Work as a human social activity of transformation of nature, always had a fundamental importance in various spheres of social life. Thus, identification processes, forms of relationships (subordination, domination and exclusion, equity, reciprocity, correspondence, etc.)
Long Abstract:
In recent decades there have been major changes in production structures in the world, centrally involving the application of different modes of labor flexibility and precariousness. These changes, which extended to both the urban and the rural, redefined the terms of employment, labor relations and business strategies, and the methods of protest and resistance of workers, resulting in forms of mobilization, strategies collective production and employment, recovery, innovation and diffusion of union strategies.
We invite contemporary approaches that are presented to describe the complexity of daily work (industrial, service, trade, informal) exerted in urban contexts, involving the challenges of skills, the uses of technology, tensions represented by phenomena such as instability, unemployment and risks faced by workers. We want to understand the changes occurring in rural areas related to agribusiness activities, whether in farming or ranching, paying attention to changes made in the field worker's identity and way of life.
We believe that an ethnographic eye and an approach through field work can grasp the multiplicity of meanings that these processes take. This working group aims to bring together research from a socio-anthropological perspective, contrast observations, explanations and interpretations.
El modelo sindical actual se ha posicionado con fuerza como objeto de debate en el mundo del trabajo, como consecuencia de las transformaciones desarrolladas en las últimas décadas. Esta cuestión, es vivida concretamente en el día a día del trabajador, siendo expresión a la vez, aunque no mecánicamente, de los cambios en el denominado “modelo económico”. Es nuestro propósito analizar y comprender tanto la historicidad de las formas de organización, como la percepción que los trabajadores tienen de las mismas.
Paper long abstract:
Este trabajo aborda el problema del modelo sindical argentino desde una perspectiva regional, particularmente a través del análisis de las normas, acciones y percepciones de los trabajadores. Nos proponemos abordar las formas que el llamado "modelo sindical" adquiere dentro de las problemáticas concretas, teniendo en cuenta tanto las posibilidades de vehiculización como los obstáculos que presenta a la hora de organizar los colectivos gremiales. Consideramos, a la vez, que si bien el concepto se encuentra fuertemente vinculado a formas jurídicas que lo expresan, incide principalmente en los modos de organización de los trabajadores, permeando distintos aspectos de la vida del gremialista. En tal sentido, se tendrá en cuenta el carácter de historicidad de modelo vigente, generado hace más de seis décadas, vinculándolo con las distintas valoraciones positivas o negativas, la complejidad que adquiere en las prácticas concretas y los modos en que es "vivido" en los espacios cotidianos. Buscamos además, plantear una reflexión sobre nuestro proceso de investigación y las complejidades que conlleva el trabajo etnográfico dentro de las organizaciones gremiales.
En este trabajo se propone abordar el modo en que se construyen las relaciones laborales de los vendedores ambulantes en una línea de trenes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. El análisis está centrado en cómo para poder desarrollar la actividad los actores construyen relaciones territorializadas.
Paper long abstract:
En este trabajo se propone abordar el modo en que se construyen las relaciones laborales de los vendedores ambulantes en una línea de trenes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. El análisis está centrado en cómo para poder desarrollar la actividad los actores construyen relaciones de afinidad con otros actores presentes (otros vendedores, personal de seguridad, pasajeros, etc. ) que posibilitan la construcción de territorios y la estabilización en la tarea.
Resumen corto:
A partir del análisis de un episodio laboral concreto, intentaré acercar algunas reflexiones en torno a las relaciones de trabajo que se gestan en el espacio de oficina, y cómo estas modelan y permean de manera específica la cotidianeidad laboral y el propio proceso de trabajo.
Paper long abstract:
Resumen largo:
Para esta presentación he seleccionado un suceso que tuvo lugar durante el desarrollo de mi trabajo de campo en una empresa privada ubicada en la ciudad de Rosario, Argentina. El episodio al que me referiré, la renuncia de un empleado con varios años de trabajo en la compañía, impactó fuertemente en todos los empleados y puso en escena un conjunto conflictivo y complejo de relaciones que modelan y permean de manera específica la cotidianeidad laboral y el propio proceso de trabajo.
. A fin de acceder analíticamente a este episodio consideré pertinente plantear su lectura en clave de "drama social" en el sentido que le otorga Victor Turner.
Field work among Mexican corporate executives showed a live full of contradictions. In this paper I shall present the cultural and moral contradictions this sort of executives has to deal with, and the many ways they and their families develop to cope with them. With first hand field data among high level Mexican corporate executives I shall try to show their daily life and the ways corporate work interferes with traditional family live. One of the most crucial points is the different cultural criteria that rule employment and deals in local family enterprises and corporate international firms, especially North American ones. While most of my informants came from entrepreneurial families where employing and making deals with kindred members is a moral obligation, big corporations where they work in, especially North American ones, consider this practice as nepotism, and as such, inmoral (Lomnitz and Pérez Lizaur, 1987; Pérez Lizaur, 2005).
As employers cut labor costs by making their workforces more "flexible", the part-timing of retail work has serious consequences for those who depend on the job for their livelihoods. This paper will examine the way in which part-timing has affected workers' lives and the social world at work.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is based on fieldwork among retail workers at a large superstore in the deindustrialized U.S. town of Flint, Michigan. Following the relocation of manufacturing to cheaper labor markets, retail work has become one of the few jobs available to people in Flint who may not come to the job market with a degree in hand, or who are unable to secure a "better" job because of competition from high rates of unemployment. When a large retail chain that historically offered full-time positions opted recently to cut costs by switching to a more "flexible", all-part-time model, the consequences for workers have been significant: workplace community became fragmented, workers' household structures changed, and they became forced to depend on the increasingly sparse remnants of the U.S. welfare state.
This paper explores the nature of value-creation within call centres through an examination of the computer-based techniques of labour quantification and surveillance enacted in the labour process, and the critical role of workers’ deployment of language and communicative skills in terms of productive output leading to profit creation.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 1990s call centre work became representative of the increased relevance of emotional labour in the neoliberal knowledge-based economy, as well as a symbol of the deployment of Taylorist methods for disciplining and controlling labour with the aid of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Drawing on fieldwork conducted in a call centre belonging to a private telecommunications company in Lisbon, this paper explores how discipline, quantification and surveillance are enacted within the labour process in order to clarify the main distinguishable characteristic of the nature of value-creation within call centres. Such examination aims to contribute to the growing anthropological literature on knowledge work and the intricate relations between the nature of value-creation and the constitution of subjectivity and consciousness. I argue that the call centre regime of labour is best defined as a regime of disciplined agency. That is, call centres present the most advanced system for the exploitation of a rarefied form of human labour: linguistic engagement or human communicative competence. In order for call centres to subsist as a rentable economic activity they need specific human intervention for which no kind of machine can substitute. Thus, my paper reveals a core paradox of call centre work, not by describing the robotization of human beings, but by bringing to light the (usually neglected) unique human species-being quality which is exploited in the call centre regime of labour - human communicative competence - and which makes call centres such a profitable business in several parts of the world.
Based on a colonial history typified by conceding logic, the social relations of the Gabonese logging camps are still marked by strong hierarchical logic. Concepts as paternalism and clientelism are central in the companies' modulation of social links.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to analyze continuities and changes in Gabonese logging camps daily work. It is based on research conducted as part of a Ph.D. on ways of working and living in logging camps in the country. Logging began a century ago in Gabon, during a colonial era and through concessions. If the abolition of forced labor led to a possible higher wages for workers, the concessions logic has lasted until today. It generates very marked differences in firms' hierarchy. Through control over workers and the allocation of premiums and benefits, clientelism and paternalism emerged. Currently, the gradual incorporation of sustainable development allows the introduction of new management techniques. But, most of all, they contribute to make more subtle the forms of domination suffered by workers.
Based on narratives of women garment workers (both home and factory based) collected from in-depth interviews conducted in Delhi (India), I will explore the quotidian scripts that take shape in women workers lives, and the roles they have to play in these scripts so that they can achieve a semblance of work-family balance (read sanity). I will also highlight the impact of these scripts on their emotional and physical wellbeing as well as their engagment with 'work'. The intent is to engage with the understanding of these scripts as acts that seen as breaches of the boundaries of gendered discipline, moral order and the inside-outside worlds
The paper will also discuss the impact of these balancing strategies on the lives of the women workers. It will be argued that that the highly adaptable and absorptive natures of the spaces where these strategies are played out obscure the redemptive potential of these acts for the women themselves. The overall focus is to engage with the work-family-gender rights debates and engage with issues of power and identities among women garment workers, especially in a developing country context.
Keywords:
Gender, Garment Workers, Wellbeing, Power, Inclusion-Exclusion, Work-Family-gender rights
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