Author: Elena Baglioni
Co-Authors ⁄ Presenters: Dr Elena Baglioni, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, UK Dr Liam Campling, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, UK Dr Satoshi Miyamura, Departments of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK Dr Jonathan Pattenden, School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK Dr Ben Selwyn, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Exploitation and labour control regimes: a research agenda
This symposium proposes to further the research agenda on labour centred analyses of contemporary capitalism that has emerged in recent years from the increasing dialogue between the fields of labour geography, GVC/GPN analyses, and labour process theory. The goal is to promote a class-relational analysis of globalised forms of industrial production moving beyond descriptive and narrow understanding of labour exploitation within commodity chains.
Taking the production of surplus value as the epicentre of capitalism, the symposium seeks to push our collective thinking on the moment of production as being in constant relation to the much broader terrain where all the necessary conditions for capitalist production are realised, evolve, and are fought over. From this perspective the ‘narrow’ moment of labour exploitation (as surplus value creation/extraction) can be more fully connected to the totality of social relations and power dynamics that underpin it: labour exploitation becomes a prism to discover a much larger world – the historically and geographically uneven development that allows the (re)production of value on unequal terms. By exploring the world that underpins labour exploitation the symposium ultimately wishes to emphasise how the constant fragmentation of labour across productive/unproductive, or paid/unpaid lines, creates both obstacles and opportunities for class struggle.
The symposium will consist of a broad, open, conversation around a set of fundamental questions (listed below). The participants in the symposium will elaborate jointly and/or individually on each question while encouraging participation from the audience.
1. 1) Labour exploitation as a prism: the insides and outsides of labour exploitation
2. 2) Productive labour versus unproductive labour: contradictions and complementarities between the spheres of production and reproduction; implications for class antagonism and struggle
3. 3) The exploitation of labour and the appropriation of nature: ecological contradictions within capitalist production
4. 4) Labour exploitation and UCD: bringing class back in
5. 5) Labour exploitation and labour control: labour control regimes, and diverse/ changing forms of labour deployment and management strategy
6. 6) New/old trajectories of labour organisation