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Water Grabbing, Capitalist Accumulation and Resistance: Conceptualising the Multiple Dimensions of Class Struggle
Get PDFThe purpose of this article is to reflect on how we can conceptualise the multiple types of struggles over water. Through a historical materialist engagement with social reproduction theorists, post-colonial interventions and eco-socialism, we argue that capitalist reproduction not only depends on the exploitation of wage labour but also the expropriation of nature and people along different forms of oppression. By focusing on historical processes and the intertwined dynamics necessary for capitalist reproduction, we reveal the internal relations of these struggles to each other and to global capitalism. Moreover, by putting forward a conceptual and methodological guide for how to approach water struggles relationally, we can point to the anti-systemic potential of these struggles. We argue that the diversity of protesters apparent in struggles against water grabbing captures internally related and mediated forms of class struggle, where the terrain of class struggle is inclusive of the whole social factory.
KEYWORDS: Class struggle; exploitation; expropriation; primitive accumulation; water grabbing; incorporated compariso
Wildcat Strike Season: The Origin and Limits of Platform Driver Protests during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia
Get PDFThis article examines the widespread protest actions carried out by gig workers, especially actions using the wildcat strike, with case studies from Indonesia. During the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020 to March 2022), a total of 47 wildcat strikes were carried out by platform drivers in Indonesia. Why were most of the protests by gig workers in Indonesia carried out through wildcat strikes? Can these wildcat strike actions win workers’ demands? Unlike the claims of several scholars that wildcat strikes tend to appear in authoritarian state labour control regimes, becoming, in these cases, an effective form of movement in winning demands, in Indonesia a despotic labour market, repressive employers’ actions, platform drivers’ distrust of existing driver organisations and the obstacles to organising can explain the emergence of wildcat strikes. Though these tend to be effective in responding quickly to specific problems at the local level, they have limitations, being unable to win their demands in national or wider contexts
Building Autonomous Power: Solidarity Networks in Precarious Times
Get PDFFrom COVID-19 to the so-called labour shortage of late 2021, the past three years have revealed a renewed discourse on labour markets and working conditions. Alongside this discourse, workers in a variety of industries have been organising to fight the rollbacks, redundancies and concessions imposed in response to the pandemic and its related financial crisis. From Amazon warehouse workers to hospitality workers to informally employed platform workers, the global precarious are rising up. In addition to traditional labour movement tactics, one tool that has proven powerful and flexible in the COVID period is the autonomous solidarity network. Built from the model of the worker centre, a labour solidarity network is conceived of as a decentralised grouping of workers, organisers and allies, usually operated virtually and at arms-length from formal union structures. Following the methodological foundation of workers’ inquiry and using the tools of strategic labour research and participatory action research, this article reports on interviews with workers and organisers involved with worker centres and solidarity networks, distilling their experiences and observations into a set of common practices that characterise worker organising efforts taking place in a number of Canadian workplaces, including hospitality, migrant work programs, platform services and artisanal industries.
In addition to traditional labour movement tactics, one tool that has proven powerful and flexible in the COVID period is the autonomous solidarity network. Built from the model of the worker centre, a labour solidarity network is conceived of as a decentralized grouping of workers, organizers and allies, usually operated virtually and at arms-length from formal union structures.
Following the methodological foundation of workers’ inquiry, this article reports on interviews with workers and organizers involved with worker centres and solidarity networks, distilling their experiences and observations into a set of common practices that characterize worker organizing efforts taking place in a number of Canadian workplaces, including hospitality, migrant work programs, platform services, and artisanal industries
Recent Acquisitions, 2018–19
Get PDFThe previous general update of acquisitions appeared in Russell n.s. 37 (winter 2017–18): 342–7. The new listing covers numbers 1,797 to 1,823 with the latest items arriving in November 2019
Russell and Anti-War Politics in Working-Class Wales [review of Aled Eirug, The Opposition to the Great War in Wales, 1914-1918]
No full textDriver\u27s seat: A qualitative study of transformational student partnerships in SoTL
Get PDFThis qualitative study is based on a series of interviews conducted with students (n=6) who participated in the inaugural cohort of a year-long students-as-partners program called CTL Scholars. As one of the first students-as-partners programs implemented at this large, dispersed, public research institution, students of diverse majors and research perceptions identified three common themes from their participation: motivation, agency, and partnerships. Our findings suggest that students-as-partners programs such as CTL Scholars can establish students as agents of their own learning, promote equitable relationships between students and faculty members, and potentially contribute to both teaching transformation and research productivity
But do they agree? Examining differences in science faculty and student perceptions’ of the presence of student partnership values
No full textThere is growing support for the use of student-faculty partnerships within higher education. Successful partnerships, capable of sustainable transformation, require the presence of several underlying values held by both faculty and students. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the perceptions of student-faculty partnership values across science faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and determine whether these values differ by partnership category. Faculty and students responded to the Student Staff Partnership Questionnaire which included five scales aimed to assess values for successful student partnerships: reciprocal respect, influence, autonomy, commitment, and partnership. Our findings suggest that faculty perceive themselves as aligning with the values of reciprocal respect, influence, autonomy, and partnership to a higher degree than undergraduate and graduate students perceive faculty as adhering to them. No differences in values were noted across partnership categories. Implications for higher education are discussed
