The Devil Wears Dockers: Devil Pacts, Trade Zones, and Rural-Urban Ties in the Dominican Republic

摘要

AbstractThis essay examines popular narratives that a spirit demon or bacá lurked in an export garment plant in the Santiago trade zone of the Dominican Republic in the early 2000s. By interpreting the bacá story, and the transformation of the bacá itself from a rural context to an urban factory, we unpack the changing nature and meaning of employment under neoliberal capitalism, and tease apart complex geographies of status, exploitation, technology and debt.