Humanitarian Logics, Capitalist Practices: The Paradox of Labor Control in a Jordanian Social Enterprise

Abstract

Social enterprises combine humanitarian commitments with commercial production, yet little is known about how these competing imperatives shape the everyday control of labor in Jordan and the wider Middle East and North Africa region. Based on fieldwork and semi-structured interviews conducted between 2024 and 2026, this article examines the management and labor experiences of female workers in a social enterprise and its affiliated textile workshop in northern Jordan. The findings show that labor control operated through a combination of capitalist discipline and humanitarian-oriented practices. Workers’ accounts present a valuation of the safety and social legitimacy of the workplace, income, and flexibility, which could make labor arrangements more acceptable and therefore contribute to the stabilization of the labor order. The article develops the concept of ‘humanitarian labor control’ to capture this combination of care and control. It argues that this mode of control is shaped by the social enterprise’s dependence on production under precarious conditions, local moral institutions, as well as the forewoman’s life experiences and cross-cultural positionality. By providing a regionally grounded perspective, this study contributes to labor process and social enterprise research by demonstrating how humanitarian care and capitalist discipline can be intertwined within the everyday organization of labor.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Middle East Critique, 2026 · DOI ↗