Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:48:17.600Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Geographies of Labor Internationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Andrew Herod
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Globalization is transforming the spatial organization of the world economy. In particular, it is leading to the “shrinking globe” phenomenon and the speeding up of social interaction between places across the planet. Given that international labor solidarity is a process of coming together across space, I argue that the spatial reorganization of global capitalism has important consequences for practices of solidarity. Specifically, I suggest that the spatial context within which they find themselves is likely to impact the types of political praxis in which workers engage. Thus, whereas globalization may encourage some workers to engage in traditional international solidarity campaigns it might also, paradoxically, lead others to focus on highly local campaigns, the consequences of which can quickly be spread far and wide as a result of the growing spatial interconnectivity of the planet that globalization has augured. Likewise, the spatial context within which they find themselves may lead some workers to defend their class interests while others defend their spatial interests. Equally, while some unions are focusing upon organizing what I call the spaces of production, others are organizing around the spaces of consumption. Given that workers’ spatial context impacts their spatial goals and political praxis, I argue that it is important to conceptualize international labor solidarity in explicitly spatial terms if we are to understand why different groups of workers may pursue radically different types of political praxis in different places and at different times.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 27 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Labor Internationalism , Winter 2003 , pp. 501 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2003 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agger, B. (1989) Fast Capitalism: A Critical Theory of Significance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Babson, S., ed. (1995) Lean Work: Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, B. J., and Jennings, K. M. (1998) “The UPS strike: Lessons for just-in-timers.” Production and Inventory Management Journal 39 (4): 63–67.Google Scholar
Curry, M. R. (1996) “On space and spatial practice in contemporary geography,” in Earle, C., Mathewson, K., and Kenzer, M. S. (eds.) Concepts in Human Geography. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield: 3–32.Google Scholar
Dicken, P., Peck, J., and Tickell, A. (1997) “Unpacking the global,” in Lee, R. and Wills, J. (eds.) Geographies of Economies. London: Arnold: 158–66.Google Scholar
Dohse, K., Jürgens, U., and Malsch, T. (1985) “From ‘Fordism’ to ‘Toyotism’? The social organization of the labor process in the Japanese automobile industry.” Politics and Society 14 (2): 115–46.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1986) “Of other spaces.” Diacritics 16:22–27.Google Scholar
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996) The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2002) “Beyond global vs. local: Economic politics outside the binary frame,” in Herod, A. and Wright, M. W. (eds.) Geographies of Power: Placing Scale. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 25–60.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (1978) “The urban process under capitalism: A framework for analysis.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 2:101–31.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (1982) The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (1985) “The geopolitics of capitalism,” in Gregory, D. and Urry, J. (eds.) Social Relations and Spatial Structures. New York: St. Martin’s: 128–63.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (1988) “The geographical and geopolitical consequences of the transition from Fordist to flexible accumulation,” in Sternlieb, G. and Hughes, J. W. (eds.) America’s New Market Geography. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University: 101–34.Google Scholar
Haworth, N., and Ramsay, H. (1984) “Grasping the nettle: Problems in the theory of international labour solidarity,” in Waterman, P. (ed.) For a New Labour Internationalism: A Set of Reprints and Working Papers. The Hague: International Labour Education, Research and Information Foundation: 59–85.Google Scholar
Herod, A. (2000a) “Workers and workplaces in a neoliberal global economy.” Environment and Planning A 32: 1781–90.Google Scholar
Herod, A. (2000b) “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: 521–47 (publisher’s map erratum published in 91 [2001]: 200-2).Google Scholar
Herod, A. (2001) Labor Geographies: Workers and the Landscapes of Capitalism. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Herod, A. (2003) “Scale: The local and the global,” in Holloway, S. L., Rice, S. P., and Valentine, G. (eds.) Key Concepts in Geography. Sage: London:229–47.Google Scholar
Hirst, P., and Thompson, G. (1996) Globalization in Question. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity.Google Scholar
Hughes, A. (2000) “Retailers, knowledges and changing commodity networks: The case of the cut flower trade.” Geoforum 31 (2): 175–90.Google Scholar
Johns, R. (1998) “Bridging the gap between class and space: U.S. worker solidarity with Guatemala.” Economic Geography 74 (3): 252–71.Google Scholar
Johns, R., and Vural, L. (2000) “Class, geography, and the consumerist turn: UNITE and the Stop Sweatshops Campaign.” Environment and Planning A 32: 1193–1213.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1996) “On actor-network theory: A few clarifications.” Soziale Welt 47: 369–81.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H. (1976) The Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction of the Relations of Production. London: St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. (1939) Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. New York: International.Google Scholar
Linge, G. J. R. (1991) “Just-in-time: More or less flexible?” Economic Geography 67 (4): 316–32.Google Scholar
Lorwin, L. L. (1929) Labor and Internationalism. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Luxemburg, R. (1951) The Accumulation of Capital. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1967 [1887]) Capital. Vol.1. New York: International (1987 printing).Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Massey, D. (1995) Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sjolander, C. T. (1996) “The rhetoric of globalization: What’s in a wor(l)d?” International Journal 51:603–16.Google Scholar
Smith, N. (1990) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. 2d ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Southall, H. (1988) “Towards a geography of unionization: The spatial organization and distribution of early British trade unions.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, n.s., 13:466–83.Google Scholar
Sweeney, J. (2000) Speech given at the Seventeenth World Congress of the International Confederation of Trade Unions, Durban, South Africa, 4 April. Google Scholar
Trumka, R. (1991) Remarks reported in Labor Notes, November: 4.Google Scholar
Waterman, P. (1993) “Internationalism is dead! Long live global solidarity?” in Brecher, J., Brown Childs, J., and Cutler, J. (eds.) Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order. Boston: South End: 257–61.Google Scholar