In 2019, the Editorial Board of The Economic and Labour Relations Review (ELRR) approved the establishment of the Nevile-Plowman Prize for the best article published in ELRR in any one year.
The Prize is named after the journal's founding editors, Professor John Nevile and Professor David Plowman, deeply respected scholars in economics and industrial relations respectively. Professor Plowman died in 2013, and today Professor Nevile is the ELRR Patron.
The criteria for this prestigious prize are (a) thorough and rigorous research (b) communicated in accessible and convincing prose and offering (c) broad scholarly and/or policy implications.
Winner of the Nevile-Plowman Prize for Best Article 2023
The 2023 Nevile-Plowman prize has been awarded to Brian Garvey, Maria Luisa Mendonça, Maurício Torres, Daniela Stefano and Fábio Pitta for their article Cultivating space for contemporary resistance in Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado (ELRR, 34(4), pp. 825 - 839.)
The article, according to Editor in Chief, Di Kelly, exemplifies the key things that we value at the journal in terms of good and rigorous research: "the innovative use of theory, the robust application of data and, finally, producing research that is highly readable and useful to raise [social justice] issues."
The paper examines the ways in which land-grabbing in Brazil at the frontiers of the Amazon is facilitated not only by the state, but also by practices of financialisation, which integrate these newly minted economic assets into the realms of circulation and speculation. The authors track the fascinating and often contradictory and confounding modes by which this capital expansion occurs - Dr Garvey notes that often speculators prove that a given parcel of land is theirs by showing that it was illegally cleared... by them.
Importantly, the authors pay close attention to processes of resistance in their study. On top of placing it centrally in the theoretical framework, the paper stands on a foundation of the authors engaging with and enhancing the already existing voices of the people situated in the conflicts. Dr Daniela Stefano explains that, having started working with the community in 2017, the researchers are now producing their 4th series of podcasts co-created with the local communities. These can be found at www.social.org.br. She says that "much more than giving a voice, we know that they have voices, and they have very important things to say to us."
This is a remarkably rich article. It is built on data born of engaging in the lived experience of the combatants, considers a conflict that spans industrial and ecological conflicts that have global ramifications, and turns on the careful and precise positionality of the researchers in relation to their subjects and the phenomena they are explaining.
We are very proud to have published the article and congratulate all the authors on their achievement.
The full shortlist for 2023 can be found below.
Shortlist
Oğuz Alyanak, Callum Cant, Tatiana López Ayala, Adam Badger and Mark Graham, Platform work, exploitation, and migrant worker resistance: Evidence from Berlin and London, ELRR 34(4), pp. 667-688.
Michelle Baddeley, Capital investment, business behaviour, and the macroeconomy, ELRR 34(1), pp. 35-50.
Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Developing Countries: The Legacy of Keynes and Post-Keynesian Economists, ELRR 34(1), pp. 51-65.
Mauro Boianovsky and Constantinos Repapis, G.C. Harcourt: An economist with accounting sense, ELRR 34(2), pp. 233-249.
Jenny Chan, Class, labour conflict, and workers’ organisation, ELRR 34(3), pp. 383-394.
Wendy Harcourt, Conversations with GC Harcourt on Social Justice in the Face of Economic and Ecological Uncertainty, ELRR 34(1), pp. 26-34.
Prue Kerr, Post-Keynesian essays from Down Under: Theory and policy in an historical context, ELRR 34(2), pp. 250-262.
Ellen MacEachen, Pamela Hopwood and Meghan K. Crouch, Retirement pension poverty among injured workers with long-term workers’ compensation claims, ELRR 34(4), pp. 753-771.
Dung Kieu Nguyen, Diep Ngoc Nguyen, Son The Dao and Trang Phan, Labour code, location, and migration, ELRR 34(4), pp. 805-824.
Angelika Papadopoulos and Patrick O’Keeffe, The Australian Centaur State and the Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery, ELRR 34(1), pp. 104-117.
John Quiggin, The RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) Review 2023: A missed opportunity, ELRR 34(3), pp. 610-616.
Walter T. Ryley and Michael H. Belzer, Compensation and crash incidence: Evidence from the National Survey of Driver Wages, ELRR 34(1), pp. 118-139.
Haopeng Sun, The impact of trade liberalisation on the gender wage gap in urban China: The role of sectoral switching costsThe impact of trade liberalisation on the gender wage gap in urban China: The role of sectoral switching costs, ELRR 34(3), pp. 444-467