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Plan for the research project on the globalising world
Phases of the project
FundingThe phases 1-3 will be funded nationally and/or produced by the everyday work of partners. I have arranged funding for my work so far for 3 months a year in 2006-2008, altogether 12 months. I am looking for more funding and naturally it will help if there are more partners committed to the project. As for European partners I am quite optimistic about getting funding from the European Commission and moreover from national research funds and trade unions. During 2006-2007 we will plan together with partners about which funding sources we will try to find together. I am prepared to be a coordinator in realizing this task. The roles of partnersI will try to put this project into practice anyway. What I expect the partners to do is
A South African partner at Cape Town University has committed himself to participating in at least the minimum level for the beginning. Thereafter he will decide whether he is interested in continuing as a partner. The South African labour relations research organisation Naledi has been informed about the project. I have had preliminary discussions about the project with colleagues in the Netherlands and Great Britain. The first publicationOur first publication (an article or a book) might quite well be a comparison between two extreme regions on the globe: Finland and South Africa, if possible also the Netherlands and India. I use Finland and South Africa here as illustrative examples. Finland:
South Africa:
Below are my preliminary notes for the article/book.. IntroductionA few decades ago a focus on the global nature of worker resistances would have been problematic to compile. It still is. In recent times however the images and practices of global resistance have been accepted as an integral part of the intensified processes of globalisation. As with most research themes in social science, globalisations and resistances do not simply appear to us as neat parcel of definitions with clear boundaries. Because of that we prefer to develop questions that may provoke a range of responses, each of which opens up further questions for discussion. We are interested for example in
After a short survey and critics of the most common theories on trade union movements, we analyse trade unions in different parts of the world. Finland and SA ( perhaps India and the Netherlands) are the cases of thorough analysis. Besides the above-mentioned perspectives we explore thesis and hypothesis of the problematic divide between domination and resistance. As a starting point there is a hypothesis that relations of power are never exterior to other types of social relationships. There is no all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled. In a word we can find a plurality of resistances everywhere; unobtrusive and covert forms of resistance. Theory and praxisIt is necessary to have at least a loose theoretical frame of reference and agreement about some basic practical viewpoints. A traditional way would be to present a brief summary about the most common trade union theories and thereafter define the theoretical frame of reference that will be used in the book. There are other ways of starting a book, too. I'd rather keep them open in the beginning. I think that our theoretical frames of reference should at least cursorily deal with 1) interaction between the basic framework (economy, technology) and superstructure (power, culture, social) and 2) resistance within these different structural levels. My assumption is that our case countries offer an opportunity to present an illustrative overview of the historical development combined with theoretical interpretations. The present-day SA and India still include all stages of the history of exploitation from tribal communities to post-industrial (pre-informational) capitalist relations via colonialism and early phases of industrial capitalism. Finland on the other hand represents a rapid transformation from an agricultural to pre-informational society (during only one generation - mine!). Setting forth these both together may offer an opportunity to describe and reflect the long trends of capitalist development in the world, I suppose. The basisOur starting point for analysis might be the dichotomy: economic basis - ideological and cultural superstructure (originally presented by Marx). Globalisation at base level is expressed by e.g. processes of financial globalisation that have extended banking and financial discipline into many aspects of social life. This may be understood as an illustration of interaction of basis and superstructure. The globalisation of production, global explosion of production networks and supply chains and the reliance of economies and societies on attracting direct foreign investment have led to struggles surrounding the environment, labour and work. The themes of technology and culture and interaction between them are another illustration of basis / superstructure dichotomy. Communications and transportation technologies and the media, in particular, have become significant sites in the global political economy. For some interpreters the incorporation and subordination of people within global capitalism has produced the possibility for transnational democratising projects. They can be labelled as global elites living in different regions on the globe, some in SA, Finland, India and the Netherlands. Others, a huge majority of people, are beset by difficulties of forging private troubles into public issues in an increasingly individualized world. My preliminary suggestion for our description of basic social structure of the world is the following (the case examples only from Finland);: Global elites
I suppose that an important distinction for trade union analysis in Finland and the Netherlands is between core and marginal workforce. The latter is extremely commoditised and in this respect comparable to the majority of those workers who are working within the scope of an official employment relationship in developing countries (like SA and India). My assumption is that one can find similarity between the Finnish, SA and Indian elites and core workforces.. Relations of production in the worldFrom the point of view of e.g. Karl Marx and Immanuel Wallerstein capitalism is just in its dawn. Most of mankind lives in pre-capitalist relations of production (nomadic tribes, slavery, feudalism perhaps as a most common relation of production, and different phases of capitalism). Most certainly capitalism is the most hegemonic and powerful but there is e.g. a lot of potential resistance within feudal relations of production. I suppose that a precise description of relations of production in India, South Africa, Finland and the Netherlands might illustrate different "subworlds" in the present capitalist world quite well. Global resistanceOur understanding of the meaning of global resistance, together with perceptions of the scope and possibility for concrete resistance, is shaped by competing views of the world. For some, the incorporation and subordination of people within global capitalism has produced the possibility for trans-national democratising projects. For others resistances are beset by the difficulties of forging private troubles into public issues in an increasingly individualized world. In practice global resistances continually challenge our efforts to understand and explain them. As they emerge in new contexts, they are simultaneously being incorporated into a global governance agenda. As a patch of the huge patchwork quilt of resistances, trade union movement is the most stable one, perhaps together with peasant movements. Both are stable because their basis is material conditions. On the contrary, most of contemporary social movements within prosperous countries originate from ideas. Resisting the war in Vietnam and one-dimensional hegemony of technology-economy elite were main sources of student demonstrations in the 60s. Of the same kind have been big demonstrations against oppression of multinational companies and international economy organisations in the 90s and in the beginning of this century.
The politics of resistance has to be floodlit by a broader set of connections to globalization and the oft-cited neo-liberal restructuring strategies of states, multinational corporations and international organizations. Within this frame we witness "counter movements" (Polanyi) as societies seek to protect themselves from the global extension of the market economy into their lives. Neoliberalism has provoked a series of crises and counter hegemonic (Gramsci) movements. Many feminists emphasize particular experiences of women in the global restructuring of firms, states and societies. As public spaces are privatised, as welfare systems are retrenched, as production moves to the "offshore" sites of export processing zones, it may be more localized practices of resistance that are of most significance. How is resistance expressedAcademic commentators and international organizations tend to name particular movements in order to explain a form of civil collective agency. Trade unions, women's groups, chambers of commerce, farming and housing cooperatives, religion based organisation, academic institutes, community-based organisations, consumer protection bodies, criminal syndicates, development cooperation groups, environmental campaigns, ethnic lobbies, charitable foundations, farmers' groups, human rights advocates, relief organisations, peace activists, professional bodies, youth campaigns are often mentioned expressions of collective agency. However we should ask ourselves, whether agency can be unequivocally ascribed to a particular group or movement. Fixed forms of agency do not capture the mobility and malleability of those creative forms of social life that are localized transit points for mobile forms of civic and civil life. For example, trade union resistances have begun to be explained through the rubric of global social movement unionism, suggesting that institutionalised labour groups now speak for a wider constituency. There is little doubt that cooperation with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has broadened the agenda of trade union politics, but it is possible that this serves to fix worker resistance within an exclusive frame. It is not at all self-evident that marginalized voices can be heard within this frame. We have to ask ourselves can collective agencies be mapped onto class solidarities or do they more closely mirror ethnic, gendered or racial identities. Conventionally, political and social thought has functioned around a series of binaries: state/non-state, global/local, resistance/compliance, individual/collective. Though resistance is characteristically understood to be expressed through the politics of protest, demonstration, public statement or declaration, the more mundane gestures of everyday life reveal significant sites of political struggle. For instance the assumed boundary between resistance and compliance have been revealed to be insecure and contradictory in Scandinavian countries for decades and in SA at the latest from the beginning of the period of the ANC -lead government. Economy, culture, politicsSome tendencies within Marxism and bourgeois liberal theories are inclined to reduce transformations in all aspects of social life to economic determinants. In our analysis we prefer wider and more multidimensional concepts like hegemony, originally developed by Antonio Gramsci. The term encompasses dynamic processes in which social identities, relations, organizations and structures based on asymmetrical distributions of power and influence are constituted by the dominant classes.
Discussion of common sense in the development of consciousness
is crucial to explaining historical and contemporary forms of
resistance. It is the product of an individual's relationship
to and position in a variety of social groups: With contemporary globalization, the interpenetration of forces at the local, national, regional and world level implies that different peoples enter into alliances that are contradictory. For example in Southeast Asia a new common sense has to address effectively or make coherent women's critical understanding of the tensions, limitations, and opportunities in their identities as daughters or wives in the household, as low-wage workers on the factory floor, as citizens and as Muslims in the local, national and trans-national Islamic communities. In a context in which liberal, authoritarian and ex-communist states-in-transition alike are often becoming facilitators for trans-national capital, the driving forces of openly declared resistance against the state and multinational corporations must be analysed within a larger framework. Contemporary social movements simultaneously occupy local, national, trans-national and global space as a result of innovations in and applications of, technologies such as the Internet, mobile phones and globalised media, which produce instantaneous communications across traditional frontiers. Contemporary social movements can be conceptualised as a form of collective action based on solidarity, carrying on a conflict and breaking the limits of the system in which action occurs. In this fumbling definition there are two implicit problems. Collectivity is assumed in the notion "movement". This has the effect of constructing social movements as united fronts in and of themselves. There is also an assumption of organizational structure. This may be the case with some social movements (e.g. Greenpeace), but networks with no clearly defined organizational structure have formed in an era of globalization, too (e.g. Attac in the so-called western world). Participants in these "submerged networks" live their everyday lives mostly without engaging openly declared contestations. In the absence of openly declared collective action, resistance has to be read as the ways in which people live their everyday lives. In the context of increasingly complex societies, the absence of openly declared contestations should not be mistaken for acquiescence. An emerging frameworkFollowing on the above discussion I may define three preliminary levels and dimensions of resistance:
All levels of resistance live in parallel: From peasant revolts to trade unions, from the anti-apartheid revolution to the Spring demonstrations in France in 2006, from Greenpeace to anti-establishment hip-hop -music. They also go through their own evolution. Slave rebels and peasant movements originate from pre-capitalist modes of production. Trade unions and socialist parties are connected with capitalism. Resistant Internet networks need their technology basis. Resistance movements at a given time become integrated into the establishment like labour and green parties, trade unions and feminist movements in the post-industrial period of the industrial age in the "western world". The conduct and meaning of resistance are culturally embedded. Class structure is only partly the basis of resistance. Agents of resistance emerge from interactions between structure and agency that leads to the contextual privileging of particular intersections of different modes of identity, i.e. class-nationality-gender-ethnicity-religion-sexual orientation. As certain dimensions of political and economic power become more diffuse and less institutionalised, so too will forms of resistance. Resistance is localized, regionalized and globalized at the same time that economic globalization slices across geopolitical borders. The "public-private" dichotomy no longer holds for most. Dimensions of social life are affected in varying and interconnected ways by globalizing forces. People whose modes of existence are threatened by globalization, respond to achieving certain objectives in a sustained manner. While forms of struggle differ, groups may adopt varied means to contest and link to their counterparts in other countries or regions. The development of cyberspace allows opportunities for globalized resistance from private homes. Trade unions as a resistance movement and a part of the integrated capitalist power structureI think that it would be useful to create a preliminary overview about the trade union movement in the present world. I started this task by using the statistics of ILO. The result is summarized in the graph below. I classify the countries presented in the figure into the following categories (mentioned union densities from the latest available year):
A lot of countries are not included in my plan and many of them are missing from the ILO statistics. Especially developing countries should be categorized more analytically, but at present I don't have sufficient information to do that. As such the ILO statistic are extremely unreliable. For example in many years in the 90s the union density of Finland was reported to be over 100 %, 30-40 percent over the real figure. Trade union densities in some market economics
Deepening and specifying quantitative facts about the national trade union movements would be the task for the year 2006. Visiting the countries in question, interviewing people and becoming familiarized with the literature, journals and newspapers would help to find relevant qualitative information  |
Our
frame of reference is organised following the perspectives of
classic authors. Finland and SA (perhaps India and the Netherlands)
are utilised as illustrative examples. We start describing the
economic and social structure of the world and the case countries,
make some basic notes on hegemony and power and reflect the
influences of the extension of the market principle, commoditisation
of natural resources and environment, labour processes and labour
power, systems of credit and exchange.
Depending
on the definition of trade union movement, it has a history
of two (Great Britain in the 19th century) to three centuries
(Luddites in the 18th century) closely related with the expansion
of the capitalist relations of production. Finland might be
interpreted as one of the most extreme examples of the development.
Like in almost all social movements, a part of the Finnish trade
union leadership has been integrated with local, national and
international power structures. Open trade union resistance
has been transformed into co-operation with employers and government
bodies during a century. The first national collective agreement
was made within the printing industry in 1899. In the 1970s
all trade union central federations were prepared to join the
corporatist three party income policy agreements. Strike movements
started to subside. In the peak year, 1976, there were over
3000 local (wild cat) strikes. The last year of more than a
thousand strikes was 1988. From 1996 onwards there has been
less than 100 more or less spontaneous strikes.
The
institutions of civil society, such as church, family, schools,
media and also trade unions give meaning and organization to
everyday life so that the need for the application of force
is reduced. Hegemony is a lived process and that is why different
social contexts will produce different forums of hegemony with
different sets of actors. On the one hand the process of establishing
hegemony presumes and requires participation of subordinate
groups. On the other hand these same groups are counter-hegemonic
when resisting their superiors.