Intensification Of Labour Research Articles

Capital accumulation, crisis, and labor market in modern Brazil

Abstract This article presents the recent changes in the Brazilian labor market, resulting from the recessionary dynamics of the world capitalist economy of the last decades manifested since the 2007-2008 crisis. It observes the insertion of Brazil in the global capitalist economy and the foundations supporting the processes of reproduction of capital, analyzing some indicators of the labor market related to the labor-power employment, wage, rates of formalization and turnover, in light of central tendencies and determinations of today’s process of expanded reproduction of capital. The study contributes to clarify phenomena such as the tendency to identify formal and informal work, the reconstitution of the industrial reserve army, wage repression and intensification of labor, which are promoted by the ongoing “reforms” in Brazil.

Remaking the labour movement in Italy: the revival of strikes at Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles in 2015–17

ABSTRACTAfter the Fiat-Chrysler merger in 2009, CEO Sergio Marchionne imposed a drastic reorganization of labour relations in Italy’s plants, precipitating a profound crisis of the system of industrial relations in the country. But between 2015 and 2017 a significant section of workers at Melfi, Atessa and Termoli plants went on strike against compulsory overtime and labour intensification, establishing links with grassroots unions that successfully organized in logistics. The metalworkers’ union FIOM-CGIL, however, delegitimized the union representatives who resisted Marchionne’s plans. In this article, we trace the context and development of these still little-known strikes. Because of their growing institutionalization, we argue, the confederal unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL) have both failed to mobilize workers and repressed workers’ attempts to resist the deterioration of their conditions. The strikes at FCA and in logistics, however, show that new forms of radical unionism are emerging, pointing to new possibilities for working-class organizing.

Emulation and Competition as the Forms of Interaction of the Subjects of Professional Activity

The Object of the Study. Competition and CompetitionThe Subject of the Study. Competition and competition as a form of interaction between subjects of professional activityThe Purpose of the Study. Competition and competition as a form of interaction between subjects of professional activityThe main Provisions of the Article.The authors reveal the features of manifestation of socialist emulation and competition in connection with the social structure of the state and the system of social relations existing in it and generating them. The distinctive characteristics of socialist emulation and competition as two social phenomena and forms of interaction between subjects of professional activity have been studied. The great importance of socialist emulation in solving important tasks for the state is shown, in the intensification of labour, the achievement of better results in the production of material and spiritual goods, the development of socialist society as a whole, the realization of the interests of society and each of its participants. In the particular the features of socialist emulation are revealed: its essence, functions, forms, basic principles and types of stimulating its participants.Besides the work reveals the social aspects of competition, its manifestations in society and professional activity in comparison with the socialist emulation. The main approaches to the study of competition as an interdisciplinary phenomenon are presented. The author's understanding of the essence of competition of subjects of professional activity as one of the types of social competition is given. The structure of competition of collective subjects of professional activity, its positive and negative functions, the nature of the course, the main approaches to its management are presented. As the main differences between socialist competition and competition of subjects of professional activity, their differences in motivation, behavior, methods used by them and means of achieving victory are examined. Competition and competition are manageable, both by the state itself, and by the subjects themselves.The features of the manifestation of socialist competition and competition are connected with the system of social relations existing in the state, which give rise to them. Competition and competition are the most important forms of interaction and relationships between the subjects of professional activity, but having their own manifestations.

"Compatible" workers, a compound fracture in the automobile industry: intensification of labor and the health implications

Today's intensification of labor is part of the industrial transformations under way in Brazil since the 1990s, involving changes in the social production of auto workers' strain and epidemiological profile. Accident- and disease-related absenteeism is an important indicator of auto workers' strain, with relevance to the health field. The study aims to analyze the intensification of labor and its health implications from the perspective of the health-disease process, based on workers' perceptions at an automobile assembly plant in the ABC Industrial Belt of São Paulo. Workers were asked about the obstacles to returning to work following work-related accidents or diseases (commonly referred to as "compatible" workers). We conducted six visits to the plant and 20 interviews with assembly line workers. Data were collected from March 2010 to November 2014. The results depict the social figure of the "compatible" worker, a "compound fracture" in the production process, expressed as the intensification of labor, characterized by an intense work pace, denser work, extended workdays, and heavy stress, while simultaneously pointing to a trend toward laying off "compatible" workers. The study contributes to the search for knowledge on the intensification of labor and its health implications. We hope to have produced backing for further research on determination of the health-disease process, based on the incorporation of workers' experience.

For Reproductive Justice in an Era of Gates and Modi: The Violence of India's Population Policies

This article addresses India's contemporary population control policies and practices as a form of gender violence perpetrated by the state and transnational actors against poor, Adivasi and Dalit women. It argues that rather than meeting the needs and demands of these women for access to safe contraception that they can control, the Indian state has targeted them for coercive mass sterilisations and unsafe injectable contraceptives. This is made possible by the long-term construction of particular women's lives as devalued and disposable, and of their bodies as excessively fertile and therefore inimical to development and progress. It further considers how population policy is currently embedded in the neoliberal framework of development being pursued by the Indian state. In particular, it argues that the violence of population policies is being deepened as a result of three central and interrelated aspects of this framework: corporate dispossession and displacement, the intensification and extension of women's labour for global capital, and the discourses and embodied practices of far-right Hindu supremacism. At the same time, India's population policies cannot be understood in isolation from the global population control establishment, which is increasingly corporate-led, and from broader structures of racialised global capital accumulation. The violence of India's contemporary population policies and the practices they produce operate at several different scales, all of which involve the construction of certain bodies as unfit to reproduce and requiring intervention and control.

Experiencing primitive accumulation as alienation: Mangrove forest privatization, enclosures and the everyday adaptation of bodies to capital in rural Senegal

AbstractThis paper examines primitive accumulation by studying changes in fishermen and mollusc collectors' labour before and after the privatization of 1,800 hectares of mangrove forest in rural Senegal through the creation of a tourism‐oriented protected area. Locating this privatization within a broader context of capital's enclosures, the paper shows a process of depeasantization, labour intensification (via the multiplication of petty commodity production activities and proletarianization) and changing socioecological relations. This is a process where enclosures continuously alienate workers by separating them not necessarily from the land, but, more generally, from the conditions of their labour even when these are already commodified. As workers cope with alienation, they encounter it anew, contributing to capital's survival through their search for money and other commodities (i.e., means of production and subsistence). Workers' everyday adaptations to capital, and hence alienation, need to become central in future research on primitive accumulation and agrarian change.

The new organization of labor at public universities: collective consequences of job instability on the health of teachers

The main objective of this article is to analyze the new organization of labor of university teachers, seeking to investigate the potential relationship with the health status of these workers. It is based on the assumption that job instability in public universities has had repercussions on the health of higher education teachers. A qualitative exploratory study was conducted by means of bibliographic research in indexed databases. As a method of analysis, thematic analysis was used, focusing on four empirical categories, namely: job instability in the teaching profession; intensification of labor; aspects of the organization of teaching work in universities; and data on the health of university teachers. It was revealed in the literature that the use of strong organizational pressures prevails in the university scenario and consequently the intensification of labor is prevalent, with emphasis on the issue of increasing the demand for academic productivity. It was also observed that the topic of excess workload of teachers is recurrent and the concept of availability of less leisure time prevails. In addition, the need for organized collective resistance was confirmed in order to modify the job instability of teaching work.

From “Involution” to “Capitalization”: The “New Agriculture” and the “New Peasant”—A Case Study of Tobacco Growers in a Chinese Township (从“过密化”到“资本化”：“新农业”与“新农民”——以湖北省恩施市烟叶种植农户为例的讨论)

With the acceleration of the urbanization process and the transformation of the population structure, China’s small peasant economy is breaking away from involutionary growth. At the same time, capital investment in family farms is increasing, leading to the capitalization of family farms and the rise of “new agriculture.” Based on a case study of tobacco growers in a Chinese township, this article demonstrates how capital investment contributes to specialization and scale production in tobacco production and how a capitalized family farm operates, depending mainly on family labor and partly on rented land. As a typical new agriculture, tobacco production achieves the dual intensification of both capital and labor and manages to get out from the involution trap. This article argues that the capitalized family farm is not only a new type of economic subject but that it also shapes a new type of social subject. As the “new peasant,” the holder of a capitalized family farm is a member of a social elite in villages and serves as the crucial social force in the transformation of village society. 伴随城市化的快速发展和农村人口结构的转型，中国的小农经济正逐渐摆脱“过密化”陷阱。同时，农业生产中的资本投入日益增长，家庭农场日益“资本化”，“新农业”获得了空前的发展。文章以中国恩施地区烟叶生产为例，阐述了资本投入对烟叶专业化、规模化生产的关键作用，分析了资本化家庭农场的经营方式：其主要依赖家庭劳动力（少部分季节性雇佣劳动力），并通过土地流转实现适度规模经营。烟叶生产是一种典型的“新农业”，它在家庭农场中实现了资本和劳动的“双密集”，摆脱了“过密化”陷阱。作者认为，资本化的家庭农场不仅形成了一种“新农业”（新型经济主体），更塑造了一群“新农民”（新型社会主体），他们是村庄中的精英群体，对村庄社会转型具有重要意义。 (This article is in English.)

Erratum

Hjorth, L., & Richardson, I. (2017). Pokémon GO: Mobile media play, place-making, and the digital wayfarer. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 3–14. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916680015. In the above Editorial, “(XXXX)” has been cited many times throughout the text, which should actually be the year 2017. In the same article, the references, which have not been completely updated in the print files, are as follows: De Souza e Silva, A. (2017). Pokémon GO as an HRG: Mobility, sociability, and surveillance in hybrid spaces. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 20–23. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916676232. Frith, J. (2017). The digital “lure”: Small businesses and Pokémon GO. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 51–54. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916677861. Giddings, S. (2017). Pokémon GO as distributed imagination. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 59–62. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916677866. Humphries, L. (2017). Involvement shield or social catalyst: Thoughts on sociospatial practice of Pokémon GO. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 15–19. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916677864. Jin, D. Y. (2017). Critical interpretation of the Pokémon GO phenomenon: The intensification of new capitalism and free labor. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 55–58. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916677306. Keogh, B. (2017). Pokémon GO, the novelty of nostalgia, and the ubiquity of the smartphone. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 38–41. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916678025. Licoppe, C. (2017). From Mogi to Pokémon GO: Continuities and change in location-aware collection games. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 24–29. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916677862. McCrea, C. (2017). Pokémon’s progressive revelation: Notes on 20 years of game design. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 42–46. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916678271. Mäyrä, F. (2017). Pokémon GO: Entering the Ludic Society. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 47–50. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916678270. Salen Tekinbaş, K. (2017). Afraid to roam: The unlevel playing field of Pokémon GO. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 34–37.DOI:10.1177/2050157916677865. Sicart, M. (2017). Reality has always been augmented: Play and the promises of Pokémon GO. Mobile Media & Communication, 5(1), 30–33. DOI: 10.1177/2050157916677863. SAGE regrets the error.

Taking worker productivity to a new level? Electronic Monitoring in homecare—the (re)production of unpaid labour

This article explores the use of Electronic Monitoring (EM) in homecare and its impact on the ratio of paid to unpaid working time. It argues that whilst Zero Hours Contracts (ZHCs) blur the distinction between paid and unpaid labour, the introduction of EM can formalise and regulate the demarcation between the two. In the context of local authority commissioning and constrained budgets, the combination of EM and ZHC's may excise so‐called ‘unproductive’ but available labour from homecare. In particular, the minute‐by‐minute commissioning of care that EM facilitates means the cost of homecare is anchored in the time that worker's spend in client's houses, squeezing out paid travel, time between visits, training and supervision. Paid working time is minimised whilst maximising the use of unpaid time with resulting intensification of care labour.

Entfremdung in der Arbeit / Alienation at work

Zusammenfassung Durch die Verdichtung der Arbeit in den letzten Jahrzehnten haben Klagen über Entfremdungsphänomene wieder zugenommen. Aber was ist Entfremdung? Ausgehend von Beobachtungen des Wandels der Arbeitswelt reformuliert dieser Beitrag die Marx‘sche Theorie der Entfremdung auf eine Weise, die sie für arbeitssoziologische Forschungen und Praxis wieder anschlussfähig macht. Im Vordergrund stehen dabei vier qualitative Dimensionen der Beschreibung von Entfremdung sowie vier Faktoren, die die Entstehung von Entfremdungserfahrungen erklären könnten.

Redefining Borders between Communities and the Classroom: How Community-based Social Activists can Transform Social Work Education

In the context of service restructuring that has gravely impacted quality of life for social workers and the people with whom they work, this paper considers the ways that social work education can better support social justice-based social work practices in urban communities in Canada. The paper’s authors attended a fall 2013 Ryerson University forum that brought together critical social work educators and community-based activist social workers struggling to bring social justice-based practices to their work within restructured social services. Examples of social service restructuring include cuts to services, labour intensification, and increased managerialism, processes known as neoliberalism that have shifted discourses away from quality of life toward a focus on economic markers and efficiencies. The purpose of our forum was to explore ways in which social work curricula and pedagogical practices can be challenged and redefined in order to better support those efforts by social workers to resist such processes and to enhance social worker and client quality of life. Our paper presents the findings of this forum, including the presentation and discussion of a series of recommendations to reconfigure social work education so that it is more congruent with the needs of social justice-based practice in social work.

Researching the researcher: the heart and mind in sub-prime times

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to gather research-stories, that is, the stories of the researcher themselves. The authors gather stories that situate researchers in their social, political, personal and professional contexts to learn about being a researcher in a University at this particular historical moment. Design/methodology/approach – The authors’ stories began with the naive question – “What is it like to be a researcher in a University right now?”. The authors asked this question of Julie White’s (2012) “disposable academics” (p. 50); short-term and casualised staff with insecure teaching or research contracts. They asked White’s (2012, p. 48) “academic infantry” the mid-career researchers who have felt the labour intensification of recent times. They also asked senior academics, established professors with established research histories and the security (they hope) of a steady track record and a list of external grants. Findings – The answers were not simple. They were stories of the pragmatics of managing the new academic scene; maintaining a research passion despite the pressures of new managerialism’s focus on certain forms of efficiency, external accountability and monitoring; resolving the apparent losses of autonomy, academic freedom, support, security and academic dignity. The authors heard emotional and vulnerable stories, stories of personal investment and emotionally and physically risky and dangerous encounters. The authors learnt something of the complex business of negotiating personal and professional subjectivities. Originality/value – The authors heard emotional and vulnerable stories, stories of personal investment and emotionally and physically risky and dangerous encounters. They learnt something of the complex business of negotiating personal and professional subjectivities.

ECONOMICS OF PRODUCING AND EXPORTING MARJORAM IN EGYPT

ECONOMICS OF PRODUCING AND EXPORTING MARJORAM IN EGYPT

The UK's Productivity Puzzle

The 2008 Great Recession was notable in the UK for three things: the enormity of the output shock; the muted unemployment response; and the very slow rate of recovery. We review the literature which finds most of the decline in productivity is within sector and within firm before presenting new micro-analysis of workplace-level behaviour between 2004 and 2011 to gain insights into the processes that may have contributed to this aggregate picture. We find clear evidence of labour intensification but employers appeared incapable of turning this effort into improved workplace level productivity. Widespread pay freezes and cuts were often initiated in direct response to the recession. Workplace closure rates were little different to those experienced prior to the recession, but there is some evidence of a cleansing effect with poorer performing workplaces being more likely to close. There is some evidence of labour hoarding, especially hoarding of high skilled labour: this has had no discernible impact on the rate of innovation. There is no impact of recession on either the number of HRM practices workplaces invested in, nor their returns on those investments. There is no evidence that workplaces have benefitted from Britain's labour market as indicated by using recruitment channels used by welfare recipients or the use of numerically flexible workers. On the contrary, workplaces with increasing unionisation appeared to benefit in terms of improved workplace performance.

‘Wasting talent’? Gender and the problematics of academic disenchantment and disengagement with leadership

Confronted with the processes of massification, commercialisation, internationalisation and reduced funding, universities also face an ageing academic workforce, with implications of a shrinking pool from which to recruit managerial and research leaders. A feminist analysis suggests that the policy problematic has been wrongly conceptualised as disengagement with leadership due to the characteristics of the academic workforce. Instead, it is argued that the corporatisation of the academy has produced academic disenchantment due to managerial dominance, commercialisation and privatisation and disengagement with the dominant values, practices and images of university leadership. Furthermore, the intensification of academic labour and the lack of diversity in leadership discourage many women from aspiring to or achieving leadership.

Negotiating professional identities in higher education in Kenya: dilemmas and priorities of faculty

This research builds on work carried out in England looking at how faculty negotiate their personal and professional identities. It focuses on a sample of full-time faculty in a private secular university in Kenya. Weekly time logs with follow-up individual semi-structured interviews were used as a basis for an examination on how faculty spend their time and cope with the dilemmas they face. The research probes the motivations and priorities of faculty and draws tentative conclusions regarding their professional identities. The picture emerges of a rapidly increasing workforce, very positive about teaching, facing the challenges of intensification of labour, conflicting priorities, outside pressures and a sense of lack of control over their professional lives. In contrast to the UK findings, what was most striking was the lack of dilemmas and agonising between competing claims on time that characterised the work of the UK lecturers. The Kenyan faculty appeared to approach tasks in a pragmatic way, with priority often given to family matters and a tendency to let things happen. Notions of professionalism appeared to be less well developed and appeared to point to compliance and acceptable standards of behaviour.

Against Value: Accumulation in the Oil Industry and the Biopolitics of Labour Under Finance

Current theses on the financialization of capitalism postulate a shift from investment in material growth to financial channels, with the implication that the extraction of value from the labour process is no longer the central locus of corporate profitability and that the antagonism between labour and capital in the accumulation process has been displaced by the tension between corporate managers and financial markets. This article challenges both claims of financialization and its political implications. Using an analysis of the oil industry in the US, focusing particularly on layoffs, I argue that, instead of inhibiting material accumulation, financialization signals a change in the form of investment that has led to the intensification of labour and its deepening subsumption under capital, transcending labour exploitation and extending the sovereignty of capital over the life of living labour.

‘Prosuming’ conservation? Web 2.0, nature and the intensification of value-producing labour in late capitalism

Recent insights from critical social theory suggest that consumption and production co-constitute each other; a phenomenon referred to as ‘prosumption’. It is further suggested that contemporary prosumption dynamics could alter the form of capitalism. In this article, we argue that recent literature and research on the intersection between capitalism and nature conservation are highly relevant in engaging these claims. Predominantly but not solely through interactive web 2.0 applications, conservation organisations are increasingly drawing consumers into the production of conservation, thereby enabling them to ‘prosume’ and co-create (narratives about and images of) ‘nature’ as well as their own identities as environmentally conscious citizens. We argue that prosumption is an intensification of earlier capitalist attempts at generating ‘value-producing labour’ from commodity-sign values. Ethnographic engagements with nature conservation in eastern and southern Africa, in turn, show that this value-producing labour is inherently material through its concealed connections with contradictory conservation realities in the context of late capitalism.

CAN PIKACHU SAVE FANNIE MAE?

I argue that Pokémon offers a demonstrative and constitutive moment of the financializaion of contemporary cultural life in ways that signal an intensification of finance, risk, debt and cognitive labour as global imperatives. I suggest that children's play with Pokémon cards can help us revisit tenacious debates within Cultural Studies over structure and agency by focusing on the social production of value (in this case, the way children produce common forms of value for their card collections) and how this is connected to economic value in an age of speculative capital. In particular, I argue that Pokémon emblematizes emerging trends in the way the financialized economy develops and depends on commodified social practices that offer resources for the development of financialized subjectivities and engineered forms of agency.