Braverman and beyond
Stream Organisers (Work in the Global Economy editorial team)
- Prof Kirsty Newsome, (University of Sheffield)
- Prof Sian Moore (University of Greenwich)
- Prof Paul Thompson (University of Stirling)
- Prof Abigail Marks (Newcastle University)
- Dr Safak Tartanoglu-Bennett (University of Greenwich)
At the Padua conference, ILPC celebrated its 40th anniversary. In 2024, another notable event appears in the calendar – 50 years since the publication of Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital. MNC is universally regarded as the foundational text of LPT. This iconic status was reinforced by Braverman’s untimely death in 1976 before he could respond to commentary and criticism, except for two very short notes. This notable anniversary provides an opportunity for the conference to reflect on both the status and character of LMC, but more importantly how, in different ways, the labour process community has built on its legacy.
Though the anniversary is in 2024, the editors of our new journal, Work in the Global Economy, want to use the Strathclyde conference to organise a stream that will collect papers for potential publication in a special issue of the journal for the following year. Recent conferences have been notable for the emergence of greater attention to theory building challenges amongst new as well as more traditional generations of scholars and from the global south as well as traditional heartlands. The stream will hopefully bring together a variety of contributions that will showcase the best and most innovative writing in this vein. Papers need not be substantively focused on LMC but can be reflective of any aspects of the evolution and further development of LPT. Papers may be empirically based as long as they are theory-led.
Illustrative topics may include:
- Reconsideration is of LMC on Braverman’s legacy
- Reflections on LPT as a theory building project in general.
- Analyses of the contributions of LPT to particular debates around issues such as skill, control regimes, resistance of labour agency, gender or settings such as service work, care work platforms.
- New and potential directions in LPT and how they build on or differ from existing approaches.
- Actual or potential mutual influences between LPT and other bodies of theory, such as institutional approaches, labour history or geography.