The contributors to this volume interrogate the labour/capital relation exploring the ways in which industrial outsourcing and subcontracting transform the conditions, possibilities and politics of work; the effects of economic deregulation on agricultural economies and on local markets; the manner in which migration changes understandings of productive power in places that once depended on the physical and social energies of people who now labour elsewhere; and how the appearance and/or disappearance of waged work alters not only the foundational notions of the relationship between productive and reproductive labour, but also of personhood, citizenship and place. We deploy the concept of dislocation to extend the repertoire of labour analysis beyond that of dispossession and/or disorganization. By dislocation we refer to the unevenness of transnational capitalism’s unfolding. Dislocation conjures the spatial movements of migrant workers and refugees, but also suggests other senses of disruption, such as the sentiment of feeling out of place, or of losing one’s bearings as things change around you. Overall the volume argues that a renewed focus on ‘labour,’ as both a social category and a social practice, offers a window for grasping key contemporary material, affective, moral, social and political processes.
The contributors to this volume interrogate the labour/capital relation exploring the ways in which industrial outsourcing and subcontracting transform the conditions, possibilities and politics of work; the effects of economic deregulation on agricultural economies and on local markets; the manner in which migration changes understandings of productive power in places that once depended on the physical and social energies of people who now labour elsewhere; and how the appearance and/or disappearance of waged work alters not only the foundational notions of the relationship between productive and reproductive labour, but also of personhood, citizenship and place. We deploy the concept of dislocation to extend the repertoire of labour analysis beyond that of dispossession and/or disorganization. By dislocation we refer to the unevenness of transnational capitalism's unfolding. Dislocation conjures the spatial movements of migrant workers and refugees, but also suggests other senses of disruption, such as the sentiment of feeling out of place, or of losing one's bearings as things change around you. Overall the volume argues that a renewed focus on 'labour, ' as both a social category and a social practice, offers a window for grasping key contemporary material, affective, moral, social and political processes.
About the Author
Penny Harvey is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She has done fieldwork in Peru, Spain and the UK and published on technology, infrastructure, expertise, materiality and the modern state. Recent publications include Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise (authored with Knox, Cornell University Press, 2015) and Infrastructures and Social Complexity (edited with Bruun Jensen and Morita, Routledge 2016);
Christian Krohn-Hansen is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has done fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and the United States, and his research interests are centred upon the study of power and violence, political and economic life, and history. His publications include Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics and Everyday Life (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) and Political Authoritarianism in the Dominican Republic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
