We Are in This Dance Together - by Nancy Plankey-Videla (Paperback)

About the Book

We Are in This Dance Together uses in-depth interviews with over sixty workers, managers, and policy makers to document and analyze events leading up to the female-led factory strike in March 2001 at a high-end producer of men's suits in Mexico and the strike's aftermath--including harassment from managers, corrupt union officials and labor authorities, and violent governor-sanctioned police actions. It illustrates how the women's shared identity as workers and mothers, deserving of dignity, respect, and a living wage, became the basis for radicalization and led to further civic organizing against the state, the company, and the corrupt union to demand justice.

Book Synopsis

Changes in the global economy have real and contradictory outcomes for the everyday lives of women workers. In 2001, Nancy Plankey-Videla had a rare opportunity to witness these effects firsthand. Having secured access to one of Latin America's top producers of high-end men's suits in Mexico for participant-observer research, she labored as a machine operator for nine months on a shop floor made up, mostly, of women. The firm had recently transformed itself from traditional assembly techniques, to lean, cutting-edge, Japanese-style production methods. Lured initially into the firm by way of increased wages and benefits, workers had helped shoulder the company's increasing debts. When the company's plan for successful expansion went awry and it reneged on promises it had made to the workforce, women workers responded by walking out on strike.

Building upon in-depth interviews with over sixty workers, managers, and policy makers, Plankey-Videla documents and analyzes events leading up to the female-led factory strike and its aftermath--including harassment from managers, corrupt union officials and labor authorities, and violent governor-sanctioned police actions. We Are in This Dance Together illustrates how the women's shared identity as workers and mothers--deserving of dignity, respect, and a living wage--became the basis for radicalization and led to further civic organizing against the state, the company, and the corrupt union to demand justice.

Review Quotes

"Plankey-Videla's cogent ethnography of labor relations and worker resistance at a cutting-edge apparel factory in Mexico reveals some of the most serious contradictions in our contemporary global labor market."--Jane Collins "author of Threads: Gender, Labor & Power in the Global Economy"

"Plankey-Videla's engaging ethnography of a Mexican factory illustrates the ways in which team production, gender, and labor resistance interact. It should interest readers in sociology, gender studies, and labor studies as well as anyone interested in the political economy of globalization."--Ruth Milkman "professor of sociology, City University of New York Graduate Center"

"A compelling story that joins the ranks of other important feminist scholarship examining the gendered dynamics of work within a context of globalization."
-- "American Journal of Sociology"

"On its surface, We Are in This Dance Together effectively portrays the unraveling of a single Mexican garment production company and the challenges faced by the broader Mexican economy during a period of global economic upheaval. Yet by weaving together the narratives of female factory workers, the progressively impotent efforts by management to remain relevant within an increasingly competitive marketplace, and the corrupt state apparatus, Plankey-Videla does much more."-- "Anthropology of Work Review"

About the Author

NANCY PLANKEY-VIDELA is an assistant professor in the department of sociology at Texas A & M University. She studies inequality in the workplace.