Review of: Julia Harnoncourt (2018) Unfreie Arbeit. Trabalho escravo in der brasilianischen Landwirtschaft

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the reality of precarious jobs and working conditions all around the world, ranging from meat-cutters in Germany, to fruit and vegetable pickers in Peru, and to women from Eastern Europe working as 24-hour assistants for elderly people in Western Europe. The global health crisis has shed light on exploitative working conditions as well as global power inequalities. The book Unfreie Arbeit. Trabalho escravo in der brasilianischen Landwirtschaft (Unfree Labour: Trabalho escravo in Brazilian Agriculture) addresses exactly these issues by looking at trabalho escravo, a form of unfree labour, in the north-western Brazilian state of Pará. However, Harnoncourt explains that trabalho escravo is just one of many mechanisms of creating inequality which the study aims to disentangle (p. 10).In four chapters plus an appendix Harnoncourt analyses the aspects which constitute and shape this labour regime. Due to the fact that the book is based on a PhD thesis, the introduction (pp. 7-44) is reduced to the basics, such as sources, perspective, method and theory as well as the state of the research. Familiar with the original text of the thesis, the reviewer has to point out the excellent editorial work that has been carried out by the author and the editorial staff at Promedia. Why is that important? The book was published in the series "Critical Science" (Kritische Forschung) and therefore wants to accomplish -apart from scientific standards -also a socio-political statement. This implies that the outcome of scientific research addresses a wider audience, reaching not only "expert" circles. The introduction proves that this goal has been met, due to the previously mentioned editorial work, but also through clear language and logical argumentation. Although up to now the book has only been published in German, which limits its possible outreach, the study proves to be useful for various settings, from undergraduate students at university seminars to basic reading material for journalistic investigations.The main part of the book (pp. 45-199) then deals with trabalho escravo in the agricultural complex in Pará. As a peripheral state inside the Brazilian nation-state, Pará constitutes a favourable location for the exercise of unfree labour and other forms of exploitation. During the last military dictatorship the Amazonian region experienced an "internal peripheralization", becoming a source of primary materials such as cattle, sugar and soya. These are produced basically only by men under various unfree labour mechanisms which are implemented in order to reproduce surplus value for global agrobusiness (pp. 126-7).Harnoncourt´s study focuses on these agricultural workers and describes the process of how these young men -often of black or indigenous descent -step into a vicious circle of dependency and exploitation (pp. 87-105).The empirical basis for the book consists of qualitative interviews with members of different organisations which oppose trabalho escravo and its agents, like the Landless...