Paper long abstract:

Our perspective on the anthropology of class begins from what Marx called the "multiplication of the proletariat," which he understood as the mirror process to capital accumulation. We take this as a call for a sustained focus on the continual making, unmaking, and remaking of labor forces and working classes - politically, culturally, and structurally - through the lens of dispossession and disorganization. Labour, in our understanding, is first and foremost a political entity, whose movements, organizations, and cultures reflect its multiple engagements with capital and state, as well as the relationships with other labourers, locally, regionally, and globally. This relational approach brings labour's political agency to the fore, and suggests that the outcomes of working classes' attempts to make themselves are multiple and uneven, resulting in attempts at solidarity, as well as racial, ethnic, and gender exclusions. Drawing together recent theoretical debates and ethnographic cases, we will chart the effects of simultaneous, global processes of dispossession and disorganization for particular landscapes of production and working class life.