LOCAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS IN THE HINTERLAND OF THE STATE OF RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL: NOVA FRIBURGO AND REGION UNDERGARMENT FASHION HUB

Abstract

This paper’s study object is the role of household labour in the building of the Local Production System (LPS) named ‘Nova Friburgo and Region Undergarment Fashion Hub’, one of the greatest underwear production centres in Brazil. Planned as an instrument for territorial development, many public and private investments were made to improve technologies, stimulate professional qualification and reduce the very present informality rates. The first perceived contradiction was the absence of informal working relationships in the adopted strategies, particularly the mostly female household labour. Therefore, we propose to analyse the extent to which the reproduction of the spaces of both the underwear production and the family reproduction through household labour has been providing social and economic local transformations, from the investments in the Local Production System constitution, particularly at our spatial research area, the neighbourhood of Olaria, in Nova Friburgo. The research has verified that the adopted strategies had slightly changed informality precariousness, since they had been turned to the enterprises, and not to the working relationships which effectively reveal its presence. The household labour has always been integrated to the capital (re)production, but ‘marginally’, consisting in an ‘exhaust valve’ from the reserve army of labour’s pressures; disguised in the contemporaneity, this work form it plays an important role in the building of this production space.