SGO9207 – Rethinking labour agency in a globalized world of work
Course content
The course focuses on how workers can engage with and selectively rework structural constraints through mobilization, organization and ways of coping. Workers are brought into relation with ever-new groups of subjects in a contemporary world economy that is simultaneously marked by connectivity and fragmentation. A central concept in this PhD course is that of ‘constrained agency’, which we use to show how labour does in fact have the ability to act on globalized structures, but in ways that are circumscribed by borders of different kinds, networked economic relations organised at different spatial scales, and systems of social reproduction. The course will introduce the basic concepts of agency and structure and apply them to the sub-discipline of labour geography. We will also show how new conceptual advances from across the social sciences have an unsettling effect on how we view agency and structure, helping to pave the way for a decentered and decolonized understanding of labour agency in geography. The course provides a learning context whereby academic interventions are coupled with active student engagement and encounters with actors and sites in the world of work.
Course leaders:
David Jordhus-Lier, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo. David Jordhus-Lier is Professor of Labour and Economic Geography at the University of Oslo. His research on labour and trade unions has engaged with South African, Norwegian and Indonesian politics and focused on how workers encounter state restructuring, corporate flexibility measures and the challenge of climate change. He is currently in charge of a research project on oil workers and their role in a just transition.
Neil M. Coe, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. Neil M. Coe is Professor of Economic Geography at the National University of Singapore. His research interests are in the areas of global production networks, regional economic development, and labour geographies. He has published widely on these topics, and recently authored the Advanced Introduction to Global Production Networks (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2021).
Lecturers
Kendra Strauss is an Associate Professor and Director of the Labour Studies Program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and an Associate Member in the Department of Geography. She is a feminist economic and labour geographer and with teaching and research interests in the areas of labour regulation, social reproduction, migration, urbanization, and social infrastructures. Her research examines how categories of social difference shape how wage labour and unpaid work are valued, and what counts as labour.
Andrew Warren is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography & Sustainable Communities at the University of Wollongong, Australia. As a researcher, he is interested in the lived experiences of those engaged in forms of work undergoing transformation, whether compelled by structural, social, spatial, or environmental factors. His recent co-authored book, The Guitar: Tracing the Grain Back to the Tree (University of Chicago Press, 2021), follows different workers and firms who cut, grade, process, and convert trees into finished guitars. I am currently researching the intra-labour politics that shape work in two contrasting workplaces: automotive maintenance and repair shops and childcare centres. I live by the beach in Wollongong with my partner and two young children.
Learning outcome
The participants will learn to use and appropriate basic concepts in social theory to study the politics of work and workers through readings, lectures and discussions. They will be stimulated to see the relevance of these concepts for their own research projects, and appreciate commonalities, differences and relations with the research of others. The course will offer students an up-to-date overview of labour geography, a basic introduction to the literatures on agency and structure, and an in-depth understanding of how they can be combined and applied. They will also acquire experience in giving oral academic presentations and receive feedback on their academic writing.
Admission
The course is open to all PhD students who are researching workers as an active constituent of the global economy. Although most suited to students working in the traditions of labour/economic geography, economic sociology, labour studies and industrial relations, applicants from all disciplinary backgrounds will be considered. Likewise, applications are welcomed from across the globe, and from researchers looking at the politics of work in all and any form (e.g. informal work, reproductive work, gig work, migrant labour, modern slavery etc.). Applicants can apply at any stage of the PhD process, but may find it most rewarding if they have already conducted some of their own empirical research.
Ph.D.-students at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography register for the course in StudentWeb.
Interested participants outside the Department of Sociology and Human Geography shall fill out this application form.
The deadline for registration is 1st April 2022. After the deadline shall all applicants receive a note about if the application is approved.
Prerequisites
Formal prerequisite knowledge
Although no specific prior knowledge is required, initial understanding of social science debates concerning work, labour, structure and agency would be an advantage.
Teaching
Schedule
The course comprises five whole days. Day 1, 2 and 3 will consist of three consecutive two-hour sessions combining lectures and discussions. Day 4 includes a field trip and a panel discussion with relevant actors based in Oslo, while Day 4 is set aside for student-organised panels.
Teaching room: seminar room 3, Sophus Bugges Building
23 May 2022: Dissecting labour agency: spaces, temporalities and actors
09.00–10.00: Welcome and course introduction
10.00-12.00: Lecture 1 Introducing the debates (Neil M. Coe)
12.00-13.00: Lunch
13.00-15.00: Lecture 2 Labour agency as an academic concept (David Jordhus-Lier)
15.00-15.30: Break
15.30-17.00: Discussion
24 May 2022: Unsettling categories: intersectionality, roles and identities
09.30-11.00: Lecture 3 The geographies of labour agency (Neil M. Coe)
11.00-11.30: Break
11.30-13.00: Lecture 4 Role theory and intersectionality (David Jordhus-Lier)
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00–15.30: Discussion
15.30-16.00: Break
16.00-17.30: Academic intervention and discussion (Kendra Strauss via Zoom)
25 May 2022: Debating and situating labour agency: student interventions
09.30-11.00: Academic intervention (Andrew Warren via Zoom)
11.00-11.30: Break
11.30-13.00: Student panel 1
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-15.00: Student panel 2
15.00-15.30: Break
15.30-17.30: Student panel 3
26 May 2022: Day out: guided tour and film screening
Due to public holiday in Norway, this day is not mandatory
09.00-12.00: Guided city tour with Jonas Bals, author of "Streik!" [the history of the strike in Norway]
12.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-16.00: Screening of "Transnational Tradeswomen" with documentary film maker professor Vivian Price
27 May 2022: Addressing the contemporary moment of labour
09.30-11.00: Lecture 5 Digital platforms and labour agency (Neil M. Coe)
11.00-11.30: Break
11.30-13.00: Lecture 6 Climate change, just transitions and labour agency (David Jordhus-Lier)
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00–15.30: Discussion (David Jordhus-Lier and Neil M. Coe)
15.30-16.00: Coffee and goodbye
Place
Taking part in the full program requires physical attendance, but arrangements for hybrid teaching will be made for students unable to travel to Oslo. Academic interventions from invited guest speakers will be done via a digital platform.
Readings
Lecture 1: Introducing the debates
Required readings:
Coe, N. M., & Jordhus-Lier, D. C. (2011). Constrained agency? Re-evaluating the geographies of labour. Progress in Human Geography, 35(4), 211-233.
Herod, A. (1997) From a geography of labor to a labor geography: Labor's spatial fix and the geography of capitalism. Antipode 29(1): 1-31.
Peck, J. (2018) Pluralizing labour geography, in G.L. Clark, M.A. Feldman, M.S. Gertler and D. Wójcik (eds.) The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 465-484.
Additional readings:
Carswell, G. and de Neve, G. (2013) Labouring for global markets: Conceptualising labour agency in global production networks. Geoforum 44: 62-70.
Martinelli, A. (2021) Collectivism, individualism and solidarity in global value chain restructuring in the Global North: workers’ resistance in the Swiss machinery industry, Economic and Industrial Democracy. DOI: 10.1177/0143831X211009958.
Sifaki, E. (2019) Women's work and agency in GPNs during economic crises: the case of the Greek table grapes export sector, Feminist Economics, 25(3), 70-95.
Todd, P., Ellem, B., Goods, C., Rainnie, A. and Smith, L. (2020) Labour in global production networks: Workers and unions in mining engineering work. Economic and Industrial Democracy 41(1): 98-120.
Warren, A. (2019) Labour geographies of workplace restructuring: an intra-labour analysis. Antipode 51(2), 681-706.
Worth, N. (2016) Feeling precarious: Millennial women and work. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34(4): 601-616.
Lecture 2: Labour agency as an academic concept
Required readings:
Strauss, K. (2020) Labour geography II: Being, knowledge and agency. Progress in Human Geography, 44(1), 150-159.
Tufts, S., & Savage, L. (2009). Labouring geography: Negotiating scales, strategies and future directions. Geoforum, 40(6), 945-948.
Castree, N. (2008) Labour geography: A work in progress. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31, 853-862.
Additional readings:
A?ar, C. C. and B?hm, S. (2018) Towards a pluralist labor geography: Constrained grassroots agency and the socio-spatial fix in D?rsim, Turkey. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(6), 1228-1249.
Cumbers, A., Helms, G., and Swanson, K. (2010) Class, agency and resistance in the old industrial city. Antipode, 42(1), 46-73.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998) What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 962-1023.
Featherstone D and Griffin P (2016) Spatial relations, histories from below and the makings of agency: Reflections on The Making of the English Working Class at 50. Progress in Human Geography 40(3): 375-393.
Rogaly, B. (2009) Spaces of work and everyday life: Labour geographies and the agency of unorganised temporary migrant workers. Geography Compass, 3(6), 1975-1987.
Zampoukos, K., Knutsen, H.M, Kiil, M.B. and Olofsdotter, G. (2018) Mobile with an agency: negotiating the spatiotemporalities of the temp migrant worker, Geoforum, 93, 40-47.
Lecture 3: The geographies of labour agency
Required readings:
Anderson, J. (2015) Towards resonant places: reflections on the organizing strategy of the International Transport Workers’ Federation. Space and Polity, 19(1), 47-61.
Herod, A. (2000) Implications of Just-in-Time production for union strategy: lessons from the 1998 General Motors-United Auto Workers dispute, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(3), 521-547.
Nowak, J. and Gallas, A. (2014) Mass strikes against austerity in Western Europe – a strategic assessment. Global Labor Journal 5(3): 306-321.
Additional readings:
Axelsson, L., Malmberg, B. and Zhang, Q. (2017) On waiting, work-time and imagined futures: theorising temporal precariousness among Chinese chefs in Sweden’s restaurant industry. Geoforum 78, 169-178.
Mufakhir, A., Pelu, A.A. and Panimbang, F. (2018) ‘The drivers who move this country can also stop it’: the struggle of tanker drivers in Indonesia, in J. Alimahomed-Wilson and I. Ness (eds.) Choke points: logistics workers disrupting the global supply chain, London: Pluto Books, 199-213.
Munck, R.P. (2010) Globalization and the labour movement: challenges and responses, Global Labour Journal, 1(2), 218-232.
Schmalz, S., Ludwig, C. and Webster, E. (2018) The power resources approach: developments and challenges. Global Labour Journal 9(2), 113-133.
Tufts, S. (2007) Emerging labour strategies in Toronto's hotel sector: Toward a spatial circuit of union renewal. Environment & Planning A 39: 2383-2404.
Zajak, S., Egels-Zandén, N. and Piper, N. (2017) Networks of labour activism: collective action across Asia and beyond. Development and Change 48(5): 899-921.
Lecture 4: Role theory and intersectionality
Required readings:
Archer, M. S. (2000) Being human: The problem of agency, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Chapters 8 and 9.
Berntsen, L. (2016). Reworking labour practices: on the agency of unorganized mobile migrant construction workers. Work, employment and society, 30(3), 472-488.
Valentine, G. (2007) Theorizing and Researching Intersectionality: A Challenge for Feminist Geography, The Professional Geographer, 59:1, 10-21, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9272.2007.00587.x
Additional readings:
Dutta, M. (2020) Workplace, emotional bonds and agency: everyday gendered experiences of work in an export processing zone in Tamil Nadu, India, Environment and Planning A, 52(7) 1357-1374.
Elder-Vass, D. (2010) The causal power of social structures: Emergence, structure and agency. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 5, 6 and 7.
Karlsson, J.C. (2020) Refining Archer’s account of Agency and organization, Journal of Critical Realism, 19:1, 45-57, DOI: 10.1080/14767430.2019.1663031
Kynsilehto, A. (2011) Negotiating intersectionality in highly educated migrant Maghrebi women's life stories. Environment and Planning A 43(7): 1547-1561.
Lewis, N.M. and Mills, S. (2016) Seeking security: Gay labour migration and uneven landscapes of work. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 48(12): 2484-2503.
Lecture 5: Digital platforms and labour agency
Required readings:
Bearson, D., Kenney, M. and Zysman, J. (2021) Measuring the impacts of labor in the platform economy: new work created, old work reorganized, and value creation reconfigured, Industrial and Corporate Change, 30(3), 536-563.
Ford, M. and Honan, V. (2019) The limits of mutual aid: emerging forms of collectivity among app-based transport workers in Indonesia, Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(4), 528-548.
Veen, A., Barratt, T. and Goods, C. (2020) Platform-capital’s ‘app-etite’ for control: a labour process analysis of food-delivery work in Australia, Work, Employment and Society, 34(3), 388-406.
Additional readings:
Anwar, M.A. and Graham, M. (2020) Hidden transcripts of the gig economy: labour agency and the new art of resistance among African gig workers, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(7), 1269-1291.
Scholz, T. (2017) Uberworked and underpaid: how workers are disrupting the digital economy, Polity, Cambridge. Chapter 7.
Stewart, A. and Stanford, J. (2017) Regulating work in the gig economy: What are the options? The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 28(3), 420-437.
Tassinari, A. and Maccarrone, V. (2019) Riders on the storm: workplace solidarity among gig economy couriers in Italy and the UK, Work, Employment and Society, 34(1), 35-54.
Wells, K.J., Attoh, K. and Cullen, D. (2021) “Just-in-Place” labor: Driver organizing in the Uber workplace. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space: 53(2), 315-331.
Wu, Q., Zhang, H., Li, Z. and Liu, K. (2019) Labor control in the gig economy: evidence from Uber in China, Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(4), 574-596.
Lecture 6: Climate change, just transitions and labour agency
Required readings:
Grenzd?rffer, S.M. (2021) Transformative perspectives on labour geographies–The role of labour agency in processes of socioecological transformations. Geography Compass 15(6): e12565.
Houeland, C. and D. Jordhus-Lier (2022). ‘Not my task’: Role perceptions in a green transition among shop stewards in the Norwegian petroleum industry. Journal of Industrial Relations. In print.
Stevis, D., Uzzell, D., & R?thzel, N. (2018) The labour–nature relationship: Varieties of labour environmentalism. Globalizations, 15(4), 439-453.
Additional readings:
Barca, S. (2019) The labor (s) of degrowth. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2), 207-216.
Houeland, C., Jordhus‐Lier, D. C., & Angell, F. H. (2021) Solidarity tested: The case of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO‐Norway) and its contradictory climate change policies. Area, 53(3), 413-421.
Jordhus-Lier, D., Houeland, C., & Ellingv?g, T. H. (2021) Alienating assemblages: Working the carbonscape in times of transformation. Progress in Human Geography, 03091325211018730.
Lundstr?m, R. (2017) Going green—turning labor: A qualitative analysis of the approaches of union officials working with environmental issues in Sweden and the United Kingdom. Labor Studies Journal, 42(3), 180-199.
Lundstr?m, R. (2018) Greening transport in Sweden: the role of the organic intellectual in changing union climate change policy. Globalizations, 15(4), 536-549.
Thomas, A. (2021) ‘Heart of steel’: how trade unions lobby the European Union over emissions trading. Environmental Politics, 1-20.
Examination
The entire five-day event makes up the Ph.D.-course, with the equivalent of 5 credits. For approval you need to be an active participant throughout the course, be present on all days, read the curriculum, prepare and conduct a student panel in collaboration with a group of students, and write a 5000-word paper that critically evaluates their own research agenda in dialogue with the themes and theories discussed during the course. To pass the course, the paper must be sent to the two course leaders by 5pm on Friday 31st August 2022 and subsequently approved by them.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a pass/fail scale. Read more about the grading system.