Unfreedom and Workers' Power: Ever-Present Possibilities

Resource type

Authors/contributors

Title

Abstract

Trafficking, forced labour and related phenomena have been documented time and again in recent years by advocacy groups, the media and government agencies. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are 20.9 million people in some form of forced labour worldwide. The estimate is broken down regionally and sectorally: 11.7 million of these are thought to be in the Asia and Pacific region; and 18.7 million are believed to be in the private economy, among whom 14.2 million are involved in economic activities not related to sexual exploitation. Debt bondage appears to be the most common mechanism of forced labour (cf. ILO 2005; 2012; Andrees and Belser 2009). The prevalence of labour relations characterized by various forms of unfreedom raises critical questions about how the phenomenon fits into the contemporary economy, and therefore about how to address the issue(s) in ways that advance the interests of all exploited workers. --Chapter abstract at Durham Research Online

Book Title

Handbook of the International Political Economy of Production

Series

Handbooks of research on international political economy series

Place

Cheltenham

Publisher

Edward Elgar Publishing

Date

2015

Pages

299-317

Language

English

ISBN

978-1-78347-020-4

URL

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298091622_Unfreedom_and_workers'_power_Ever-present_possibilities

Extra

https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/handbook-of-the-international-political-economy-of-production-9781784712587.html OCLC: 908245189

Notes

Contents:
Pt. 1. Restructuring the Global Political Economy
Introduction to Part 1. 1. Labour, war and world politics: Contemporary dynamics in world-historical perspective / Beverly J. Silver -- 2. Rethinking production, finance and hegemonic decline in IPE / Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin -- 3. Innovation policies and the competition state: The case of nanotechnology / Joscha Wullweber -- 4. The political economy of global labour arbitrage / David T. Martin -- 5. Apple's iPad City: Subcontracting exploitation to China / Mark Selden -- 6. The grapes of wrath: social upgrading and class struggles in global value chains / Benjamin Selwyn -- 7. Global outsourcing and socialization of labour: The case of Nike / Jeroen Merk -- 8. Standardizing services: transnational authority and market power / Jean-Christophe Graz -- 9. Encumbered behemoth: Wal-Mart, differential accumulation and international retail restructuring / Joseph Baines --10. Beyond the `BRICS': new patterns of development cooperation in the Trans-Eurasian corridor / Yury Gromyko.

Pt. 2. Labour and the Politics of Work
Introduction to Part 2. 11. Look back in hope? Reassessing Fordism today / Radhika Desai -- 12. Paternalism, Taylorism, socialism: The Battle for Production in the Chilean textile industry, 1930-1973 / Adam Fishwick -- 13. Trasformismo and the defeat of the Left in Italy / Davide Bradanini -- 14. Flexibilization of labour in the European Union / Otto Holman -- 15. Globalization and Japanese-style management: Image and changing reality / Ryoji Ihara -- 16. Work, power and the urban poor / Jeffrey Harrod -- 17. Unfreedom and workers' power: Ever-present possibilities / Siobhán McGrath and Kendra Strauss -- 18. The race to the bottom halted? Passive revolution and workers' resistance in China / Kevin Gray -- 19. Bargaining in the global commodity chain: The Asia Floor Wage Alliance / Ashim Roy. -- 20. Twilight of the machinocrats: creative industries, design and the future of human labour / Alan Freeman -- Appendix to Part 2: Transnational networks of radical labour research / Mehmet Gursan Senalp.

Pt. 3. Production, Reproduction, Nature
Introduction to Part 3. 21. Tracking bodies, the `Quantified Self', and the corporeal turn / Phoebe Moore -- 22. Production in everyday life: Poetics and prosaics / Matt Davies -- 23. Automobility: Culture, (re- )production and sustainability / Matthew Paterson --24. Risk capitalism, crisis of socialization and loss of civilization / Werner Seppmann -- 25. Servicing the world: Women, transnational migration and sex work in a neoliberal era / Christine B.N. Chin -- 26. Molecular biotechnologies: insights on production through the lens of reproduction / Miriam Boyer -- 27. Alternatives to agribusiness: agro-ecology and the peasant principle / Sylvia Kay -- 28. Strategies of a Green Economy, contours of a Green Capitalism / Markus Wissen.

Citation

McGrath, S., & Strauss, K. (2015). Unfreedom and Workers’ Power: Ever-Present Possibilities. In K. van der Pijl (Ed.), Handbook of the International Political Economy of Production (pp. 299–317). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298091622_Unfreedom_and_workers’_power_Ever-present_possibilities

Link to this record

http://labourstudies.ca/lsi/7TGFSACM