Pub Date : 2024-03-13DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10143
Aryaman Sharma
Taking from, and critiquing, both the scholarship on the Indian “middle class” as well as the scholarship on the ‘labour aristocracy’, this paper argues for the reformulation of the Indian “middle class” as a labour aristocracy or worker elite. We define the distinctive characteristics that set the Indian worker elite apart from the broader working class and highlight, through the case studies of international migration, patterns in urban living spaces and domestic service employment, the stark differences between the worker elite and the poor working masses in India, and the exploitative relationship that exists between the two. The analysis points to the semi-periphery being the locus of the largest inequalities in the capitalist world-system today, where the bourgeoisie and the worker elite both gain tremendously from the exploitation inherent to capitalism. Resultingly, the task at hand in India and the semi-periphery broadly remains to organize the poor, marginalised working masses.
{"title":"Reframing the Indian Middle Class as a Labour Aristocracy","authors":"Aryaman Sharma","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10143","url":null,"abstract":"Taking from, and critiquing, both the scholarship on the Indian “middle class” as well as the scholarship on the ‘labour aristocracy’, this paper argues for the reformulation of the Indian “middle class” as a labour aristocracy or worker elite. We define the distinctive characteristics that set the Indian worker elite apart from the broader working class and highlight, through the case studies of international migration, patterns in urban living spaces and domestic service employment, the stark differences between the worker elite and the poor working masses in India, and the exploitative relationship that exists between the two. The analysis points to the semi-periphery being the locus of the largest inequalities in the capitalist world-system today, where the bourgeoisie and the worker elite both gain tremendously from the exploitation inherent to capitalism. Resultingly, the task at hand in India and the semi-periphery broadly remains to organize the poor, marginalised working masses.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140148064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-12DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10151
Fredrik Petersson
Weimar Berlin was an anticolonial metropolis in the interwar period. After the ending of the Great War in 1918, Berlin developed into a hotbed of political activism, culminating in 1933 with the Nazi Party’s ascendancy to power, having migrants from the colonial and semi-colonial world arriving, living and working in the city. In this spatial and temporal setting established individuals, holding different national and cultural backgrounds, networks that overlapped with the political milieu of pacifism, socialism and communism in Germany. In some cases this resulted in anticolonial articulations that explicitly fused politics with culture. By mapping and locating these anticolonial articulations in Weimar Berlin, drawing inspiration from theoretical concepts on space and place, the essay analyze the spatial setting of anticolonial politics and culture, and how this constituted an articulated resistance against colonialism and imperialism, performed at theaters, in film, music, or curricular activities. The essay is based on archival research conducted in Berlin, Moscow and Stockholm.
{"title":"Migrant Activists and Cultural Spaces of Anticolonialism in Weimar Berlin","authors":"Fredrik Petersson","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10151","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Weimar Berlin was an anticolonial metropolis in the interwar period. After the ending of the Great War in 1918, Berlin developed into a hotbed of political activism, culminating in 1933 with the Nazi Party’s ascendancy to power, having migrants from the colonial and semi-colonial world arriving, living and working in the city. In this spatial and temporal setting established individuals, holding different national and cultural backgrounds, networks that overlapped with the political milieu of pacifism, socialism and communism in Germany. In some cases this resulted in anticolonial articulations that explicitly fused politics with culture. By mapping and locating these anticolonial articulations in Weimar Berlin, drawing inspiration from theoretical concepts on space and place, the essay analyze the spatial setting of anticolonial politics and culture, and how this constituted an articulated resistance against colonialism and imperialism, performed at theaters, in film, music, or curricular activities. The essay is based on archival research conducted in Berlin, Moscow and Stockholm.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140250006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-12DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10138
Peter Ranis
{"title":"The People’s Hotel: Working for Justice in Argentina, written by Sobering, Katherine","authors":"Peter Ranis","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10138","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140248561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-11DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10147
Thomas Beaumont, Tim Rees
{"title":"International Communism and the “Cultural Front”","authors":"Thomas Beaumont, Tim Rees","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10147","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140251852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10134
Beth Gutelius, Nik Theodore
For nearly a half century, questions of why and how firms navigate the “make-buy” decision have animated fields as varied as industrial relations and economic geography. The idea of “core competencies” became the dominant explanation of corporate decision-making processes, where any activity deemed outside of the central specializations of the firm is a possible candidate for outsourcing. Coupled with the focus on short-term profit taking, corporate leaders have grown increasingly focused on shedding less-profitable activities and shifting supply-chain risk—leading to high levels of lead-firm influence over subcontracting markets and the cost-based competition that permeates them. This paper examines the role of third-party logistics companies (3pl s) in the warehousing sector. It argues that efforts to contain operational costs increasingly are focused on labor and that the ability to access and deploy low-cost labor is among the “core competencies” touted by many 3pl s in the warehousing sector.
{"title":"Redefining “Core Competencies”: Labor Market Intermediation in Outsourced Warehouses","authors":"Beth Gutelius, Nik Theodore","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10134","url":null,"abstract":"For nearly a half century, questions of why and how firms navigate the “make-buy” decision have animated fields as varied as industrial relations and economic geography. The idea of “core competencies” became the dominant explanation of corporate decision-making processes, where any activity deemed outside of the central specializations of the firm is a possible candidate for outsourcing. Coupled with the focus on short-term profit taking, corporate leaders have grown increasingly focused on shedding less-profitable activities and shifting supply-chain risk—leading to high levels of lead-firm influence over subcontracting markets and the cost-based competition that permeates them. This paper examines the role of third-party logistics companies (3<jats:sc>pl</jats:sc> s) in the warehousing sector. It argues that efforts to contain operational costs increasingly are focused on labor and that the ability to access and deploy low-cost labor is among the “core competencies” touted by many 3<jats:sc>pl</jats:sc> s in the warehousing sector.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138529354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-29DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10140
Gregor Gall, Mark Harcourt
Unions’ presence and influence in the United States continue to atrophy. One key reason for this decline is the difficulties in certifying via the National Labor Relations Act. Consequently, labor-oriented scholars have developed proposals to overhaul and/or supplement this process. One of the most far-reaching is the ‘Clean Slate’. We contend that, though a welcome advance, ‘Clean Slate’ is a necessary but insufficient law reform to revive unions. Accordingly, we suggest a complementary policy, the union default, to the ‘Clean Slate’. With a union default, ‘Clean Slate’ would produce a much swifter and more dramatic resurgence in union membership and resources, sparking a badly needed virtuous upward spiral.
{"title":"Can the ‘Clean Slate’ ‘Go Big’ on Its Own? The Contribution of the Union Default","authors":"Gregor Gall, Mark Harcourt","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10140","url":null,"abstract":"Unions’ presence and influence in the United States continue to atrophy. One key reason for this decline is the difficulties in certifying via the National Labor Relations Act. Consequently, labor-oriented scholars have developed proposals to overhaul and/or supplement this process. One of the most far-reaching is the ‘Clean Slate’. We contend that, though a welcome advance, ‘Clean Slate’ is a necessary but insufficient law reform to revive unions. Accordingly, we suggest a complementary policy, the union default, to the ‘Clean Slate’. With a union default, ‘Clean Slate’ would produce a much swifter and more dramatic resurgence in union membership and resources, sparking a badly needed virtuous upward spiral.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138529346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-27DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10137
Stephanie J. Smith
This article analyzes the interactions of artists, Mexico’s Communist Party, or the Partido Comunista Mexicano (pcm), and the Mexican state within the context of Mexico’s vibrant post-revolutionary era. Although during these early years the Party’s official membership numbers remained relatively minimal, this article argues that the extraordinary influence of Mexico’s creative participants on the politics of the period was significant. During the 1920s the pcm derived a great deal of prestige from its association with art and the muralists, including Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and as a result Mexico’s lively political and artistic scene attracted the attention of writers, photographers, artists, and intellectuals from all over the world. Art and politics intertwined as artists played major roles in political affairs, and politicians appropriated the arts to transmit the “official” national history. Indeed, during these exhilarating years, the artists and the pcm built a powerful coalition, and one whose influence endured long beyond the 1920s.
{"title":"Envisioning the Revolution: Art and the Creation of Mexico’s Communist Party","authors":"Stephanie J. Smith","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10137","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the interactions of artists, Mexico’s Communist Party, or the Partido Comunista Mexicano (pcm), and the Mexican state within the context of Mexico’s vibrant post-revolutionary era. Although during these early years the Party’s official membership numbers remained relatively minimal, this article argues that the extraordinary influence of Mexico’s creative participants on the politics of the period was significant. During the 1920s the pcm derived a great deal of prestige from its association with art and the muralists, including Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and as a result Mexico’s lively political and artistic scene attracted the attention of writers, photographers, artists, and intellectuals from all over the world. Art and politics intertwined as artists played major roles in political affairs, and politicians appropriated the arts to transmit the “official” national history. Indeed, during these exhilarating years, the artists and the pcm built a powerful coalition, and one whose influence endured long beyond the 1920s.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139228872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-10DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10129
André Thiemann
Abstract Extending from an ethnographic case study that demonstrates the existential troubles of Serbian farmers to continue raspberry production for the global market, this article anthropologically hones in on the intertwining of human and non-human labour (production) with socio-economic and techno-scientific policies of care (reproduction). Different waves of state transformation—the build-up and decay of formal employment coupled with the emergence, then exhaustion of the welfare state, its socio-liberal transformation in the early 2000s, followed by its polypore repurposing for illiberal ends since 2012, have led to a zombified hope in the state’s will to care for its population. Skilled and unskilled workers have emigrated to Western labour markets, while the climate crisis gained momentum because of the underfunding of critical infrastructures of value. Adopting a Marxist-Eco-Feminist care perspective, the case study thus embeds seemingly disconnected concerns within wider struggles on the boundaries of the (welfare) state, economy and techno-science.
{"title":"Fledgling Farms and Failing Health: How the Polypore State Transforms the Multispecies Relations in Serbia’s Raspberry Fields","authors":"André Thiemann","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10129","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Extending from an ethnographic case study that demonstrates the existential troubles of Serbian farmers to continue raspberry production for the global market, this article anthropologically hones in on the intertwining of human and non-human labour (production) with socio-economic and techno-scientific policies of care (reproduction). Different waves of state transformation—the build-up and decay of formal employment coupled with the emergence, then exhaustion of the welfare state, its socio-liberal transformation in the early 2000s, followed by its polypore repurposing for illiberal ends since 2012, have led to a zombified hope in the state’s will to care for its population. Skilled and unskilled workers have emigrated to Western labour markets, while the climate crisis gained momentum because of the underfunding of critical infrastructures of value. Adopting a Marxist-Eco-Feminist care perspective, the case study thus embeds seemingly disconnected concerns within wider struggles on the boundaries of the (welfare) state, economy and techno-science.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135091863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-09DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10128
Jake Lin, Dennis Arnold, Minh T.N. Nguyen
Abstract Welfare expansion in the global South is partly in response to the social crises caused by neoliberal restructuring since the 1980s, with the 2008 global financial crisis escalating them, and the covid-19 pandemic further exposing the impact on the most precarious working populations. What are the new dynamics of labor struggles against these structural, industrial, and health crises under the expansion of social protection or the lack thereof? How do the state and non-state actors manage recurring and new capitalist crises by reconfiguring labor and social policies? The contributions in this special issue address these questions by engaging with workers’ lived experiences across the global South and post-communist states. They show that current labor and social policies fail the test under various crises. We argue that the neoliberalization of labor and welfare reconfigurations and the recurring crises of global capitalism have reproduced each other in these global South countries.
{"title":"Welfare in Crisis: Labor and Social Protection in the Global South","authors":"Jake Lin, Dennis Arnold, Minh T.N. Nguyen","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10128","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Welfare expansion in the global South is partly in response to the social crises caused by neoliberal restructuring since the 1980s, with the 2008 global financial crisis escalating them, and the covid-19 pandemic further exposing the impact on the most precarious working populations. What are the new dynamics of labor struggles against these structural, industrial, and health crises under the expansion of social protection or the lack thereof? How do the state and non-state actors manage recurring and new capitalist crises by reconfiguring labor and social policies? The contributions in this special issue address these questions by engaging with workers’ lived experiences across the global South and post-communist states. They show that current labor and social policies fail the test under various crises. We argue that the neoliberalization of labor and welfare reconfigurations and the recurring crises of global capitalism have reproduced each other in these global South countries.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135290647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-06DOI: 10.1163/24714607-bja10135
Elke Weesjes
Abstract This article examines the postwar cultural sphere of the Dutch communist movement. Drawing on a series of interviews with 27 Dutch cradle communists born between 1935 and 1955, communist archives, and a wide range of other sources, it explores respondents’ cultural upbringing and family leisure time in the period 1945–1965. It challenges the notion that Dutch communists all lived in a closed sectarian milieu or ideological bubble and instead argues that Dutch communists had a close yet complex relationship with the ‘bourgeois’ (non-communist) world.
{"title":"Blending Soviet and Dutch Culture: Communist Family Life in the Netherlands 1945–1965","authors":"Elke Weesjes","doi":"10.1163/24714607-bja10135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10135","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the postwar cultural sphere of the Dutch communist movement. Drawing on a series of interviews with 27 Dutch cradle communists born between 1935 and 1955, communist archives, and a wide range of other sources, it explores respondents’ cultural upbringing and family leisure time in the period 1945–1965. It challenges the notion that Dutch communists all lived in a closed sectarian milieu or ideological bubble and instead argues that Dutch communists had a close yet complex relationship with the ‘bourgeois’ (non-communist) world.","PeriodicalId":42634,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Labor and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135680081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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