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Community unionism versus business unionism: The return of the moral economy in trade union studies
Author(s) -
MOLLONA MASSIMILIANO
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01201.x
Subject(s) - capitalism , financialization , politics , trade union , context (archaeology) , working class , political economy , sociology , industrial relations , economics , political science , market economy , law , labour economics , management , paleontology , biology
In this article, I discuss different forms of working‐class activism in two steel factories in Sheffield, England, where I conducted fieldwork between 1999 and 2000. Locating the ethnography in the broader context of the U.K.'s financial capitalism, I describe how the models of “community unionism” and “business unionism” were implemented on the two shop floors, affecting the work practices, political strategies, and forms of solidarities of workers. I show, first, how the current financialization of the economy challenges existing labor strategies, leading to new political solidarities and moralities of labor. Second, I use current debates on trade union activism to think anthropologically about class, labor, and the relations between society and the economy under capitalism.