Universität Wien

240100 SE VM5 / VM7 - Transnational Activism and International Organizing (2018W)

The challenge of global inequality in the world of work

7.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 24 - Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Continuous assessment of course work
SGU
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Friday 05.10. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 12.10. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 19.10. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 09.11. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 16.11. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 23.11. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 30.11. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 07.12. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 14.12. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 11.01. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 18.01. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1
  • Friday 25.01. 16:00 - 18:00 Seminarraum SG2 Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengasse 3, Bauteil 1

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Description:

This seminar focuses on one key dimension of the global history of laboring peoples’ activism and self- organizing and the institutions and organizations representing their interests. This history was closely intertwined with the history of global inequality in the world of work. Examples of this historical entanglement can be found when studying the question of forced labor, the informal sector, transnational migration, labor relations of groups such as seafarers or transport workers engaged in transnationally organized work, the positioning of trade unions at both sides of the “Iron Curtain”, the struggles of organized working women or non-white workers, the critique of the “nationalism” of trade unions, the encounter of labor activists and organizations with employers’ spatially diversified investment and employment strategies, border-crossing labor and wage struggles, and so forth. There are many concrete themes to be discovered and questions to be asked in relation to each of these and other large thematic areas. Students will be supported in developing their individual seminar theme and relevant questions in a variety of ways.

Learning Goals:

Students learn how to develop and write a sophisticated seminar paper using original material and pursuing a theoretically grounded argument. At the end of the seminar they are able to conceive of the history of working people, and their (often) transnational self-organizing and interest-representation as (involving) contention around various dimensions of global inequality in the world of work. They are able to relate their own key interests and scholarly positioning with regard to the various traditions and concepts in the field of development studies to our seminar theme, and to pursue their related research interests in their independently researched and written seminar paper.

Methods:

In the first part of the seminar we discuss key texts exploring the historical development of labor relations in global perspective, and the past and present of border-crossing and organizing of working people. We critically interrogate whether and how this scholarship addresses racializing and racist, gender-specific and other differences in the world of work, and whether and how it discusses the relationship between these differences and the history of global inequality in the world of work and in labor law. In parallel, students begin to develop the topic of their seminar paper and explore its feasibility.
In the second, more extensive part of the seminar the students present a draft prospectus and the final prospectus of their seminar papers, and towards the end of the term a draft portion of their seminar papers. The seminar group discusses these materials in depth, thereby facilitating the joint and individual learning process. Support for the development of the seminar papers also includes introductions into the relevant data bases, libraries, and other resources relevant for the border-crossing history of labor and labor activism, and the methods of working with original and scholarly material.
At the beginning of the seminar students are invited to briefly present their interest in the seminar and to describe the learning goals they have begun to set for themselves. At the end of the seminar these original statements will be (re-)considered against the background of the learning process both as a group and individually in course of the seminar.

Assessment and permitted materials

Students write a scholarly seminar paper (in English or in exceptional cases in German) of approximately 5000 to 6500 words. The paper makes a clear argument, gives full references, is grounded in the students’ self-reliant work, and discusses methodological and theoretical questions.

In addition, the students must contribute in an active manner to all components of the Seminar as described above.

Without exception, seminar participants must be present in the first, introductory unit, so as to enable the co-operative planning of the Seminar.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

see above

Examination topics

-

Reading list

NB: The literature given here serves as an initial orientation. After the first unit the required reading will be tailored to the interests of the students.

Ahuja R. (2013) Working Lives and Worker Militancy: The Politics of Labour in Colonial India ( Delhi: Tulika)
Balachandran G. (2012) Globalizing Labour? Indian Seafarers and World Shipping, c. 1870-1945 (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford UP)
Bock G. Die andere Arbeiterbewegung in den USA von 1905-1922. Die Industrial Workers of the World / Die I.W.W. (München: Trikont)
Boris E., Hoehtke, D., and S. Zimmermann (eds) (2018), Women’s ILO. Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present, Brill
Carew A. et al. (eds) (2000) The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (Bern: Peter Lang)
Cobble D.S., “A Higher ‘Standard of Life’ for the World: U.S. Labor Women’s Reform Internationalism and the Legacies of 1919,” The Journal of American History 100, no. 4 (2014): 1061–70
Fink, L. (ed.) (2011) Workers across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History (New York: Oxford University Press)
Fonow, M. M. and S. Franzway (2011) Making Feminist Politics. Transnational Alliances between Women and Labor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press
Eckert A. (ed.) (2016) Global Histories of Work (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Publishers)
Hoerder D., Nederveen Meerkerk E., and Neunsinger, S. (eds) (2015) Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers (Leiden: Brill)
Hofmeester, K., and Van der Linden M. (eds) (2017) Handbook: Global History of Work (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Publishers)
International Labour Solidarity and Changing Organization of Production / Solidarité internationale ouvrière et réorganisation du travail (2005). Labour, Capital and Society / Travail, capital et société, Special issue 38, No. 1/2
Jensen J., and Lichtenstein N. (eds) (2015) The ILO From Geneva to the Pacific Rim.West Meets East (London: Palgrave Macmillan/ILO)
Maul D. R. (2007) Menschenrechte, Entwicklung und Dekolonisation. Die Internationale Arbeitsorganisation (IAO) 1940-1970 (Essen: Klartext)
Movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies, folgende Hefte: “Kämpfe der Migration als un-/sichtbare Politiken 1 (2015) 2; „Umkämpfte Bewegungen nach und durch Europa“ 3 (2017) 1
Kott S. and J Golb (2012) “The Forced Labor Issue Between Human and Social Rights, 1947-1957”, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 3, 3, 321-35
Lindell I. (ed.) (2010) Africa’s Informal Workers: Collective Agency, Alliances and Transnational Organizing in Urban Africa (London: Zed Books), 1-30
Neiss I. (2015) Southern Insurgency. The Coming of the Global Working Class (London: Pluto Press)
Ness I. and D. Azzellini (eds) (2011) Ours to Mater and to Own. Workers’ Control From the Commune to the Present (Chicago: Haymarkets Books)
Rodriguez Garcia M. (ed.) (2006) Labour Internationalism. Different Times, Different Faces (= Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 84, 4)
Tarrow S. (2005), The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press)
Tosstorff R. (2004), Profintern: Die rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920-1937 (Paderborn etc: Ferdinand Schöningh)
van der Linden M. (2017), Workers of the World. Eine Globalgeschichte der Arbeit (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag)
Van Goethem G. (2006) The Amsterdam International. The World of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), 1913-1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate)
Zajak S., Rethinking Pathways of Transnational Activism, Global Society 31 (2017) 1, 125-143

Association in the course directory

VM5 / VM7

Last modified: We 21.04.2021 13:34