How We Struggle: A Political Anthropology of Labour

by Sian Lazar

Overview

A comparative, ethnographic approach to the question of labor struggles and workers' political agency

When it comes to labor movements, unionized industrial workers on the factory floor have only ever been part of the picture. Across so many different workplaces, sectors of the economy, and geographical contexts, the question of how working people struggle in the day-to-day has no single answer.

Here Sian Lazar offers a unique anthropological perspective on labor agency that takes in examples from across the globe, from heavy industry and agriculture to the service and informal sectors. She asks: how do people strive to improve their lives and working conditions? How are they constrained and enabled in that struggle by the nature of the work they do, and by their own positionality in local histories, cultures, and networks? 

How We Struggle explores worker action across the spectrum from organized trade unionism to individualized strategies of accommodation, resistance, and escape. The book marries a discussion of global political economy and Marxist feminist theories of labor with ethnographic approaches that begin from a perspective of human experience, kinship, and radical heterogeneity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745347516
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	01/20/2023
Series:	Anthropology, Culture and Society
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Sian Lazar is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of The Social Life of Politics: Ethics, Kinship and Union Activism in Argentina and editor of Where are the Unions? Workers and Social Movements in Latin America, the Middle East and Europe amongst other books.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Heavy Industry and Post-Fordist Precarities
2. Light Industry: Gender, Migration and Strategies of Resilience
3. Agricultural Labour: Exploitation and Collective Action
4. Affective Labour and the Service Sector: Work as Relations
5. Professional and Managerial Work: Producing Selves and Processes
6. Platform Labour: Digital Management and Fragmented Collectivities
7. Patchwork Living
8. Social Reproduction Labour
Conclusion
Coda: The Covid-19 Pandemic and Labour: Continuities and the Potential for Change
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

'Sian Lazar shows us anthropology at its best. She explores how different capitalist strategies for organizing workers’ productivity generate problems that encourage certain solutions that in themselves create more problems, and on and on. Lazar is remarkably imaginative in revealing how, in large and small ways, workers of all stripes can organise to create otherwise, generate new possibilities for resistance and lead more fulfilling lives.'
lana Gershon, Ruth N. Halls professor of anthropology, Indiana University, US

‘Sian Lazar's new book is as brilliant as useful. She manoeuvres lightly among the opposing schools of labor anthropology and shows with world-wide examples that how we struggle for better lives is deeply embedded in the type of relationships in which we labour, care and serve; relationships that are globally produced, intimately lived, and more often than not divisive. "How we struggle" is a boon for analysts and activists alike.’
Don Kalb, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, author of Expanding Class

‘With its fresh analysis of labour agency, How We Struggle is a source of tremendous inspiration and hope. I can’t wait to share it with my students.’
Dr Rebecca Prentice, Reader in Anthropology and International Development, University of Sussex

‘With ethnographic flair, the book beautifully incorporates a wide range of contemporary contributions to the anthropology of labor, from the workplace to the home and the community, from collective action to individualized strategies of resilience and escape. It provides a highly readable and state of the art analysis of the politics of labor, with a keen eye to gender and migration.’
Luisa Steur, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam

‘"How we struggle" is marvellously expansive and generous in its conceptualization as it allows us to think broadly about labor agency in a post-Fordist, post-pandemic world. Lazar has written a masterful book - a resource that makes anthropology matter.’
Andrea Muehlebach, Professor of Anthropology, University of Bremen, Germany

'In these times, when the power of capital to determine our life conditions seems inexorable, Sian Lazar’s study of working people’s agency and their struggles from below is a very welcome intervention.'
Sharryn Kasmir, author of The myth of Mondragón

‘How We Struggle presents a real tour de force: it offers magnificent insights into the challenges workers face today and the diverse acts of resistance, agency and organising that underpin their aspirations to improve lives. This refreshing and lucidly written book will be an invaluable resource for scholars of the rapidly changing landscapes of labour and capitalism that engulf us.’
Geert De Neve, Professor of Social Anthropology and South Asian Studies, University of Sussex

From the Publisher