Book•
Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India
08 Apr 2013-
TL;DR: Agarwala et al. as mentioned in this paper argue that Indian informal workers are using their power as voters to demand welfare benefits from the state, rather than demanding traditional work benefits from employers.
Abstract: Since the 1980s, the world's governments have decreased state welfare and thus increased the number of unprotected 'informal' or 'precarious' workers. As a result, more and more workers do not receive secure wages or benefits from either employers or the state. This book offers a fresh and provocative look into the alternative social movements informal workers in India are launching. It also offers a unique analysis of the conditions under which these movements succeed or fail. Drawing from 300 interviews with informal workers, government officials and union leaders, Rina Agarwala argues that Indian informal workers are using their power as voters to demand welfare benefits from the state, rather than demanding traditional work benefits from employers. In addition, they are organizing at the neighborhood level, rather than the shop floor, and appealing to 'citizenship', rather than labor rights.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an explanation and dialectical approach to economics and philosophy and economics, with a focus on exploitation, freedom, and justice, and a theory of history.
Abstract: Preface and acknowledgments Introduction 1. Explanation and dialectics Part I. Philosophy and Economics: 2. Philosophical anthropology 3. Economics 4. Exploitation, freedom and justice Part II. Theory of History: 5. Modes of production 6. Classes 7. Politics and the state 8. Ideologies 9. Capitalism, communism and revolution Conclusion references Index of names index of subjects.
803 citations
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: Chibber as discussed by the authors argued that despite a democratic framework and a state commitment to economic growth, India failed to reach the levels of economic development that South Korea reached in the 1950s and 1960s.
Abstract: Why did India, despite a democratic framework and a state commitment to economic growth, fail to reach the levels of economic development that South Korea reached in the 1950s and 1960s? Vivek Chibber’s Locked in Place revives the comparative historical study of economic development and argues for the central role of capitalists in sending India’s developmental state awry. In this issue Jeffery Paige, Elisabeth Clemens, and Leo Panitch examine Chibber’s claims and Chibber responds.
298 citations
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: In this article, Janice Fine identifies 137 worker centers in more than eighty cities, suburbs, and rural areas in thirty-one states in the US, which serve not only as organizing laboratories but also as places where immigrants and other low-wage workers can participate in civil society, tell their stories to the larger community, resist racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, and work to improve their political and economic standing.
Abstract: Low-wage workers in the United States face obstacles including racial and ethnic discrimination, a pervasive lack of wage enforcement, misclassification of their employment, and for some, their status as undocumented immigrants. In the past, political parties, unions, and fraternal and mutual-aid societies served as important vehicles for workers who hoped to achieve political and economic integration. As these traditional civic institutions have weakened, low-wage workers must seek new structures for mutual support. Worker centers are among the institutions to which workers turn as they strive to build vibrant communities and attain economic and political visibility. Community-based worker centers help low-wage workers gain access to social services; advocate for their own civil and human rights; and organize to improve wages, working conditions, neighborhoods, and public schools.In this pathbreaking book, Janice Fine identifies 137 worker centers in more than eighty cities, suburbs, and rural areas in thirty-one states. These centers, which attract workers in industries that are difficult to organize, have emerged as especially useful components of any program intended to assist immigrants and low-wage workers of color. Worker centers serve not only as organizing laboratories but also as places where immigrants and other low-wage workers can participate in civil society, tell their stories to the larger community, resist racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, and work to improve their political and economic standing.
251 citations
TL;DR: The reality of urban informality is changing across the Global South, with implications for how we understand this phenomenon across economic, spatial, and political domains as mentioned in this paper. But, as discussed in Section 2.
Abstract: Across the Global South, the realities of urban informality are changing, with implications for how we understand this phenomenon across economic, spatial, and political domains. Recent accounts ha...
147 citations
Cites background from "Informal Labor, Formal Politics, an..."
...In India, Agarwala (2013) argues that increasingly sophisticated responses by informal construction and bidi workers have secured a social wage to compensate for labour market informalisation in some states....
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TL;DR: The power resources approach (PRA) as discussed by the authors has emerged as a research heuristic for trade union renewal, based on the assumption that organized labour can successfully defend its interests by collective mobilisation of power resources.
Abstract: Instead of dismissing labour as a product of the past, the study of labour has been revitalised over the past two decades by approaches that emphasise the ability of organised labour to act strategically. This new branch of research on trade union renewal has challenged the discourse of a general decline of organised labour, focusing instead on innovative organising strategies, new forms of participation and campaigning in both the Global North and the Global South (Turner, Katz and Hurd, 2001; Clawson, 2003; Milkman, 2006; Agarwala, 2013; Murray, 2017). The focus of these studies has not been the institutional setting of labour relations or the overall impact of major trends like globalisation on labour, but rather the strategic choice in responding to new challenges and changing contexts. In the discussion on trade union renewal, the power resources approach (PRA) has emerged as a research heuristic. The PRA is founded on the basic premise that organised labour can successfully defend its interests by collective mobilisation of power resources. This idea has significantly shaped the way scholars are dealing with the issue of union revitalisation and labour conflict, as studies from different world regions have examined union renewal as a process of utilising existing power resources while attempting to develop new ones (Von Holdt and Webster, 2008; Chun, 2009; Dörre, 2010a; McCallum, 2013; Julian, 2014; Melleiro and Steinhilber, 2016; Lehndorff, Dribbusch and Schulten, 2017; Ludwig and Webster, 2017; Xu and Schmalz, 2017). Many of these studies were part of close collaboration between scholars and unionists and therefore can be understood as being a form of “organic public sociology in which the sociologist works in close connection with a visible, thick, active, local and often counter-public” (Burawoy, 2005: 7). The articles of this Special Issue are part of this debate. They are results of an international research project – “Trade Unions in Transformation” – initiated by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in spring 2015, aiming at identifying and analysing innovative forms of trade unionism in different world regions. Most of the papers were discussed (or even co-authored) with union actors involved in the struggles presented in this Special Issue. They all draw on the power resources approach in order to analyse the process of union renewal. This editorial introduces the analytical tool of power resources by analysing its development and by presenting its basic tenets. In what follows, we will first describe the origins of the power resources approach. In the next section we will present a specific variety of the approach applied in this Special Issue. After that, we will discuss the relevance
129 citations
Cites background from "Informal Labor, Formal Politics, an..."
...The concept of Global Labour Journal, 2018, 9(2), Page 115 symbolic power was added into the power resources approach by researchers in the United States (Chun, 2005, 2009; Fine 2006) and the Global South (Webster, Lambert and Bezuidenhout, 2008), arguing that workers with limited structural power were able to compensate for the lack of associational power “by drawing upon the contested arena of culture and public debates about values” (Chun, 2009: 7)....
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...For instance, capital relocations have contributed in some countries of the Global South (such as China, South East Asia, Mexico) and also in Eastern Europe to the emergence of new worker milieus with a high degree of workplace bargaining power....
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...This new branch of research on trade union renewal has challenged the discourse of a general decline of organised labour, focusing instead on innovative organising strategies, new forms of participation and campaigning in both the Global North and the Global South (Turner, Katz and Hurd, 2001; Clawson, 2003; Milkman, 2006; Agarwala, 2013; Murray, 2017)....
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...Such divides become particularly clear in the informal sector in the Global South: informal workers have limited workplace and marketplace bargaining power, while the powerful and relatively well-paid workers in major industrial companies are often considered to enjoy a privileged position....
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...Accordingly, individual groups of workers in countries of the Global South are often particularly able to assert themselves as they occupy key positions in the economy (for example, workers in seaports and airports), while equally there are large groups of informally employed workers whose structural power is limited....
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References
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Book•
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: In this paper, Esping-Andersen distinguishes three major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different Western countries, and argues that current economic processes such as those moving toward a post-industrial order are shaped not by autonomous market forces but by the nature of states and state differences.
Abstract: Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in Western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the foremost contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced Western societies. Esping-Andersen distinguishes three major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different Western countries. He argues that current economic processes, such as those moving toward a postindustrial order, are shaped not by autonomous market forces but by the nature of states and state differences. Fully informed by comparative materials, this book will have great appeal to all those working on issues of economic development and postindustrialism. Its audience will include students of sociology, economics, and politics."
16,883 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a different framework for solving problems of distribution accumulation and growth first in a closed and then in an open economy, where the assumption of an unlimited labor supply is used.
Abstract: Written in the classical tradition this essay attempts to determine what can be made of the classical framework in solving problems of distribution accumulation and growth first in a closed and then in an open economy. The purpose is to bring the framework of individual writers up to date in the light of modern knowledge and to see if it helps facilitate an understanding of the contemporary problems of large areas of the earth. The 1st task is to elaborate the assumption of an unlimited labor supply and by establishing that it is a useful assumption. The objective is merely to elaborate a different framework for those countries which the neoclassical (and Keynesian) assumptions do not fit. In the 1st place an unlimited supply of labor may be said to exist in those countries where population is so large relative to capital and natural resources that there are large sectors of the economy where the marginal productivity of labor is negligible zero or even negative. Several writers have drawn attention to the existence of such "disguised" unemployment in the agricultural sector. If unlimited labor is available while capital is scarce it is known from the Law of Variable Proportions that the capital should not be spread thinly over all the labor. Only so much labor should be used with capital as will reduce the marginal productivity of labor to zero. The key to the process of economic expansion is the use that is made of the capitalist surplus. In so far as this is reinvested in creating new capital the capital sector expands taking more people into capitalist employment out of the subsistence sector. The surplus is then larger still and capital formation is still greater and so the process continues until the labor surplus disappears. The central problem in the theory of economic development is to understand the process by which a community which was previously saving and investing 4 or 5% of its national income or less converts itself into an economy where voluntary saving is running at about 12-15% of national income or more. This is the crucial problem because the central fact of economic development is rapid capital accumulation (including knowledge and skills with capital). Much of the plausible explanation is that people save more because they have more to save. The model used here states that if unlimited supplies of labor are available at a constant real wage and if any part of profits is reinvested in productive capacity profits will grow continuously relative to the national income and capital formation will also grow relatively to the national income. As capitalists also create capital as a result of a net increase in the supply of money particularly bank credit it is necessary to take account of this. Governments affect the process of capital accumulation in many ways and not least by the inflations which they experience. The expansion of the capitalist sector may be stopped because the price of subsistence goods rises or because the price is not falling as fast as subsistence productivity per head is rising or because capitalist workers raise their subsistence standards.
9,030 citations
TL;DR: A traditional society is one whose structure is developed within limited production functions, based on pre-Newtonian science and technology, and on pre Newtonian attitudes towards the physical world as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: First, the traditional society. A traditional society is one whose structure is developed within limited production functions, based on pre-Newtonian science and technology, and on pre-Newtonian attitudes towards the physical world. Newton is here used as a symbol for that watershed in history when men came widely to believe that the external world was subject to a few knowable laws, and was systematically capable of productive manipulation.
3,662 citations
Book•
01 Apr 1999
TL;DR: The Global Transformations (GTL) project as discussed by the authors is the product of almost a decade's work by a research team (based at the Open University and supported by the ESRC) who have produced what James. N. Rosenau has called the definitive work on globalization.
Abstract: Undoubtedly one of the highlights of the 1999 Conference was the plenary session in which Professors David Held and Mahdi Elmandjra came together to discuss the theme of ‘“Globalization”: Democracy and Diversity’. The Conference also witnessed the launch of Global Transformations (Polity Press, 1999), at which David Held was joined by two of his three coauthors, Professor Anthony McGrew and Dr Jonathan Perraton. Global Transformations is the product of almost a decade’s work by a research team (based at the Open University and supported by the ESRC) who have produced what James. N. Rosenau has called ‘the definitive work on globalization’. It is a study which not only synthesises an extraordinary amount of information from research on globalization in a range of social science disciplines, but also makes its own distinctive contribution to our understanding of the complex range of forces which are reshaping the world order. We are delighted to be able to reproduce here an ‘executive summary’ of Global Transformations that summarises the major findings of this 500-page survey in just six thousand words.
2,755 citations
TL;DR: The Global Transformations (GTL) project as mentioned in this paper is the product of almost a decade's work by a research team (based at the Open University and supported by the ESRC) who have produced what James. N. Rosenau has called the definitive work on globalization.
Abstract: Undoubtedly one of the highlights of the 1999 Conference was the plenary session in which Professors David Held and Mahdi Elmandjra came together to discuss the theme of ‘“Globalization”: Democracy and Diversity’. The Conference also witnessed the launch of Global Transformations (Polity Press, 1999), at which David Held was joined by two of his three coauthors, Professor Anthony McGrew and Dr Jonathan Perraton. Global Transformations is the product of almost a decade’s work by a research team (based at the Open University and supported by the ESRC) who have produced what James. N. Rosenau has called ‘the definitive work on globalization’. It is a study which not only synthesises an extraordinary amount of information from research on globalization in a range of social science disciplines, but also makes its own distinctive contribution to our understanding of the complex range of forces which are reshaping the world order. We are delighted to be able to reproduce here an ‘executive summary’ of Global Transformations that summarises the major findings of this 500-page survey in just six thousand words.
2,637 citations