@article{oai:minpaku.repo.nii.ac.jp:00004178,
 author = {平井, 京之介 and Hirai, Kyonosuke},
 issue = {1},
 journal = {国立民族学博物館研究報告, Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology},
 month = {Oct},
 note = {Since the 1970s, industrialisation in Asia, Central America, and
elsewhere has been undertaken mainly by inviting transnational companies
to establish labour-intensive factories. In such factories various
types of clashes between foreign managers and indigenous workers have
been reported, often in the spheres of time, autonomy, and communication.
These sociological studies of work tend to take for granted doubtful
assumptions about traditional regional societies and foreign industrial
societies. The over-simply stereotyped assumptions of industrial
sociology often ignore the workers' experience. An anthropological
study of work or factory is needed here.
The aim of this paper is to answer a question in terms of the anthropological
research data which I collected in a Japanese-owned stationery
factory in Northern Thailand. What types of clashes do the
village women experience in the factory? How do they adapt to the factory
system?
First of all, this paper describes the organisation, regulations and
formal authority of the factory. Then the employees' interactions in the
factory are analysed, including their way of utilising the formal order
and authority. Finally, this paper describes the workers' lifestyles and
argues the relations between the formal power structure and the
differences of the workers' lifestyles.
The research data in this paper show that the Thai workers greatly
control the operation of the factory in a way that the Japanese managers
do not understand. Some of the Thai managers occupy an intermediary
position between the Japanese managers and the Thai workers in terms
of their foreign language ability. They utilise their advantageous position
to control the interactions between the Japanese and the Thai, which
covertly benefits them by keeping the social order in the factory.
Moreover, the paper shows that since the relationships between Thai
workers in the factory are basically or emotionally equal irrespective of
rank, the superior needs special techniques of persuading the inferior to
obey orders. The inferior can oppose the superior's strong compulsion
by sexual gossip.
The factory women are not passively controlled by the Japanese
managers or factory discipline, but are active participants in the construction
of the factory society. The relationships among the workers, the
managers, and the Japanese managers are not so rational as the
sociologists expect. The workers do not experience the capitalist
discipline in the factory as cruelly impersonal or irresistibly suppressive,
but rather can evade or defy the strict and irritating discipline. The
paper concludes that the social relations in the factory are rather individual
and personal. Profitability or efficiency is not the exclusive
principle of the workers' actions in the factory society. There exists not
a single stable hierarchy, but a variety of hierarchies of authority in the
factory society. Especially, the understanding of relations of power in
the factory requires investigation of the workers' struggles for good
reputations as women. These hierarchies create a disputing hierarchy.
Then, the workers' struggle for the determination of a hierarchy involves
a process of defining themselves.},
 pages = {1--76},
 title = {北タイの工場社会における権力と相互行為 : 日系文具メーカーの事例から},
 volume = {21},
 year = {1996},
 yomi = {ヒライ, キョウノスケ}
}