The Governance Gauge: Border Capitalism

We hope you’re enjoying your Sunday, and hope that this weekend’s Governance Gauge will get you ready for the coming week! For more reading materials, our reading list is constantly updated.

“Border Capitalism” is brought to us by Asst. Prof. Stephen Campbell of the Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. The book primarily focuses on the Mae Sot special economic zone (and the various permutations of that name) and the geopolitical and economical considerations of the Myanmar-Thailand border region. The point of view sometimes veers into Marxist Autonomist territory, but mostly keeps a decent level of descriptive scholarship that one would expect from an academic economics work such as this.

The book is split into 6 chapters which regard the creation of the border zone, production practices, mobility struggles, policing, followed by a theoretical and prescriptive chapter on workers’ rights in such environments.

Creators of zones and societies will find chapters 2 and 3 most useful as they describe the production practices and mobility struggles of those employed within this zone, and the best practices to avoid such undesirable results.

Policymakers and analysts can take a look at chapters 1 and 4 — these chapters speak about the securing of this border and the corruption that sets in with border agents. These chapters are highly relevant to anti-corruption.

Scholars and experts may use chapters 5 and 6 for references on marxist organisational theory and worker rights literature — as well as well-sourced data throughout the book regarding the economics of the economic zone.

The book can be found here.