[Reader-list] Proposal for research on representation of labour

Awadhendra Sharan sharan at sarai.net
Thu Aug 16 18:28:03 IST 2001


Dear all,

Please find enclosed a proposal for research on representation of labour,
prepared by Prabhu Mahapatra from National labour Institute.

Cheers,
Dipu

  Notes on a Research on Representations of Labour         

1.
                                      
 The current phase of globalisation has meant unprecedented expansion of
the process of commoditisation, conquering ever new spaces of human life.
A key consequence has been of course the increasing pace of
proletarianisation - i.e. extensive commoditisation of labour power ;not
only has proletarianisation increased among the older strata of the
population  such as the peasantry or artisan groups in developing countries
many new groups have been drawn into the process of proletarianisation such
as in the burgeoning information and media sectors of the economy.

Yet paradoxically, while the visibility of commodities of all kinds have
increased manifold   it has also been accompanied by the  erasure of
presence of  labour in public life. This has occurred despite massive
increase in the  mobility of labour ( circulation)Labour worldwide is in
retreat in politics, economic and in every sphere of public domain
precisely when the numerical expansion of  proleterianised strata of
population has been the maximum. 

What explains this relative invisibility of labour in public domain? A
dominant  economic explanation focuses on  the fragmentation and
dispersion of production process occurring alongside integration of markets
. The Political  explanation focuses on the decline of the  welfare state,
retreat of the state from the sphere of labour relations and the
concomitant decline of political clout of organised labour. The numerical
dilution organised labour and the growing mass of  informal sector labour
indicates an astounding reversal of public regulation and  public presence
of labour.  The tendency towards informalisation has  been accompanied by
privatisation of labour relations and regulations. 

 This however is not historically unprecedented,  a careful scrutiny will
reveal earlier phase of  globalisation  being accompanied by similar
retreat  of labour into the private sphere .  This process has often been
termed as " deproletariansiation" or "decomposition " or "
decollectivisation" of the working class. 
(That this process has often ended with sudden reversals and massive
eruption of labour and working class in public life  is also noteworthy.
There are increasing signs that the current global slowdown has accentuated
the contradictions propelling this phase of globalisation. Mass " anti -
capitalist" demonstrations in the  metropolitan home of capital  is an
early indications of a possible reversal of the tendencies mentioned above. )

Increasing individuation of  direct relation between labour and capital ,
disguised forms of employment relations occluded by representation of these
as" self employment,  and decline of  collective forms of  working class
presence are indicators of  this tendency towards privatisation. 


To sum up this marginalisation  of labour in public domain is first of all
indicative of a deep crisis in collective representation of labour.   This
crisis is both and objectively given  and subjectively experienced.  It is
appropriate then to  look at this crisis as a historically specific and
contingent form  thus the need to look at both contemporary and  historical
 forms of rep[representations of labour . This may be an appropriate
historical conjuncture to  reconceptualise  and retrace the processes by
which this dialectic of eruption and erasure  has been historically played
out.  The aim being to trace out the emergence of this crisis  and possibly
recover  for the public domain a  renewed presence of labour 



Representations
There is almost complete lack of significant literature available on the
the question of methods of interrogating the cultural experience of
workers. How do we study consciousness? The pitfalls of deriving it
immediately from or reducing it to the objective structures are well known
. I would like to say that `experience' (a much maligned term and denounced
for its implicit psychologism and subjectivism)  still retains analytical
valence; experience mediates structure and consciousness. Yet experience is
not merely the subjective apprehension of structures; it also produces
practices that are aimed at representing in Stuart Hall's sense`There is no
cultural experience without representations'.
 Representations are, to put it simply,
(i) the images that workers have of themselves and which they wish to
convey to others and
(ii) the images which others have of them which they contest or seek to
change. 

I would say that the study of such processes is important in getting a
handle on the cultural experience of workers. I would broadly think that
three categories of such representational practices can be useful for our
purpose.
Workers self-representations: These range from the autobiographical memoirs
of workers, to forms of cultural representations as in processional
activities, demonstrations etc. There is an urgent need to collect and
study these forms; almost complete absence of studies of workers memoirs
renders this task difficult. But one can always make a beginning. Life
stories are another way of generating such materials and very good work
mainly on women workers lives exists (Janet Salaff), but more needs to be
done as well for male workers.

- Representations by the State: This would include the study of processes by
which the state seeks to represent workers in legal forms, as well as in
the state-generated
reports and investigations into workers lives. They have to be mined for
the facts so much as the way workers subordination is normalised in these
works. It might be crucial here to trace out historically important periods
when  representations of labour  figured prominently in discourses
emanating from the state. Similarly the processes of marginalisation of
labour ( as in legal, environmental and health, urban planning ) could also
be studie to provide better insight into the rchanging representational
strategies . 

- Market representations: This is about the way in which workers are
represented in mass products targeted at them. An important area of such
study would be the way workers and work are represented in media. Finally
we can think of representations by the intelligentsia which seek to
`represent' or speak for or give voice to workers. Novels dealing with
working-class issues are an important source, and also political parties
(especially working-class parties) which seek to court and represent
workers as their constituency. And then in the end even the historian or
the anthropologist who writes `objectively'. These studies can complement
each other and provide us with the gamut of representational strategies
pursued by workers and others and the
contestations that occur between and within each of these categories.
***
I would plead that any agenda of research on working class culture and
consciousness needs to be self-conscious about the
evolutionary/teleological underpinnings. Secondly the tight connection
between structure and consciousness needs to be loosened considerably. The
relation between them obviously has to be recast and mediated. I would
suggest that cultural experience provides the crucial middle term in this
relation. Cultural experience of workers is not to be conceived as only
purely subjective experience related to individual or group`interiority' or
the purely symbolic ordering of norms and values, but rather as a set of
practices that are at the same time oriented towards the structure
(subjectively) and towards consciousness (objectively). They are as I have
tried to argue also co-shaped by representations which workers themselves
have and which others have of them.





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