The Work in Progress Seminar Series returns tomorrow with a talk on manufacturing firms in Malta analysed through economic sociology.
The second half of the 20th century saw Malta transitioning from a colony dependent on its colonial power to a sovereign nation-state. Such a shift, partially and initially, came through a strategy that prioritised an export-led type of industrialisation fuelled by foreign investment.
A number of such multinational companies still hold a presence in Malta, albeit in a number of cases these being physiognomically are distinct from their original state.
The talk will be delivered by Dylan Cassar whose study firstly aims to take a sociological look at the industrial organisation, evolving or otherwise, of said manufacturing companies in terms of ‘the Fordist’ and ‘the post-Fordist’.
It is secondly concerned with the relationships and practices these companies hold with locally-owned SMEs, which would represent a possible overcoming of a rigid and classical dual economy composed on the one hand of the foreign-owned company and the domestic SME on the other.
These main concerns are dealt with by presenting a set of evolving scenarios involving two comparable foreign-owned cases and nine small local enterprises acting as support-enterprises to the cases. The findings reveal a diachronic interplay between environmental structural constraints on and agency-driven action by the case studies, as well as divergent interfirm practices contingent on the particularities of the firms and the histories of the relationships.
Cassar has completed an undergraduate and a Master’s degree in sociology at the University of Malta. His academic and research interests lie in the political economy and economic sociology of development, with particular attention to transitioning and emerging economies.
The Work in Progress Seminar Series is a seminar-based interface between the University of Malta community and civil society. It is convened by Paul Clough, Peter Mayo and Michael Briguglio.
■ Tomorrow’s talk is taking place at the Faculty of Arts Library of the University of Malta at Tal-Qroqq, Msida, at 6pm. For more information, look up the event on Facebook.