RC44 Call for Papers
Second ISA Forum of Sociology – RC 44
Social Justice and Democratization
August 1-4, 2012
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Visit: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/rc44/conferences/index.aspx
VII Global Labour University Conference
The Politics of Labour and Development
September 28 to 30, 2011
Johannesburg, South Africa
The Global Labour University is pleased to announce a call for papers for the 2011 conference on “The Politics of Labour and Development” to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from September 28 to 30, 2011.
The global economic crisis has had a particularly hard-hitting impact on working people, their families and communities throughout the world. What is more, they also face an environmental crisis that is closely linked to the economic crisis. Together, these crises have intensified the dispossession of the commons (including both local resources and public goods such as health and education), the informalisation of labour, unemployment, national and global social inequality, and the “slummification” of cities. Declining biodiversity, climate change and pollution are evidence of the impact of the crisis on the planet itself. Environmental degradation threatens viable livelihoods and endangers public health. Meanwhile the market imperatives get defining power over daily life, business interests tighten their stranglehold on the state logic and power is transferred to supranational institutions with limited democratic accountability, simultaneously narrowing electoral choices, and increasingly restrictions on protest.
Labour, as a key social force of the excluded majority, has a crucial role to play in countering the destructive logics of capitalism. The politics of labour is about altering the balance of power away from capital and unelected bureaucracies toward labour and broader society. The politics of labour is also about overcoming the multiple relations of power and oppression, including the economic, political, gender, ethnic and cultural, that contribute to and reproduce the power of the few and the subordination of the many. This has the following dimensions:
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The workplace imperative: Labour’s attempts to reverse the declining wage share and extract as much of the social surplus created through mobilisation for higher wages and better working conditions, as can be seen in the recent strike wave in South Africa and other parts of the world. This is especially important as rising inequality has devastating effects on society, as more and more people are pushed to margins of production and consumption patterns. For example, this includes issues of the distribution of productivity growth, minimum wages and basic income grants as well as policy issues of taxation and redistribution.
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New forms of power or leverage: With rising unemployment and increasing numbers of workers pushed into precarious forms of work, traditional sources of power are eroded, but new forms of power are being explored, often by the most marginalized and sectors traditionally ignored by labour movements. Labour’s links to other social forces is crucial here. This also raises questions about who constitutes the working class, with wider understandings of labour increasingly finding salience in innovative movements around the world. The development of transnational linkages and networks is also an important dimension to the development of new forms of power and leverage.
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The policy imperative: Labour’s attempts, often in alliance with other groups in civil society, to pressure governments to increase the social wage (public health, education, transport, housing, etc.), increase employment and change economic (and slowly environmental) policy accordingly. For example, what would a “green new deal” look like? We also encourage papers that look at the conversion of industrial production into alternative forms of production and consumption as well as papers looking at ecological issues.
What are the most effective ways to develop pro-working class policy? Corporatism seems to have spread, rather than declined, in the neo-liberal era: what is its balance sheet?
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Political parties, alliances and trade union organizations, and political power: Labour’s attempts to directly alter the balance of state power, either
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through alliances with ruling political parties,
- through the reorganization of trade union organizations and strategies,
- through the development of alternative organizations and alliances with other movements in civil society, or
- through building movements that refuse to participate in the state, but are willing to pressure it for reforms.
This raises questions about the role of labour—as a reforming force, as a legitimating function that hindersmore radical challenges to state power, or as a central actor in building an alternative to the destructive logic of capitalist development. The nature of political alliances and forms of mobilizing are vital issues that are being experimented on in various regions of the world (e.g., many movements in Latin America, South Korean marginalized workers, etc.). It also raises questions about international approaches to global governance.
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The economic imperative. Within the neoliberal framework, competitiveness becomes more aggressive and self-destructing through currency manipulation, quantitative easing, wage dumping, trade barriers, devaluation etc. Is there space for economic policy nationally and internationally that avoids the disadvantages of a competitive race to the bottom or a retreat in isolated economic nationalism?
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Alternative forms of production, consumption and redistribution: This raises questions about what are alternative forms of production and consumption. For example, worker cooperatives, microcredit/microfinance projects (including its problems for informal sector workers), local agricultural production, and solidarity economy alternatives have emerged around the world.
We welcome submissions for papers on any of these themes. While we encourage submission of papers that broadly fit into the themes, we will also consider papers that do not fit directly into one of the themes as long as they address the broad focus of the conference. The GLU encourages policy orientated research and therefore welcomes submissions that not only analyses the problem, but also offer some policy initiatives and solutions for debate.
Please send a one page abstract (which includes your methodological approach) by January 30, 2011 to Pulane Ditlhake at Glu.SouthAfrica[at]wits.ac.za and Michelle Williams at michelle.williams[at]wits.ac.za
La version française suit
New Voices in Labour Studies
Looking back/moving forward:
Challenges for labour organizing in an era of global austerity and economic crisis
March 2nd to 3rd, 2012
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montréal, Québec
Workers at home and around the world are being saddled with the burden of saving capitalism in the context of the current global economic crisis through sweeping austerity measures and further attacks on trade unions and working people. More and more people are forced to contend with precarious working conditions, not least migrant workers and new immigrants who face multiple forms of economic, political and social exclusion in labour-receiving states such as Canada.
But from within their workplaces, trade unions, communities and as part of larger social movements, workers are fighting back. We invite paper proposals that critically theorize the politics of the current challenges for labour organizing, trade unionism and other forms of collective action undertaken to fight for workplace justice and broader forms of social change. We also invite paper proposals that place these processes in historical perspective, using history to shed light on contemporary problems.
Potential topics might include:
• The organization of migrant workers
• Workers in the labour movement
• Job insecurity and its impact on trade unionism
• The challenges of neoliberal globalization for workers and their organizations
• Resistance to austerity policies
• The challenges of organizing in the service sector
• Threats to the traditional strongholds of organized labour (public sector, manufacturing)
• Alliances between the labour movement and other social movements
• Rebuilding the struggle against capital
This list is by no means exhaustive and all proposals which fit within the overall theme of the conference are encouraged.
The conference is designed to provide a critical interdisciplinary venue for “new voices in labour studies”. Preference will be given to senior Ph.D. students and scholars who completed their Ph.D. in the last six years, as well as labour organizers and researchers from outside of the academy. Co-authored papers by academic researchers and labour activists are encouraged. Current and recent graduates will have the opportunity to meet emerging voices in the field and interact with more senior scholars as well as labour organizers and union activists.
The conference will take place at L'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montréal on March 2-3, 2012. Presentations can be made in French or English. The two-day event will include thematic panels, and an informal evening social event to be held at Montreal’s Immigrant Workers Centre.
Proposal Submission: November 30, 2011
• Title of paper and a 100-150 word outline of the paper to be presented
• List of degrees, including discipline and starting with the most recent (maximum four lines)
• List of positions, starting with the most recent (maximum ten lines)
• Publications, starting with the most recent (maximum ten lines)
Please send your proposal and supporting information to newvoiceslabour2012[at]gmail.com.
Submitters will be notified on the status of their proposal by mid-January 2012.
For more information, please contact:
Thomas Collombat (tcollombat[at]gmail.com)
or
Aziz Choudry (aziz.choudry[at]mcgill.ca)
Conference Organizers:
Aziz Choudry (McGill), Thomas Collombat (UQAM), Léa L. Fontaine (UQAM), Steve Jordan (McGill), Jean-François Mayer (Concordia), Yanick Noiseux (Université de Montréal), Eric Shragge (Concordia), Sid Ahmed Soussi (UQAM).
English version above
Travail et syndicalisme : les nouvelles voix de la recherche
Tirer les leçons du passé pour mieux avancer : les défis pour les travailleurs et leurs organisations à l’ère de l’austérité et de la crise économique »
2 et 3 mars, 2012
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montréal, Québec
Au Canada comme ailleurs dans le monde, les travailleurs se voient forcés de sauver le capitalisme de la dernière crise économique mondiale en subissant des politiques d’austérité et des attaques régulières contre le mouvement ouvrier. Le travail précaire est en pleine expansion, notamment au sein des travailleurs immigrants qui sont confrontés à de multiples formes d’exclusion économique, politique et sociale au sein des pays qui les reçoivent, dont le Canada.
Toutefois, dans leurs milieux de travail et dans leurs syndicats, les travailleurs s’organisent et résistent. Ils contribuent activement à la mobilisation de leurs communautés et à la création d’un large mouvement social d’opposition aux politiques néolibérales. Nous accueillons des propositions de communications contribuant de façon critique à la théorisation des dynamiques et des défis traversées à l’heure actuelle par les groupes œuvrant à l’organisation des travailleurs, les syndicats et les autres organisations militant pour plus de justice sociale dans les milieux de travail et dans la société dans son ensemble. Un intérêt particulier sera accordé aux propositions analysant ces processus dans une perspective historique afin de mieux comprendre les dynamiques contemporaines.
Les thèmes pouvant être abordés incluent :
• l’organisation des travailleurs migrants
• les travailleuses dans le mouvement ouvrier
• la précarité au travail et son impact sur le syndicalisme
• les enjeux de la mondialisation néolibérale pour les travailleurs et leurs organisations
• la résistance aux politiques d’austérité
• les enjeux de la syndicalisation dans le secteur des services
• les menaces aux bastions traditionnels du syndicalisme (secteur public, industrie manufacturière)
• les alliances entre le mouvement ouvrier et les autres mouvements sociaux
• la reconstruction d’un rapport de force face au capital
Cette liste n’est en aucun cas exhaustive et toutes les propositions entrant dans le thème général du colloque sont encouragées.
Ce colloque se veut un moment d’échanges critiques et interdisciplinaires pour les « nouvelles voix de la recherche ». Une préférence sera accordée aux doctorants avancés (en rédaction de thèse), aux chercheurs ayant terminé leur doctorat dans les six dernières années ainsi qu’aux militants syndicaux ou d’autres groupes engagés dans des projets de recherche à l’extérieur de l’université. La présentation de propositions co-élaborées entre universitaires et militants est encouragée. Les participants auront l’occasion de rencontrer les principaux nouveaux acteurs de ce champ de recherche et d’échanger avec des chercheurs chevronnés ainsi qu’avec des militants du mouvement ouvrier.
Le colloque se tiendra à l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), les 2 et 3 mars 2012. Les présentations pourront être faites en français ou en anglais. Le colloque comprendra des panels thématiques ainsi qu’un événement social informel qui se tiendra au Centre des travailleurs immigrants de Montréal.
Échéance pour la soumission de propositions : 30 novembre 2011
Celles-ci doivent comprendre :
• le titre de la communication ainsi qu’un résumé de 100 à 150 mots
• la liste des diplômes de l’auteur, incluant les disciplines, et en commençant par le plus récent (4 lignes maximum)
• la liste des postes occupés par l’auteur, en commençant par le plus récent (maximum de 10 lignes)
• la liste des publications de l’auteur, en commençant par la plus récente (maximum de 10 lignes)
Les propositions doivent être acheminées par courriel à l’adresse suivante: newvoices2012[at]gmail.com.
Les personnes ayant soumis des propositions seront informées à la mi-janvier 2012 des suites données à leur proposition.
Pour plus d’information, veuillez contacter:
Thomas Collombat (tcollombat[at]gmail.com)
ou
Aziz Choudry (aziz.choudry[at]mcgill.ca)
Comité organisateur:
Aziz Choudry (McGill), Thomas Collombat (UQAM), Léa L. Fontaine (UQAM), Steve Jordan (McGill), Jean-François Mayer (Concordia), Yanick Noiseux (Université de Montréal), Eric Shragge (Concordia), Sid Ahmed Soussi (UQAM).
