The Agreste Pernambucano clothing cluster

Origins and current configurations

Abstract

This article discusses the formation of the Agreste Pernambucano Clothing Cluster and its relations with the current configurations of this productive territory. We traced the history of a territory that overcame the economic crises caused by the decline in rural production - mainly due to the great droughts in the region - and today it appears as one of the main centers of production of clothing in Brazil. Based on research carried out between 2017 and the beginning of 2020 - with visits to production units, interviews with workers and data collection on the local clothing industry -, we seek to discuss the productive organization of the Pole and the perceptions of workers concerning the valorization of autonomous work, even in informality. We argue that, forged in the dialectic between privation and inventiveness, the current configurations of the Pole and its competitive power reside, to a large extent, in the homology between the culture founded on an “imperative of independence”, related to the region's history, and the neoliberal logic contemporary of individual responsibility, whose material support is verified in flexible and intense forms of autonomous and informal work.