Development at Work: Postcolonial Imaginaries, Global Capitalism, and Everyday Life at a Factory in Tunisia (Politik und Gesellschaft des Nahen Ostens)

Why did the postcolonial Tunisian state promise development? How do these promises reverberate in the hopes and dreams of Tunisians today? And how do they fit into contemporary global capitalist structures of exploitation? Starting from the everyday life at a French factory in Tunisia this book explores the relationship between the political economy of Tunisia, postcolonial promises of the Tunisian state and the hopes and dreams of Tunisians working in the factory. It argues for taking the concept of development seriously not as a desirable policy goal but as a multi-dimensional social and political fact: as the unfolding of global capitalism, as a postcolonial nation-state project, and as a personal everyday imaginary. The book employs a longue durée perspective that analyzes contemporary desires and expectations while tracing and placing them inside Tunisia’s history. It thus contributes to our understanding of state-society relations and global capitalism in Tunisia. Geleitwort Acknowledgements Abstract Notes Contents Abbreviations List of Figures 1 Introduction 1.1 Setting the Scene 1.2 Research Question 1.3 Empirical, Methodological, and Theoretical Contributions 1.4 Structure of the Thesis 2 Method and Methodology 2.1 What Ethnography Has to Offer to Political Science 2.1.1 The Political 2.1.2 Ethnographic Sensibility 2.2 Finding My Topic 2.3 Gathering Data 2.3.1 Participant Observation 2.3.2 Interviews 2.3.3 Archival Work 2.4 Analysis 2.4.1 Participant Observation and the Importance of the Everyday 2.4.2 Discourse Analysis and Coding 2.5 Ambivalence, or, How Seriously I Take What People Tell Me 2.5.1 Agency and Discourse 2.5.2 Writing About Other People’s Realities 2.6 Methodological Limits 2.6.1 A Suggestive Link Between Old Newspapers and Contemporary Realities at CERAT 2.6.2 Insufficient Sample Size for Generalizable Conclusions About Global Capitalism 3 Conceptual Framework: Towards a Multilayered Understanding of Development 3.1 What We Look at When We Research “Development” 3.2 Development as a Project of Postcolonial Nation-State Building 3.2.1 Nation-Building Projects in WANA 3.2.2 Same Story, Different Lenses 3.3 Development as an Imaginary 3.3.1 The Development Imaginary in WANA 3.3.2 Same Story, Different Lenses: 3.4 Development as the Unfolding of Global Capitalism 3.4.1 Dependency Theory 3.4.2 Uneven and Combined Development: Fifty Shades of Capitalism 3.5 What We Gain from a Development Perspective 4 Context: A Brief History of Tunisia’s Political Economy 4.1 1956–1961: The First Five-Year Plan. Attempted Economic Decolonization 4.1.1 The Colonial Heritage 4.1.2 De-Colonization 1956–1961 4.2 1961–1969: The First 10-Year Plan. Import Substitution Industrialization 4.2.1 Widening the Urban-Rural Rift 4.2.2 The End of Import Substitution Industrialization 4.3 1969–1986: The Second 10-Year Plan and Export-Oriented Development 4.3.1 Expanding Unevenness: Excluding the Masses from Corporatist Politics 4.3.2 Offshore Legislation: The Loi 72 4.3.3 Results: 4.3.4 The Beginnings of Neoliberalism and Public Unrest 4.4 1986–2010: Structural Adjustment 4.4.1 Reforms: 4.4.2 Results: 4.5 2010-Today: A Preliminary Assessment. Further SAPs in the Context of the Post-Revolutionary Budget Crisis 4.6 Assessing 70 Years of Development 5 Analysis Part I: The State’s Development Discourse 5.1 Development Discourse 1972 5.1.1 A Continuation of the Post-independence Development Project (by Different Means) 5.1.2 State Planed Liberalization 5.1.3 The Loi 72 and Export-oriented Development 5.1.4 The Stakes of Development: “Promotion de l’homme” 5.2 Development Discourse 1986 5.2.1 Crisis and Austerity 5.2.2 Objectives and Solutions 5.2.3 Struggle, Security, and National Unity 5.3 Comparison Between 1972 and 1986 5.4 Development Discourse Post-2010/2011 5.5 Why the Development Promise is not a Social Contract 5.5.1 What People Expect. A Development Perspective vs. the Social Contract Debate 5.5.2 Contract or no Contract? The Development Promise and Regime Legitimacy 5.5.3 Hegemony Instead of Social Contract 5.5.4 Taking the Superstructure Seriously 6 Analysis Part II: Development Imaginaries at CERAT 6.1 Disappointed Hopes of Progress, Meritocracy, and Middle Classness 6.1.1 Progress in Time 6.1.2 Education and the Meritocratic Promise 6.1.3 Entrepreneurship 6.1.4 Circumstances (“ẓurūf”) and Missing Opportunities (“‘Imkāniyyāt”) 6.1.5 Emigration 6.1.6 Middle Classness 6.1.7 Consumerism/Materialism 6.1.8 Unkept Promises 6.2 “Feels Like Development”: Tidiness, Orderliness, Respect, Discipline, Professionalism, Security and Peace of Mind 6.2.1 Jaw 6.3 Privileged and Stuck at the Same Time 6.4 Why Neoliberal Policies do not (Necessarily) Create Neoliberal Subjects 6.4.1 Just Another Development Policy 6.4.2 Neoliberalism with Bureaucratic Instead of Entrepreneurial Selves 7 Analysis Part III: Quality, Standardization, and Bureaucracy 7.1 The Enterprise Bureaucracy at CERAT 7.2 A Working Definition of Bureaucracy 7.3 Facets of Bureaucracy at CERAT 7.3.1 QRQC Meeting 7.3.2 Saisies 7.3.3 Audits 7.4 ISO 9001: Measurement and Governmentality 7.5 The Bureaucratic Market 7.5.1 Governmental Effects: Productivity, Regularity, and Control from Afar 7.5.2 Certificates and Trust 7.6 How the Enterprise Bureaucracy Plays Out at CERAT 7.6.1 Pleasant and Exciting Bureaucracy 8 Conclusion 8.1 Development as the Unfolding of Global Capitalism 8.2 Development as Tunisia’s Postcolonial Nation-State Project 8.3 Development as Personal Imaginary 8.4 Further Research Perspectives 8.5 Why We Need Development References