“We feel that our strength is on the factory floor”: Dualism,shop-floor power,and labor law reform in late apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article explores the transformation of South African labor relations during the 1980s. In 1979, prompted by new shop-floor militancy, the Wiehahn Commission recommended that black workers, previously excluded from state labor machinery, be permitted to join recognized trade unions. Most discussions of this shift in apartheid labor relations focus on the ensuing debate within the black unions, torn between preserving their independence or securing state legitimation. This article looks instead at the related debate about ‘levels of bargaining’: should emergent black unions demand to negotiate at the factory level, where they had secured shop-floor strength through organizing and democratic practice, or pursue the benefits of the corporatist bargaining structures that had long excluded them and had privileged white workers? The eventual drift towards corporatism, I argue, imprinted the character of the South African labor movement into the post-apartheid era. An understandable desire to wield influence at the level of the national political economy eroded the tradition of workers’ control, shop floor democracy, and struggle unionism that black unions had forged during the 1970s and 1980s.     

“God bless our American institutions”: The labor history of John R. Commons

Workers of all stripes and colors comprise a large and often forgotten segment of cinema history. This essay historicizes several key films and genres associated with early cinema, with an emphasis on pre-Great War French and American cinemas. Simultaneously, this essay formulates several critical responses to labor practices as globally understood and thus anchors this recovery of cinematized working classes, still an ongoing but marginal project in film studies today. Taken together, cinema can refract real-life occupational complexities, class dynamics, and workplace alienation – manifestations that are crucial to, primarily, view class as a social concept and to help us to think through the tensions workers faced under monopoly capitalism. Against this backdrop we must see film's ability to both trivialize class archetypes and capture the complexities as a type of tribute, as the latter becomes a central focus in this essay.     

The nation is our mother: Augusto Sandino and the construction of a peasant nationalism in Nicaragua, 1927–1934

This article explores the creation of a nationalist identity in Nicaragua during the guerrilla war of Augusto Sandino against the occupying United States. The social base of Sandino was the mountain peasants of northern Nicaragua; a social sector usually described as unlikely to become the creators and carriers of a national identity. Yet by using a gendered and familial discourse, which described Nicaragua as the ‘madre patria’ (mother homeland) and the members as his army as brothers, Sandino was successful in activating strong nationalist feelings amongst his peasant followers. The article examines both Sandino's discourse, and how it was interpreted by his peasant followers. It is this attempt to bring their perspectives into the discussion that contributes to this new assessment of the construction of a national identity in Nicaragua.     

The Personal is Work is Political is Theoretical: Continuities and Discontinuities in Women's Studies, (Pro)feminism, “Men” and My Selves

This essay reflects on some specific questions posed by the organizers of the Past, Present, Future conference held at Umeå University, Sweden, in June 2007 to the keynote speakers on their personal experiences of the influences, inspirations, challenges, and problems in and around Women's/Gender Studies over the last 30 years. It extends the notion of “the personal is political” to: the personal is work is political is theoretical. It also critically reflects on continuities and discontinuities in women's studies, (pro)feminism, “men” and my selves. Four kinds of (spheres of) activity and experience (the personal, work, the political, the theoretical) are considered in relation to four social spaces, social sites, or social institutional formations (in this context, primarily: selves, “men”, feminism/profeminism, women's/gender studies).     

“Violence is everywhere!” An analysis of children's narratives on violence

Exposure to violence is a threat to the health and well-being of society, especially for children. Previous research on youth exposure to violence has focused primarily on the implications for victims or the treatment of the offenders. While some research has concentrated on the lived experience of the children subjected to violence, it has generally been defined within a specific domain such as domestic violence or bullying. Using student essays available from the “Do the Write Thing” (DtWT) Challenge, this research explored significant issues of violence as experienced by middle school children in southeast Texas. This research used a thematic approach for a qualitative analysis of 132 essays submitted during the 2015 school year. Essays were coded and categorized to identify major themes of how children describe their experience of violence and assign meaning to violence in their lives. Several themes within three domains (cognitive, social and moral) arose including the pervasiveness of violence, feelings of helplessness, and violence as “wrong.” Results indicate that students wrote most about personal experiences and how violence permeates their daily lives. Implications for practice and services to children are discussed.     

Feelings are “patterns in the weave of our life” 1 – not a basis for a feminist epistemology

Feelings (or “emotions”) have frequently been debated in feminist theory. A large part of this discussion can be considered to aim at a “rehabilitation of the emotions”. However, when feminist theorists make epistemological claims concerning “emotions”, i.e. what philosophy of mind calls “mental states”, we run a grave risk of ending up in subjectivism and thus of reiterating the “private access fallacy” of traditional epistemology. Starting from the feeling of shame (a paradigm for a socially constructed feeling), this article makes a Wittgensteinian reading of “emotions” which offers an alternative to the atomistic, mentalistic and episodical view of mainstream philosophy of mind. Wittgenstein's thrust against foundationalism, his conceptual remarks about “inner experiences”, his anti‐behaviourism and his emphasis on the primacy of action, are all concordant with the social constructionism of the slogan “The personal is political”.     

“This is a Book about Choices”: Gender,Genre and (Auto)Biographical Prison Narratives

The article discusses equal rights to equal participation and public policies for gender balance in different societal arenas. Although gender balance is a central aim of official Norwegian gender equality politics, male hegemony is the dominant feature in most institutional settings of leadership, power and influence. This inconsistency is rhetorically handled through travel metaphors of gender equality and utility arguments about women's contributions to public life. Gender equality then becomes a question of time, and of how society would profit from “more” gender equality. The rights perspective is distorted. In the final part of the article, we discuss alternative, normative, approaches: gender balance in relation to parity in participation, a distributive norm of simple equality, and principles of non‐discrimination.     

“My Child is Shy and Has No Friends: What Does Parenting Have to Do with It?”

Accumulating evidence suggests that parents may react differentially to children based on their children’s temperament, children’s gender, and the interaction of these factors. Furthermore, parents’ differential reactions to their children have direct implications for their children’s social success. The present study assessed the moderating influence of mothers’ and fathers’ psychological control on the relationship between shy temperament and peer exclusion in grade five children (n = 153; 57% female), an age during which peer connections are particularly salient. Teachers reported on children’s shyness and peer exclusion, and children reported on parents’ psychological control. Regression analyses showed fathers’ psychological control to be associated with greater peer exclusion for males. Both mothers’ and fathers’ psychological control were associated with peer exclusion for shy females. Results suggest the importance of parents considering how psychologically controlling behaviors may work in concert with their children’s gender and temperament in influencing peer connections during the adolescent transition.     

“哭穷”与“示弱”

我有一个陕北农村亲戚进城打工,他的日子过得其实不宽裕,家里老人有病,两个娃正上学,欠了不少债,属于标准的弱势群体,可是问他过得咋样？他却既未哭穷,也未示弱,反倒颇为满足地说：不赖。住上砖窑了,用上沼气了,吃上细粮了,看上电视了,还三天两头有荤腥。     

“繁华”与“素心”

读有关民国的历史书,你会有一种感觉,那个时候许多文人很将自己的精神追求当回事儿,为了他们认定的有价值的事业,可以吃糙米饭、住茅草屋、睡门板拼起来的床……在一种难以想象的艰难环境中,他们铸就了一个民族精神上的辉煌。