Export Processing Zones and Global Class Formation

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with one of the most striking developments in the global political economy of capitalism after the Second World War; the rise of export processing zones and special economic zones. Building on long-term ethnohistorical research on the zones’ global spread from one zone in Puerto Rico in 1947 to 3500 zones employing more than 70 million workers in 2007, it is shown that this phenomenon can only be explained if the analytical focus is on the elementary structures of capitalism, with class formation as one such structure. A critique of the ethnic bias of mainstream anthropological research on the small-island nation-state Mauritius exemplifies how historical materialist structural analysis enables anthropology to overcome its silence regarding the macrostructural workings of capitalism and also undiscloses blind spots in what so-called micro-level analysis.