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In 2011 the Philippines surpassed India to become what the New York Times referred to as "the world's capital of call centers." By the end of 2015 the Philippine call center industry employed over one million people and generated twenty-two billion dollars in revenue. In A Nation on the Line Jan M. Padios examines this massive industry in the context of globalization, race, gender, transnationalism, and postcolonialism, outlining how it has become a significant site of efforts to redefine Filipino identity and culture, the Philippine nation-state, and the value of Filipino labor. She also chronicles the many contradictory effects of call center work on Filipino identity, family, consumer culture, and sexual politics. As Padios demonstrates, the critical question of call centers does not merely expose the logic of transnational capitalism and the legacies of colonialism; it also problematizes the process of nation-building and peoplehood in the early twenty-first century.

Call centers --- #SBIB:39A4 --- #SBIB:39A6 --- Toegepaste antropologie --- Etniciteit / Migratiebeleid en -problemen --- Telephone stations --- Anthropology --- Customer service --- Filipinos --- Philippines --- United States

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A NATION ON THE LINE is an ethnographic study of the call center industry in the Philippines and of its workforce composed of young, largely college-educated Filipinos. Padios merges several lines of inquiry about Pacific transnationalism, about the role of affective labor in global markets, and about critique of Filipino exploitation by the United States through economic and military power since independence-- in order to consider how post-colonial and post-industrial changes in the Philippines’ role in global capitalism and culture are brought to bear in everyday life. Padios argues that the call center industry serves as a rich case-study for how Filipinos work within hegemonic dynamics of relational service and an understanding of American consumer culture in ways that figure Filipinos' sense of identity and aspirations at the national and individual levels.