Global Value Chains, Organizations and Industrial Work

Abstract

Rather than focussing exclusively on a list of key figures in the sociology of industrial, organisational and work sociology, the chapter considers organisation and industrial work in the context of thematic periods in the development of capitalism since 1945. The argument is made that the kind of studies of organisation and work undertaken throughout the history of our discipline, together with the scope of our understanding of organisation, work and employment have always been constrained by the geographies, spaces, sociologies, and temporality of determinate forms taken by the level of development of the capitalist firm. Our radical global value chain analysis of the ethanol sector in Brazil is used to exemply this thesis.

Unpacking Super-Exploitation in the 21st Century: The Struggles of Haitian Workers in Brazil

“…These distinctions are important as the dominant literature on labour migration, with important exceptions, is concerned with the structural conditions and patterns of subordination most usually existing in developed countries. Studies thus frequently adopt a northern-centric perspective, drawing upon conventional south-north migration interpretations and Keynesian welfare assumptions about the capacity for labour protections (Stewart and Garvey, 2015). Unfortunately, even studies making a geographical leap insufficiently theorise how developing countries are subject to radically different historical processes of development, subjugation and class relations which impact on social reproduction and exploitation (Kowarick, 1980;Munck, 2013;De Oliveira, 2006;Pun, 2016).…”

Extending the conceptualisation of class across field and city: Transgressing servitude towards an emancipatory praxis

“…Brazil’s sugar cane sector is a useful example. The pressure placed upon the factory owners by collective workers struggles during the classic ‘Fordist’ era, typified in Brazil by the now historic auto and metallurgy sector struggles of Sao Paulo in the 1980s, has been dissipated by increased social control via ‘old’ means of coercion and more modern means of fragmentation and co-option (Alves 2018; Briken 2020; Huws 2019; Stewart & Garvey 2015). Where large enterprises have relatively high sunk, fixed costs; sugar-ethanol distilleries for example (where a satisfactory return on investment may take as much as 10 years), corporations have avoided dependence on a sedentary labour force living in tight knit communities in close proximity to the factory.…”

‘Meet the New Boss … Same as the Old boss?’ Technology, toil and tension in the agrofuel frontier

“…Crucial to understanding a techno-institutional fix, however, is that innovation cannot dispel or dissolve the inherent contradictions in the process of capital accumulation (Jessop, 2014), including labour's capacity to disrupt the production process in pursuit of improved wages and conditions (Wright, 2000;Cumbers et al, 2008) (In a 2007 review of global networks for biofuel by Mol, for example, labour is referenced only in relation to its low cost.). Although the constitutive and conflictual role of labour is increasingly recognised in GCC studies (Cumbers et al, 2008;Selwyn, 2013;Taylor et al, 2013), the analysis presented here that is attentive to systemic and relational power structures in sites of commodity production requires consideration beyond the supply chain's fields and factories and to the broader and contested social relations in the frontiers (geographical, political and technological) of bioenergy production (Stewart and Garvey, 2016). From this perspective it becomes possible to conceive how new forms of power relation, coalitions, institutions and power-knowledge technologies may emerge out of the incumbent system in various ways that are incompatible with its existing form and are also capable of reinforcing each other, even to the point of being able to challenge that system lock-in or 'fix'.…”