In search of dignified work: Gender and the work ethic in the crucible of fair trade production

Fisher, Josh

doi:10.1111/amet.12600

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This work resonates with a larger body of work that aims to reimagine the human, to understand “worth at the margins” (Svendsen et al. ), and to analyze the value of a life (Errington and Gewertz ; see also J. Fisher ; Wanderer ). Across this work, more‐than‐human frames remained deeply connected to understanding the experiences of vulnerable people.…”

Section: Captivity: Wolves Zombies and Oil Palmsmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…Perez examined the complex political and ethical implications of people searching for dignity through market‐based programs, where moral categories serve as a strategic demand for social mobilization (509). J. Fisher () also used the language of “dignified work” in his work with women in the first worker‐owned free trade zone in Nicaragua. He showed how their cooperative rejected fair trade and the logic of reproducing capital at the expense of dignity and social life, instead making claims to be seeking “dignified work” (74).…”

Section: Captivity: Wolves Zombies and Oil Palmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a necessary dialectic, much work considered seepage or failures of containment through analytics of freedom (Furani ), the unruly (Cooper ; J. Fisher ; Scherz , 108; Stoetzer , 302), zaniness (Degani ), play (Rea ), transgression (Muir and Gupta ), porousness (Bjork‐James ), madness (Nuhrat ), rupture or breaking open (Kunreuther ; Kyriakides ; Ofstehage ; Saleh ), queering (Heywood ; Shirinian ), invasion (Sherouse ), excess (Gershon ), or contagion (Kivland ; Luna ; Rubin ; Rubinstein et al. ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…). Some considered the failure of containment as a “politics of refusal” (Simpson ), whether refusal to be contained by citizenship norms (McGranahan ), capitalist systems (J. Fisher ; Sangaramoorthy ), or heteronormativity (Heywood ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cultural Anthropology in 2018: Captivity and Its Unruly Failures

Doughty

2019

American Anthropologist

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This essay reviews articles produced in the four key American Anthropological Association cultural anthropology journals throughout 2018, and identifies the ways cultural anthropologists took up Haraway's invitation to "stay with the trouble" through implicit and explicit engagement with logics of captivity and its failures. This work suggests ongoing attention to long-standing themes in cultural anthropology-tensions between capture and escape, constraint and resistance, structure and agency-even as it suggests that captivity and its unruly failures can productively draw our attention to new ways of thinking about governance, temporality, scale, affect, political economy, posthumanism, ontology, care, and infrastructure. In this review, I ask: What can and cannot be contained in the contemporary moment, and what is at stake in that containment, or in the seepage that exceeds its borders?The review focuses on key ways anthropologists analyzed these long-standing questions anew in 2018: captivity and the nature of the human, dependency and exile, and violence and borders, and, by contrast, runaway change and uncertainty, unruly people and affects, and seeping waste and toxicity. Overall, I suggest that captivity and seepage provide productive provocations for further study. [year in review, sociocultural anthropology, captivity, escape, uncertainty, waste] RESUMEN Este ensayo revisa artículos producidos en las cuatro revistas científicas claves de la Asociación Americana de Antropología a lo largo de 2018, e identifica las formas como los antropólogos culturales aceptaron la invitación de Haraway para "quedarse con el problema" a través de un envolvimiento con las lógicas de la captividad y sus fallas. Este trabajo sugiere atención continua a temas de larga data en antropología cultural -tensiones entre captura y escape, restricción y resistencia, estructura y agencia-aun cuando sugiere que esa captividad y sus fallas ingobernables pueden productivamente llamar nuestra atención a nuevas formas de pensar sobre gobernanza, temporalidad, escala, afecto, economía política, posthumanismo, ontología, cuidado e infraestructura.En esta revisión, pregunto: ¿Qué puede y qué no puede ser contenido en el momento contemporáneo, y qué está en juego en esa contención o en la filtración que supera sus fronteras? La revisión se enfoca en las formas claves en que los antropólogos analizaron estas cuestiones de larga data de nuevo en 2018: captividad y la naturaleza de lo humano, dependencia y exilio, y violencia y fronteras y, por contraste, cambio desenfrenado e incertidumbre, personas rebeldes y afectos, y residuos filtrantes y toxicidad. En general, sugiero que la captividad y la filtración proveen provocaciones productivas para estudio posterior. [año en revisión, antropología sociocultural, captividad, escape, incertidumbre, residuos]

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Section: Captivity: Wolves Zombies and Oil Palmsmentioning

confidence: 55%

Section: Captivity: Wolves Zombies and Oil Palmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cultural Anthropology in 2018: Captivity and Its Unruly Failures

Doughty

2019

American Anthropologist

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“…Antropólogos y etnógrafos de otras disciplinas que han indagado en cómo los individuos buscan alcanzar una vida digna se han enfocado preferentemente en las acciones de resistencia y/o resignificación que, en su vida íntima o privada, éstos llevan a cabo (Cleaveland 2005;Han 2012;Pauli 2008). Aunque con algunas excepciones (Auyero 2003;Fisher 2018), la gran mayoría de los trabajos entienden la conquista de dignidad y reconocimiento social como una empresa personal más que colectiva. En el caso de Chile, Han (2012) afirma que la conceptualización de la dignidad de los pobladores (pobres urbanos) comprende una serie de prácticas de solidaridad y reciprocidad desarrolladas en la esfera doméstica, las que van desde pedir alimentos en casos de necesidad extrema o solicitar el cuidado de hijos e hijas a vecinas.…”

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El Derecho a La Vida Digna: Luchas Por La Vivienda Y Vida Cotidiana en Santiago De Chile

Pérez

2019

Chungará (Arica)

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En la actualidad, las reflexiones antropológicas sobre las dimensiones éticas de la vida cotidiana han estado crecientemente interesadas en examinar categorías morales como la "dignidad". En ese contexto, gran parte de los trabajos se han ocupado de estudiar los modos en que poblaciones excluidas, a través de sus prácticas ordinarias desplegadas preferentemente en las esferas íntima y privada, buscan alcanzar una vida digna. Este artículo, en contraste, analiza etnográficamente cómo la búsqueda de dignidad en Santiago de Chile, además de tomar la forma de prácticas sociales desarrolladas en el espacio privado, resulta también en formas emergentes de acción colectiva. Para ello, examino las luchas urbanas llevadas a cabo en su mayoría por pobladoras sin casa inscritas en comités de allegados, esto es, en organizaciones sociales reguladas por el Estado a través de los cuales buscan convertirse en propietarias. Explorando específicamente el "derecho a la vida digna" exigido por ellas, sostengo que dicha reivindicación nos ayuda a entender los modos en que los pobres urbanos significan políticamente sus condiciones cotidianas de exclusión, al tiempo que reformulan las demandas estratégicas de sus movilizaciones.Palabras claves: dignidad, luchas por la vivienda, vida cotidiana, categorías morales. Contemporary anthropological reflections on the ethical dimensions of everyday life have been increasingly interested inexamining moral categories such as "dignity". In this context, a large part of these works has been concerned with the study of how excluded populations, through their ordinary practices predominantly in the intimate and private spheres, seek to attain a life with dignity. This article, in contrast, ethnographically analyzes how the pursuit of dignity, in addition to taking the form of social practices performed in the private space, also results in emerging forms of collective action. To do so, I examine the urban struggles carried out in Santiago, Chile, mostly by female urban dwellers in need of housing enrolled in housing committees (comités de allegados), i.e., state-regulated social organizations through which they seek to become homeowners. By specifically exploring the right to a life with dignity demanded by these urban dwellers, I hold that such a claim allows us to understand the ways in which the urban poor make sense of their everyday conditions of exclusion while, at the same time, reformulate the strategic demands of their mobilizations.

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Substantive commitments: Reconciling work ethics and the welfare state in Norway

McKowen

2019

Economic Anthropology

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Among some policymakers and elites, it is common sense that human behavior is rational and guided by material self‐interest. In turn, this view underpins the idea that cash transfers and social services, if made too generous, risk distorting economic incentives, diminishing the “work ethic” and fostering a “culture of dependency.” The Nordic countries, however, pose a significant empirical challenge to this common sense, as they feature both comprehensive welfare systems and high rates of employment, labor force participation, and surveyed “employment commitment.” What remains unclear is the nature of this commitment, how it is cultivated at the level of everyday life, and what its broader scholarly and policy implications might be. This article, based on sixteen months of fieldwork among the unemployed in Oslo, Norway, argues that the country's distinctive “social democratic” welfare regime endows formal wage labor—as opposed to the labor process itself—with meanings and values that make having a job central to shared ideas of social personhood and moral life. This “employment ethic” is affirmed, my unemployed interlocutors show, by experiences of worklessness. The article concludes by suggesting that a focus on the moral dimensions of contemporary welfare regimes points the way toward a generative, “neosubstantivist” economic anthropology.

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In search of dignified work: Gender and the work ethic in the crucible of fair trade production

Abstract: In search of dignified work:Gender and the work ethic in the crucible of fair trade production

Cited by 12 publications

References 40 publications

Cultural Anthropology in 2018: Captivity and Its Unruly Failures

Cultural Anthropology in 2018: Captivity and Its Unruly Failures

El Derecho a La Vida Digna: Luchas Por La Vivienda Y Vida Cotidiana en Santiago De Chile

Substantive commitments: Reconciling work ethics and the welfare state in Norway

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