Human enterprise of global capitalism and the golden collars: producing the producer

Abstract

This thesis is about the production of a specific kind of producer, i.e., "golden collars". Golden collars are the most valuable production factor in the contemporary capitalism; they are mostly assigned to tasks that involve innovation, information generation and analysis. In this regard, their productivity is the primary concern of firms, since golden collars create the main comparative advantage in the global competition. In the scope of this study, production denotes not the production of commodities but the production of golden collar subjectivities: their aspirations, desires, bodies, and performances. In this regard, this study focuses on the discursive formation within which the norms of effectiveness, self-development and productivity are asserted and how through these norms a space is opened up in which golden collars in Istanbul make claims regarding "them" and "us"; the West and theEast respectively. There in, work is a realm of innumerable disciplinary techniques targeting thetime, the body, emotions, and the mind-settings of golden collars; but these disciplines in turn produce specific hierarchies, differentiations, distinctions, and exclusions in which golden collars invest.