Developing Neo-Fordism: A Comparative Perspective Heidi Gottfried Apstract: The current social reorganization of production centers around a move toward greater flexibilization in the workplace and the casualization of the labor force. As was true for prior changes in labor law, the degree and nature of legisla- tive initiatives reflect the strength of competing interests between capital and labor in the policy arena. By detailing both how some states have been historically more or less proactive and how labor has been more or less successful in shaping the process, this paper compares the development of neo-Fordist regimes in Sweden, Japan, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Research on flexible work practices rises up like a Tower of Babel, both empirically and conceptually, in its use of incommensurable vocabularies that seek to represent these changes. Each framework articulates its own language (eg,, flexible specialization, post- Fordism, post-bureaucratic, post-modernism, post-Taylorism) to make sense of current economic reality. While most share the view that the 1970s marked a crisis in Fordism, each adopts a different standpoint to explain and characterize transition. Some of this literature adopts a positive, upbeat view to speak about flexibility in terms of its contri- butions to organizational effectiveness, greater worker control, etc. Yet several are far more guarded about flexibility, seeing it as heavily ideological—as a new form of labor subordination. There has been no shortage of efforts to define novel spatialities and temporalities in employment, signalled by a shift from mass production to more decentralized production modes. Nor has there been any shortage of controversy concerning the welfare implications of these shifts. In the most optimistic view, “flexible specialization” Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907. Special thanks to David Fasenfest for lus insightful comments on earlier drafts, This project was made possible through funding from the ASA/NSF Advancement of the Discipline Grant and a DAAD Study Visit Grant. Copyright (c) 2004 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) Brill Academic Publishers, Inc