This article discusses the sector-wide organization of contractual archaeologists in Québec, beginning with the formation of a workers’ committee and leading subsequently to union accreditation. We theorize the difficulty of organizing these “precarious professionals” and suggest that self-organization outside of an industrial relations framework may be required to overcome barriers to their unionization. Deliberation, norm setting, and informal parlays with employers lead to clarifying class distinctions that professional identification often occludes, while self-organization increases worker confidence in collective action.
Cet article traite de l’organisation sectorielle des archéologues contractuels au Québec en commençant par la création d’un comité de travailleurs et menant par la suite à l’accréditation syndicale. Nous mettons en théorie les difficultés qui ont entravé l’organisation de ces «professionnels précaires», et proposons que l’auto-organisation en dehors d’un cadre de relations industrielles peut être nécessaire pour surmonter les obstacles à leur syndicalisation. La délibération, l’établissement des normes et les discussions avec les employeurs conduisent à clarifier les distinctions de classe que l’identification professionnelle occulte souvent, tandis que l’auto-organisation augmente la confiance des travailleurs dans l’action collective.
Describing cultural change and variability and inferring sociocultural dynamics about past people and communities may be among archaeology’s main goals as a field of practice. In this regard, the concept of skill has proved its usefulness to, time and again, expand the breath of archaeologists and lithic technologists’ analyses. It covers a wide range of applications, from apprenticeship, cognition, paleo-sociology, spatial organization. It is one of the main causes for material culture variability, up there with raw material constraints, design, technological organization or cultural norms. Yet, while skill has certainly been the focus of some research in the last decades, it remains quite peripheral, when considering how central the concept should be to technological inquiries. Whatever the reasons may be, this book, edited by Laurent Klaric and fully bilingual (French and English), aims at changing that, and argues for skill to become a central concern in lithic technology. Its chapters do so strongly and the end-result is a book that should become a reference for lithic technologists, whatever their research interests or schools of thought may be.
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