‘I Pray for the Factory to Continue Earning Money’: The Familial Factory Regime of the ‘Sun’ Food Factory in Turkey

This paper explores the factory regime in the ‘Sun' 1 food processing factory in Turkey, drawing on participant observation in the factory, informal interviews with women workers and in-depth interviews with the managers of the factory's ‘gherkin department’ in which I worked. This paper argues that the ‘Sun’ bottling and canning factory is best understood through my concept of the ‘familial factory regime’. By ‘familial factory regime’ I mean a factory regime in which the features of the extended patriarchal family are used to manage the labour force by obtaining women workers’ consent. Indeed, the paper suggests that there is a tendency for patriarchy to be reconstituted in the workplace through the presence of a familial factory regime. 1 ‘Sun’ is a pseudonymous name of the factory, which I gave it because of the heat.