditions, a response to deregulated markets or a product of state recognition. Instead – through a history of retailing as a site of nation and belonging, changing legal regimes, and articulations of race, class and gender in the constitution of political subjects from the 1930s to present-day Wal-Mart – this book presents the experiences and subjectivities of workers themselves to show that the collective political subject ‘workers’ (abasebenzi) is both a durable and malleable political category. From white to black women’s labour, the forms of precariousness have changed within retailing in South Africa. Workers’ struggles in different times have in turn resolved some dilemmas and by other turn generated new categories and conditions of precariousness, all the while explaining enduring attachments to labour politics.

We are happy to announce the new project of our working group "Workplaces: Pasts and Presents." A... more We are happy to announce the new project of our working group "Workplaces: Pasts and Presents." After our blog series "Factory Reloaded," and our podcast series "Workplace Matters," we are now moving into the realm of digital humanities to explore the historical and contemporary dynamics of capitalism at the point of production. This project brings together international scholars in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, and Bangladesh to investigate, in a collaborative and interdisciplinary way, the past and present of the workplace. We are especially concerned to move across the divides between the global North and South, between different disciplines, and between different methods and orientations. The project draws on a range of methodologies and on tools in the digital humanities and social sciences to archive, curate, and disseminate our results and findings to audiences of students, scholars, activists, and the general public. We welcome communication, especially offers to share research, collaborate, and exchange ideas.

Workplace Matters , 2021

We are pleased to introduce the inaugural episode of our podcast, Workplace Matters. The podcast ... more We are pleased to introduce the inaugural episode of our podcast, Workplace Matters. The podcast provides interdisciplinary perspectives on the workplace by bringing together scholars with research projects on labour, work, and space. The project draws on a range of disciplinary methodologies and on the tools of digital humanities and social sciences to archive, curate, and disseminate the results to audiences of students, scholars, activists, and the general public.

We invite proposals for exhibits for our website https://workplaces.omeka.net. Please send a maxi... more We invite proposals for exhibits for our website https://workplaces.omeka.net. Please send a maximum 300 word abstract and sample images, videos, sounds or other multimedia for your
proposal to rick.halpern@utoronto.ca The proposal should include your name, surname, current affiliation and contact details

International Labor and Working-Class History, 2023

From the nineteenth century, when the new social question of women's factory labor came to preocc... more From the nineteenth century, when the new social question of women's factory labor came to preoccupy the (middle-class) public imagination, to the present times of globalized labor chains, discourses on gendered labor have been at once fluid and constitutive of labor hierarchies. These discourses and social relations affirm their centrality within processes of industrialization and workplace restructuring as well as in development policy, urban formation, and indeed, nation building. Depending on the political economy of the labor market, the images of laboring women accordingly oscillated between, for instance, helpless and exploited victims to national heroines in the service of developmental projects. At the same time, since the early nineteenth-century, the steadily accumulating social reform, labor inspection, or social scientific accounts of women's paid and unpaid labor testified to states’ and employers’ growing comfort with hiring what was and is still, in many ways, a cheap, easily exploitable category of workers, one whose profitability increased the more precarious their employment became. Such discourses and labor control practices were deeply racialized and classed. On the other side of the public imagination and employer's surveillance, women who engaged in paid work sometimes appropriated the discourses and reshaped the practices that were used to characterize their labor and judge their choices.