We demand work! ‘Dispossession’, patronage and village labour in Bibiyana,Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

This paper critically appraises the usefulness of idioms and theories of ‘dispossession’ to describe changes taking place in rural Bangladesh, where rapid industrialization and ‘development’ have led to profound shifts in the agrarian economy. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in north-eastern Bangladesh, where the multinational company Chevron operate a large gas field, I argue that rather than political and economic struggles in the area involving access to land, it is access to work which is now all important for livelihoods and, as such, has become the basis for local patronage and political power. Theories of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, still widely cited in the anthropology of neo-liberal development in South Asia, are thus of limited help in explaining the changes and continuities which animate local political and economic struggles.     

Sugar and unfree labour: Reflections on labour control in the dominican republic, 1870–1935

This article takes issue with theories which suppose an essential contradiction between capitalist production and unfree labour relations. Using the history of sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic as a case study, it is argued that capitalist entrepreneurs tried very hard to restrict free wage labour relations. On the Dominican sugar plantations this goal was reached by a system of differential mechanisation which brought about a rigid separation between the mass of unskilled field workers and the restricted number of (semi‐) skilled workers. This labour division could be reproduced over a long period of time because the field workers were migrant labourers from Haiti liable to strong racial discrimination within Dominican society.     

Young women’s negotiations of gender,the body and the labour market in a post-feminist context

This article explores the ways the body and femininity is understood and negotiated in relation to employment. This article draws on interview data from an Australian study which aimed to explore what it meant to be a ‘young woman’ in neoliberal late modernity, and in relation to the paradoxes of post-feminism. Though there has been an unprecedented rise in youth post-secondary school participation in Australia and elsewhere, girls’ and young women’s increased investment and participation in education has not provided the same gains as for their male counterparts. All interview participants described being aware of gender inequalities and gender discrimination in the workplace, including the glass ceiling, the gender pay gap, and demands and pressures on women to balance career and motherhood, however many did not associate these issues with ‘feminism’. We explore the dynamics of notions of equality, difference and the body in participants’ discussions of work and their anticipation of motherhood and the logics by which gender inequalities are sustained.     

Domestic labour,masculinity and social change: insights from working-class young men’s transitions to adulthood

Abstract

Drawing on a seven-year longitudinal qualitative study in England, this paper presents evidence of how engagement with housework and childcare is regular and normalized for contemporary working-class young adult men. I explain this development with reference to inclusive masculinity theory, but supplement this by incorporating Mannheim’s concept of social generation, as recently adopted by scholars of youth sociology. The paper thus further augments other research that has documented considerable change in the construction and performance of contemporary masculinities – such as an opening up of gendered behaviours and a decrease (but not erasure) of homophobia – among young men across multiple contexts in English-speaking countries.     

Silenced narratives of women’s participation in labour and political struggle in Spain, 1960–1975

ABSTRACT

This article studies women’s participation in the struggle against the dictatorship in Spain (from 1960 to 1975). Drawing on life stories of women activists from el Marco de Jerez, it examines their repertoires of actions, their frames, and the lack of recognition from both academic and political spheres. A Gramscian approach and the perspective of hegemonic masculinity contribute to explain how women organized, how represented their collective action, and why their memories have been silenced. The theoretical approach has helped to identify relations of hegemony within feminist studies and political movement.     

The British,the Tudeh party and the 1947 World Federation of Trade Unions’ visit: battle for labour reform in Iran

ABSTRACT

After the British-Soviet occupation of Iran during the Second World War, Iran became the key battleground for the international labour movement. The plight of the workers had become an important political issue with the Iranian government in conflict with the socialist Tudeh party for leadership over the trade unions. The Labour government in Britain was also deeply interested in the matter but regarded the Tudeh as too dangerous and too aligned with the Soviet Union to be supported. Within this climate, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) made an official visit to Iran. With its international delegates, they represented different views over the Tudeh, which caused much conflict during the visit. This article sheds crucial light on this important visit and reveals how international the Labour questions were in Iran and how the WFTU visit brought the various tensions to light. This research will also show how the timing of the visit may have impacted on the removal of the Iranian strong-man Ahmad Qavam by the end of 1947. This work is of particular significance as it looks at the previously understudied role and interest of the British government on the Iranian labour.     

Simple commodity production and wage labour in the American plains∗

Households which exclusively produce a single commodity have a dual character as enterprises and as families. Competition establishes a constant requirement for labour, while demographic variation prevents its continuous supply within the household. Using data from a county in the heart of the American wheat plains to illustrate the analysis, this paper applies a modified version of Marx's theory to the circuits of reproduction of simple commodity production, focusing on their intersection with markets in labour power. The analysis requires elaboration of the Marxist definition of class, in order to differentiate members of specialized commodity production households who work for wages as a temporary phase in the life‐cycle, from a permanent class of wage labourers. It concludes that simple commodity production, although it differs from capitalist production as well as from peasant households, requires for its reproduction a well‐developed market in labour‐power and thus an essentially capitalist economy.     

‘Sugar,Sugar’: questioning the sexual division of labour on Jamaica's sugar plantations in Sistren's The Case of Miss Iris Armstrong and Sweet Sugar Rage

Through an analysis of Sistren Theatre Collective's play The Case of Miss Iris Armstrong and the Collective's documentary film Sweet Sugar Rage, this article looks at the way the sexual division of labour on Jamaica's sugar plantations during the 1980s was based on the following gendered myths: women's labour capacity is lower than their male counterparts; and men are the breadwinners for their families. The article also critiques the sexism in the Jamaican union movement which did not support female workers and actively kept women's wages lower than men's on the plantations.     

Harvests of shame: enduring unfree labour in the twentieth-century United States, 1933–1964

This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of ‘peonage’ during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour in southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the U.S. Sugar Corporation in southern Florida illustrates this link. The article draws on Federal archives, U.S. Government proceedings, papers of political activists and legal and labour scholarship to argue: firstly, that unfree labour has been an enduring feature of agricultural labour relations at regional level during the twentieth century, through both a transmission and a transformation of practices that had their origin in the control of black emancipated labour; secondly, that the introduction of `guest workers’ under the H2 and Bracero programme meant a modernisation in the practices of unfree labour, pivoting on the lack of citizenship rights, racial discrimination, debt at home and threat of deportation; and, finally, that the failure to recognise forms of legal and economic deprivation and coercion as unfree labour has hurt the ability of the United States to enforce protection of human rights at home.     

Peasant inclusion in global value chains: economic upgrading but social downgrading in labour processes?

This paper identifies impacts of value chain inclusion on labour from a social sustainability perspective. It focusses on the tasks, livelihoods and subjectivities of Amazonian flood plain peasants (ribeirinhos) who collect açaí for sale to an expanding market. The ‘logic’ of ribeirinho chain inclusion is explored using a combination of labour process and human security indicators. While household income benefits can be significant, gains may be threatened by monoculture trends and local power structures. Human security indicators suggest further caution. Whilst ribeirinhos remain very ‘flexible’ workers, chain engagement entails insecurities, as highlighted by their variable views of collectivity and contradictory positions with respect to sustainability. Sustainable chain prognoses require a deeper understanding of agents' means and of the preferred choices and voice of those working at the beginning of chains.     

Between Denmark and Detroit: unionized labour at Ford Motor Company,Copenhagen, 1919–1939

In 1919, Ford Motor Company established its first assembly plant on the European mainland in Copenhagen, Denmark. Based on a Fordist productive model, including technology and materials from Detroit, cars were manufactured and exported to most of Northern Europe. It has been claimed that Ford also transferred its principles of industrial relations to Europe, including a ban on trade unions. But as the article demonstrates, the Copenhagen factory was completely unionized, and the unions were able to establish collective bargaining for a period. On the other hand, several factors, including internal splits among the workers caused by the Fordist production methods, worked against the unions over time. The end result was a hybrid between Detroit methods and Danish traditions of industrial relations. The changing character of this hybrid is traced through the shifting relations of power between unions, local management and the Ford Motor Company.     

Partisan players: sport,working-class culture,and the labour movement in South Wales 1920–1939

This article argues against the prevalent notion that sport was insignificant to inter-war Welsh labour by showing that it was in fact a ‘vital area of interest’ for local activists associated with leftist organisations. In South Wales, numerous sporting opportunities provided by the local labour movement were taken up with notable enthusiasm by local workers. It is demonstrated that this represented a ‘vibrant attempt to forge a coherent alternative to mainstream sporting activity by fusing it with political allegiance’ and that sport became ‘an articulation of working class self-awareness … [and] a mechanism through which working class desires and visions could be expressed’.     

Mothers’ and Fathers’ Autonomy-Relevant Parenting: Longitudinal Links with Adolescents’ Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior

The goal of this study was to advance the understanding of separate and joint effects of mothers’ and fathers’ autonomy-relevant parenting during early and middle adolescence. In a sample of 518 families, adolescents (49 % female; 83 % European American, 16 % African American, 1 % other ethnic groups) reported on their mothers’ and fathers’ psychological control and knowledge about adolescents’ whereabouts, friends, and activities at ages 13 and 16. Mothers and adolescents reported on adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing behaviors at ages 12, 14, 15, and 17. Adolescents perceived their mothers as using more psychological control and having more knowledge than their fathers, but there was moderate concordance between adolescents’ perceptions of their mothers and fathers. More parental psychological control predicted increases in boys’ and girls’ internalizing problems and girls’ externalizing problems. More parental knowledge predicted decreases in boys’ externalizing and internalizing problems. The perceived levels of behavior of mothers and fathers did not interact with one another in predicting adolescent adjustment. The results generalize across early and late adolescence and across mothers’ and adolescents’ reports of behavior problems. Autonomy-relevant mothering and fathering predict changes in behavior problems during early and late adolescence, but only autonomy-relevant fathering accounts for unique variance in adolescent behavior problems.     

Discrimination and Mexican-Origin Adolescents’ Adjustment: The Moderating Roles of Adolescents’, Mothers’, and Fathers’ Cultural Orientations and Values

Drawing on García Coll et al.’s integrative framework and the risk and resilience model, this study examined the relationships between adolescents’ perceived discrimination and psychosocial adjustment and the moderating roles of adolescents’, mothers’, and fathers’ cultural orientations and values, and adolescent gender in a sample of 246 Mexican-origin families. Using multilevel modeling with data from mothers, fathers, seventh graders (M _age = 12.8 years; SD = .57 year) and older siblings (M _age = 15.7 years; SD = 1.5 years), findings revealed that perceived discrimination was positively related to depression, risky behaviors, and deviant peer affiliations. In addition, parents’ cultural orientations and values and adolescent gender moderated the relationships between perceived discrimination and some indicators of adjustment. These findings suggest that parents’ cultural orientations and values can serve as protective and vulnerability factors in the associations between Mexican-origin adolescents’ perceived discrimination and their psychosocial adjustment.     

‘Happy Abortionists’

Recent feminist scholarship about abortion in Australia has focused on the politics of abortion as it is played out in the law, the media, public discourse and political debate. This article seeks to offer new angles on the politics of abortion by focusing on the provision of abortion services and in particular the position of doctors in relation to abortion in Australia since the early 1990s. It crafts a theoretical framework to think about the place of doctors, and their patients, in abortion provision and sketches a history of doctors over the last two decades. It is based in a small interview project conducted by the author in 2013 and uses interviews to supplement documentary evidence with ‘inside information’ about local histories and the micro-politics of decision-making in order to build an account of the multifaceted position of doctors in relation to abortion. It also uses the interviews to build a picture of the subjectivity of doctors who play a crucial part in the provision of abortion services. It argues that the ‘pro-choice versus anti-abortion’ spectrum is inadequate for understanding the multiple negotiations that doctors make in relation to abortion. Responsibility is devolved, often to the individual, albeit in sometimes resistant environments. Neoliberal female consumer citizens, empowered by as well as subordinated to dominant discourses, are often oblivious to the history and politics that make abortions available. Some doctors, although caught up in these forces, claim to be ‘happy abortionists’.     

’93反腐备忘录

’９３反腐备忘录陈建新１９９３年，改革开放的中国刮起了一场举世瞩目的风暴：共和国的土地上再次擂响反腐败的战鼓，高悬的利剑重重地劈向寄生在党和国家肌体上的赘瘤，腐败分子闻风丧胆，人民群众拍手称快。历史也将永远地记住这一关系中国前途命运的非常一页，记下中...     

‘Porn Trouble’

In this article, I explore the emergent relationship between feminist media studies/cultural studies and the field of Evolutionary Psychology (EP). EP scholars increasingly conduct research on media and popular culture. At the same time, media/ted texts are increasingly marked by EP discourses. I take as my focus commercial women's online magazines produced in the UK and in Spain and accessed globally. Specifically, I explore a recurrent thread in their discussion forums: women expressing confusion, concern, disappointment, hurt and/or self-doubt, and asking for advice on discovering that their male partners consume various pornographies. A feminist poststructuralist discursive analysis is developed to explore both peer-to-peer and editorial advice on such ‘porn trouble’. I show how pseudo-scientific discourses give support to a narrative of male immutability and female adaptation in heterosexual relationships, and examine how these constructions are informed by EP accounts of sexual difference. The article offers empirical insights into the penetration of EP logics and narratives into popular culture transnationally. Advancing the notion of ‘postfeminist biologism’, my analysis contributes to feminist interrogations of EP's ongoing popularity in the face of sound, longstanding and widespread criticism of it as scientifically flawed and culturally pernicious.