Full Description
Based on long-term fieldwork, six vivid ethnographies from Colombia, India, Poland, Spain and the southern and northern U.S. address the dwindling importance of labor throughout the world. The contributors to this volume highlight the growing disconnect between labor struggles and the advancement of the greater common good, a phenomenon that has grown since the 1980s. The collection illustrates the defeat and unmaking of particular working classes, and it develops a comparative perspective on the uneven consequences of and reactions to this worldwide project. In Blood and Fire charts a course within global anthropology to address the widespread precariousness and the prevalence of insecure and informal labor in the twenty-first century.
Contents
Introduction: Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor Sharryn Kasmir and August Carbonella Chapter 1. Fragmented Solidarity: Political Violence and Neoliberalism in Colombia Lesley Gill Chapter 2. Labor in Place/Capitalism in Space: The Making and Unmaking of a Local Working Class in Maine's "Paper Plantation" August Carbonella Chapter 3. Flexible Labor/Flexible Housing: The Rescaling of Mumbai into a Global Financial Center and the Fate of its Working Class Judy Whitehead Chapter 4. Structures without Soul and Immediate Struggles: Rethinking Militant Particularism in Contemporary Spain Susana Narotzky Chapter 5. The Saturn Plant and the Long Dispossession of U.S. Autoworkers Sharryn Kasmir Chapter 6. "Worthless Poles" and Other Dispossessions: Toward an Anthropology of Labor in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe Don Kalb Notes on Contributors Index
