Author Description

The motor vehicle industry has had a dramatic impact on industrialized societies, shaping the structure and productive processes of capitalist economies and defining consumer life styles. The industry's impact on the Third World has been no less significant. The contributions in this book provide a unique view of its emergence and growth in a number of different national settings in an area of the Third World where the industry is most advanced. They explore what occurs when the world's leading consumer durable is produced and sold in a context of dependency and underdevelopment.Chapters by Kenneth S. Mericle, Rhys Jenkins, and Rich Kronish examine the political economy of the motor vehicle industry as it has evolved in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, stressing the importance of the structural problems it has encountered. Chapters by John Humphrey, Judith Evans, Paul Heath Hoeffel and Daniel James, and by Ian Roxborough focus on the role and impact of labor in the same three countries. Chapters by Douglas Bennett and Kenneth Sharpe, and Michael Fleet (on the industry in Colombia) discuss the bargaining process between the transnational vehicle corporations and the Latin American governments. A concluding chapter by the editors summarizes the study and offers a history of the industry in the three principal countries from 1900 to 1980.Rich Kronish is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Kenneth S. Mericle is Assistant Professor of Labor Education, School for Workers, University of Wisconsin, Madison.