How we struggle: A political anthropology of labour

Sian Lazar, a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, discusses possibilities for an anthropology of labour politics.

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Abstract

This talk draws on material from Sian Lazar’s recently published book to discuss possibilities for an anthropology of labour politics. The book explores worker action across the spectrum from organised trade unionism to individualised strategies of accommodation, resistance and escape. In the talk, Professor Lazar hopes to introduce some of the arguments, and explore the following questions:

  • How can ethnography best integrate an understanding of global political and economic processes with intimate life experiences and strategies?
  • How might social scientists maintain a position of critique, especially of global (universal?) processes of exploitation and oppression, without implicitly accusing others of false consciousness?
  • How do we do so and still properly account for accommodation, cooptation, resilience, and forms of worker agency that are not ‘resistance’?

Presenter

Sian Lazar is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of El Alto, Rebel City: Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia (2008) and The Social Life of Politics: Ethics, Kinship and Union Activism in Argentina (2017), and edited collections on citizenship and labour mobilisation.

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