Paper short abstract:

This paper considers deindustrialisation since the mid-19th century and shows how it is shaped by capitalism's historical fixes triggered by shifts in hegemonic power in the world system and by capital's geographical seesaw that incorporates and ejects locations from industry-based exploitation.

Paper long abstract:

Deindustrialisation is commonly studied as a political-economic process that first "hit" Western advanced capitalist nations during the global crisis of the 1970s. Thus closely linked to the flexibilisation of capitalist manufacturing industries and wider accumulation strategies that saw corporations relocate to newly industrialising nations in Asia and Latin America, deindustrialisation is seldom considered as a historical phenomenon that stretches back to the 19th century.

Building on long-term ethnographic and archival research in and on Mauritius, this paper considers the transition from colonial modes of exploitation and accumulation in plantation industries and real estate businesses to postcolonial modes of exploitation and accumulation in manufacturing, tourism, and financial services industries. This shows that deindustrialisation is the unseen Siamese twin of capitalist industrialisation; with all new industries developing in one world region because of processes of deindustrialisation in other world regions.

In order to theorise the longue durée of deindustrialisation, this paper draws on Neil Smith's concept of the geographical seesaw of capitalism (according to which capital abandons regions with high reproduction costs for labour and fixed infrastuctures in favour of regions where such costs are lower, only to return once a period of deindustrialisation has rendered abandoneed regions cost effective again) and on Giovanni Arrighi's concept of historical fixes of capitalism (according to which successive hegemonic powers in the world system develop particular subsidies for capital to stay mobile).

The aim is to extrapolate a historical anthropology of deindustrialisation based on the case study Mauritius.