labour Archives

Plantation Crisis

What does the collapse of India’s tea industry mean for Dalit workers who have lived, worked and died on the plantations since the colonial era? Plantation Crisis offers a complex understanding of how processes of social and political alienation unfold in moments of economic rupture. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Peermade and Munnar tea belts, Jayaseelan Raj – himself a product of the plantation system – offers a unique and richly detailed analysis of the profound, multi-dimensional sense of crisis felt by those who are at the bottom of global plantation capitalism and caste hierarchy.

Tea production in India accounts for 25 per cent of global output. The colonial era planation system – and its two million strong workforce – has, since the mid-1990s, faced a series of ruptures due to neoliberal economic globalisation. In the South Indian state of Kerala, otherwise known for its labour-centric development initiatives, the Tamil speaking Dalit workforce, whose ancestors were brought to the plantations in the 19th century, are at the forefront of this crisis, which has profound impacts on their social identity and economic wellbeing. Out of the colonial history of racial capitalism and indentured migration, Plantation Crisis opens our eyes to the collapse of the plantation system and the rupturing of Dalit lives in India’s tea belt.

Mapping Society

From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial zoning map of early twentieth-century Asmara, to a map of wealth disparities in the banlieues of twenty-first-century Paris, Mapping Society traces the evolution of social cartography over the past two centuries. In this richly illustrated book, Laura Vaughan examines maps of ethnic or religious difference, poverty, and health inequalities, demonstrating how they not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also constitute inscriptions of social patterns that have been etched deeply on the surface of cities.

The book covers themes such as the use of visual rhetoric to change public opinion, the evolution of sociology as an academic practice, changing attitudes to physical disorder, and the complexity of segregation as an urban phenomenon. While the focus is on historical maps, the narrative carries the discussion of the spatial dimensions of social cartography forward to the present day, showing how disciplines such as public health, crime science, and urban planning, chart spatial data in their current practice. Containing examples of space syntax analysis alongside full colour maps and photographs, this volume will appeal to all those interested in the long-term forces that shape how people live in cities.

Praise for Mapping Society

‘Vaughan’s detailed account of social cartography is one that demonstrates not only the functionality of a map, but how cartographic representations can communicate more than just numbers and statistics.’
Society of Cartographers Bulletin

‘Mapping Society is a beautifully produced book, with colour figures throughout rather than relegated to central pages, it gives some background to those iconic maps with which many of us are familiar.’
ianhopkinson.org.uk

‘a scholarly and thoroughly researched book that unpicks the context behind many of the foremost examples of social cartography… and reveals how the layout of cities can exacerbate or ameliorate social ills.’
LSE Review of Books

‘Explores in detail the huge array of urban social mapping that we think we know from just a few examples‘
Mapping as a Process

‘an interesting study of the ways in which early social scientists used mapping to consider the spatial ramifications of social issues and how today these maps might be used to shed new light on old problems. Her careful reading of the maps and their spatial dimensions provides new insights into the historical record.’
Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography

Labour, Nature and Capitalism

Labour, Nature and Capitalism traces how the alliance between labour and capital manifests in the form of conflicts between organised trade unions and a local environmental movement in the context of the much-acclaimed Kerala model of development. It explores the history of the area’s local industrialisation, the presence of varied economic interests and exposes the barriers to forming solidarity networks among the working classes.

Situated in the backdrop of the Eloor-Edayar industrial belt, this book delves deeper into the ways in which capitalism infiltrates and manipulates the social movement landscape in Kerala. It shows how the hegemonic coalition between the state, industries and institutionalised trade unions enable capitalist rationality to mediate and control social movements in postcolonial settings.

Using an ethnographic approach, the book seeks to embark on a journey to understand the tensions between two progressive social movements – a trade union collective and a local environmental movement – foregrounding the experiences of members of the respective groups. The analysis presented here shows how the contestations/conflicts between the movements stem from interpretive as well as ideological differences surrounding economic development and environmental justice.

Praise for Labour, Nature and Capitalism

‘Labour, Nature and Capitalism is a carefully researched as well as theoretically astute book on a subject of vital importance to India and the world. Based on fieldwork in Kerala, Dr Silpa Satheesh studies the tensions between grassroots environmental groups and trade unions, analysing how factory labour finds itself in opposition to other, even more vulnerable sections, of the working class. Importantly, she explores both the organizational as well as affective aspects of struggle, allowing activists to speak loud and clear in their own voices. Through her work, Dr Satheesh convincingly demonstrates that the conventional polarity of “environment versus development” is false and even pernicious.’

Ramachandra Guha, author of Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism

‘This work is an important contribution to an understudied and weakly understood arena, the relationship between trade unions and environmental movements. While anecdotal accounts of the tensions (and sometimes complementarities) between the two movements are common, detailed and systematic studies are not. Given the urgent need to bring these movements together to challenge capitalist exploitation and unsustainability, this study is very timely.’

Ashish Kothari, environmental activist and author

‘There are many environmental grassroots movements in the state of Kerala. This fascinating book focuses on the Periyar River gravely and persistently polluted by discharges of “company water”. Competent activists have denounced the environmental and public health damages for many years, counting on support from farmers and fishers. However, another section of the working class, smaller in number but more powerful politically, the industrial trade unions – together with factory owners and the state administration- accuses them of being at the service of “anti-national” interests. By poignant, long outspoken interviews with members of both opposite groups and thorough documentation, the sociologist Silpa Satheesh brilliantly answers a question of world relevance – is there an environmentalism of the working class?’

Joan Martinez Alier, Autonomous University of Barcelona

‘Silpa Satheesh’s book is a very welcome addition to environmental labour studies for many reasons. It adds a case from the Global South to the growing literature on labour and the environment; it examines the dynamics between labour and environment through an ethnographic approach that provides nuance and empathy; and demonstrates that labour is not homogeneous as workers are central to both the labour and environmental side of her story. In that sense it alerts us to the fact that workers, people who need to work to reproduce themselves, are not just one category amongst others but the largest category, short of human beings and citizens of one country or another. From such a starting point the tensions between labour and environmental priorities are not solely conflicts between categories of people but, also, within the very broad category of labour. As a result of the above, Dr Satheesh’s well-written book broadens and enriches environmental labour studies and should be read widely and productively.’

Dr Dimitris Stevis, Colorado State University, USA

‘Strong alliances between the labour and the environmental movement are an essential precondition for combatting the climate crisis. At the same time, they are far from being easy to build. Labour, Nature, and Capitalism brilliantly demonstrates why this is the case. Based on deep empirical insights and sound theoretical reflections, it illuminates labour-environment relationships and explores how they can be turned into a force of socio-ecological transformation.’

Markus Wissen, Berlin School of Economics and Law

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans

Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans provides an ethnography of life, work and migration in a North Indian Muslim-dominated woodworking industry. It traces artisanal connections within the local context, during migration within India, and to the Gulf, examining how woodworkers utilise local and transnational networks, based on identity, religiosity, and affective circulations, to access resources, support and forms of mutuality. However, the book also illustrates how liberalisation, intensifying forms of marginalisation and incorporation into global production networks have led to spatial pressures, fragmentation of artisanal labour, and forms of enclavement that persist despite geographical mobility and connectedness.

By working across the dialectic of marginality and connectedness, Thomas Chambers thinks through these complexities and dualities by providing an ethnographic account that shares everyday life with artisans and others in the industry. Descriptive detail is intersected with spatial scales of ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘international’, with the demands of supply chains and labour markets within India and abroad, with structural conditions, and with forms of change and continuity. Empirically, then, the book provides a detailed account of a specific locale, but also contributes to broader theoretical debates centring on theorisations of margins, borders, connections, networks, embeddedness, neoliberalism, subjectivities, and economic or social flux.

Praise for Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans

‘a beautifully written ethnographic account…The attention to individual lives and the struggle to live a decent life is one of the book’s most obvious strengths. In recent years, the bodily acts of craftwork and descriptions of manual skills have gained increasing attention within anthropological research. What has been missing from academic publications are individual stories of artisans in a small urban setting. This book renders craftworkers as central, rather than marginal, and thereby represents an important contribution.’
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)

‘A revealing book. In addition to its usefulness as a critical survey of the theoretical and historical models currently in use to understand artisanship in contemporary India and elsewhere, and the ethnographic detail it offers of the Indian woodworking industry, by insisting on the local and the particular as its unit of analysis it offers a challenge to universalising accounts of the experience of contemporary South Asian artisans.’
The Journal of Modern Craft

‘Chambers’ research on how women’s labour is devalued and underpaid lays the ground for future researchers on how women offer care and strength to each other within patriarchal settings.’
moneycontrol.com

‘Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans by Thomas Chambers is a substantial ethnography of Muslim artisan woodworkers in the northern Indian city of Saharanpur that admirably evokes the “human actuality” of their working worlds.’
ILR Review

Knowledge Sovereignty among African Cattle Herders

Beni-Amer cattle owners in the western part of the Horn of Africa are not only masters in cattle breeding, they are also knowledge sovereign, in terms of owning productive genes of cattle and the cognitive knowledge base crucial to sustainable development. The strong bonds between the Beni-Amer, their animals, and their environment constitute the basis of their ways of knowing, and much of their knowledge system is built on experience and embedded in their cultural practices.

In this book, the first to study Beni-Amer practices, Zeremariam Fre argues for the importance of their knowledge, challenging the preconceptions that regard it as untrustworthy when compared to scientific knowledge from more developed regions. Empirical evidence suggests that there is much one could learn from the other, since elements of pastoralist technology, such as those related to animal production and husbandry, make a direct contribution to our knowledge of livestock production. It is this potential for hybridization, as well as the resilience of the herders, at the core of the indigenous knowledge system.

Fre also argues that indigenous knowledge can be viewed as a stand-alone science, and that a community’s rights over ownership should be defended by government officials, development planners and policy makers, making the case for a celebration of the knowledge sovereignty of pastoralist communities

Praise for Knowledge Sovereignty Among African Cattle Herders

‘Well-written, easy to read and comprehend by the general reader. It is a must-read for specialists in the fields of animal science, veterinary medicine, indigenous knowledge systems and pastoralism in Africa.’
African Review of Economics and Finance

‘This book greatly contributes to the limited literature on theoretical discourses and practices on indigenous knowledge of livestock herding communities in the Horn of Africa. It discusses knowledge heritage and sovereignty through the presentation of valid empirical evidence, and its subsequent relevance in nurturing sustainability of knowledge systems to enhance lives of pastoralists in Africa and beyond.’
Samuel Tefera PhD, Assistant Professor and Asian Desk Coordinator at the Centre for African and Oriental Studies, Associate Dean for Research and Technology Transfer, College of Social Sciences, Addis Ababa University

‘The author has worked with our Beni-Amer pastoral communities in Eastern Sudan and Western Eritrea for over 30 years and this book is the first of its kind in documenting our practices, knowledge systems, heritage and way of life.’
Mustafa Faid and Mohamed Ali, Leaders of the of the Pastoral and Environmental Association Kassala State (PEAKS)

‘This important book arrives at a key moment of climate and food security challenges. Fre deploys great wisdom in writing about the wisdom of traditional pastoralists, which – reflecting the way complex natural systems really work – has been tested through history, and remains capable of future evolution. The more general lesson is that both land, and ideas, should be a common treasury.’
Robert Biel, Professor of the Political Ecology of Sustainable Food, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL

‘A riveting and rare book! Zeremarian Fre guides you along the sandy [dusty] tracks and grassy pastures that the Beni-Amer and their herds have been softly tracing over time all through the Horn of Africa. One of the virtues of the book is that it illustrates vividly and in clear language how their continuous self-built endogenous knowledge on agro-pastoral life is not only at the core of their survival and the survival of their herds, but more importantly a powerful weapon in facing and resisting multiple aggressions . . . Ground-breaking and a huge achievement.’
Yves Cabannes, Emeritus Professor of Development Planning,, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL

‘The book underlines the importance of enriching and utilizing the unrecognized, yet valuable scientific knowledge and practices that are deeply rooted in pastoral traditional expertise about their own environment and breeding practices. It is an important publication that reflects Dr Fre’s expertise and long term research in the region and thus, it is a significant addition to the African library.’
Hala Alkarib, Director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA)

‘This fascinating book not only gives a unique insight into the knowledge and practice of pastoralists in the Horn of Africa from the author’s first-hand experience, it also provides an incisive critique of the multiple dimensions of knowledge, paying tribute to the sovereignty of indigenous knowledge. It has a timely relevance for global sustainability that will appeal to a wider readership.’
Nicole Kenton, International Development Consultant, former long serving senior staff member of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

‘The book covers several intertwined issues relevant to contemporary development policy and practice. It goes beyond the rural-urban and peasant–nomadic livelihoods dichotomy by shedding more light on the inter-linkages within the multiple livelihood systems within the Horn of Africa and globally. A rich evidence-based resource for academics, development partners and social movements for promoting and designing state policies that embrace pastoralist aspirations.’
Bereket Tsegay MA, PhD candidate, Pastoral and Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa (PENHA)

‘Dr Zeremariam Fre has done a wonderful job of placing at the centre of this book the Beni-Amer pastoralists, the world they inhabit and the knowledge they use to navigate and thrive in it. The lessons contained in this book go beyond pastoralism; it is a must read for anyone serious about understanding the importance of located knowledge in the innovation and development process.’
Yusuf Dirie, PENHA Research Fellow and PhD researcher at the University of Sussex

‘Indigenous knowledge and the sovereignty issues addressed in the book are hallmarks not only to recognize African cattle herders but to use this knowledge to mitigate climate change and appreciate the resilience of these herders. The book will be a major resource for students, researchers and policy makers in Africa and worldwide.*
Mitiku Haile, Professor of Soil Science at Mekelle University (Ethiopia)

Brexit and Beyond

Brexit will have significant consequences for the country, for Europe, and for global order. And yet much discussion of Brexit in the UK has focused on the causes of the vote and on its consequences for the future of British politics. This volume examines the consequences of Brexit for the future of Europe and the European Union, adopting an explicitly regional and future-oriented perspective missing from many existing analyses.

Drawing on the expertise of 28 leading scholars from a range of disciplines, Brexit and Beyond offers various different perspectives on the future of Europe, charting the likely effects of Brexit across a range of areas, including institutional relations, political economy, law and justice, foreign affairs, democratic governance, and the idea of Europe itself. Whilst the contributors offer divergent predictions for the future of Europe after Brexit, they share the same conviction that careful scholarly analysis is in need – now more than ever – if we are to understand what lies ahead for the EU.

Praise for Brexit and Beyond: Rethinking the futures of Europe ‘The book is to be welcomed in that contributors discuss most of the key policy areas, is lucid and jargon-free and, thanks to the publishers, is offered ‘open access’, freely available to all to read and download.’ Journal of Contemporary European Studies
‘This is the perfect gift for the friend or relative from Europe trying to understand what Brexit has to do with them. Not only does it offer chapters written by some of the best thinkers on European politics, it’s also available free online, which means you can email it to them and therefore avoid having to face them and their looks of bewilderment about the state of Britain.’
Best of Brexit, Politico
‘a strong line-up of contributors is to be found in Uta Staiger and Benjamin Martill’s (eds.) Brexit and Beyond: Rethinking the Futures of Europe (UCL, 2018). It looks at many of the challenges to the EU, including those mentioned above, but through a Brexit lens. This doesn’t mean the other crises are diminished in importance. Far from it. But the effect of Brexit on the future of the EU and Europe’s wider institutional structures is carefully assessed.’
International Politics Review

‘a wide-ranging and thought-provoking tour through the vagaries of British exit, with the question of Europe’s fate never far from sight…Brexit is a wake-up call for the EU. How it responds is an open question—but respond it must. To better understand its options going forward you should turn to this book, which has also been made free online.’
Prospect Magazine

‘Brexit and Beyond is a stimulating and thought-provoking symposium‘
International Affairs

‘[Brexit and Beyond] fulfills its goal of demonstrating that Brexit has been a critical juncture for scholars and policymakers to ‘rethink the futures of Europe’, while exploring different types of scenarios and options, some of which have not been discussed before.’
LSE Review of Books‘[Brexit and Beyond] predates Wightman and other major developments surrounding the UK’s planned exit from the European Union. However, as one would expect from a cross-disciplinary collection which brings together so stellar a cast of academics, much of what has followed the conclusion of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement – including two European Council Decisions (22.3.2019 & 11.4.2019) extending the Article 53(3) period – was to a greater or lesser degree anticipated by the authors, making the book’s publication all the more timely.’
patriciatuitt.com‘This book explores wonderfully well the bombshell of Brexit: is it a uniquely British phenomenon or part of a wider, existential crisis for the EU? As the tensions and complexities of the Brexit negotiations come to the fore, the collection of essays by leading scholars will prove a very valuable reference for their depth of analysis, their lucidity, and their outlining of future options.’
Kevin Featherstone, Head of the LSE European Institute, London School of Economics

‘Brexit and Beyond is a must read. It moves the ongoing debate about what Brexit actually means to a whole new level. While many scholars to date have examined the reasons for the British decision to leave, the crucial question of what Brexit will mean for the future of the European project is often overlooked. No longer. Brexit and Beyond bundles the perspectives of leading scholars of European integration. By doing so, it provides a much needed scholarly guidepost for our understanding of the significance of Brexit, not only for the United Kingdom, but also for the future of the European continent.’
Catherine E. De Vries, Professor in the department of Government, University of Essex and Professor in the department of Political Science and Public Administration Free University Amsterdam

‘Brexit and Beyond provides a fascinating (and comprehensive) analysis on the how and why the UK has found itself on the path to exiting the European Union. The talented cast of academic contributors is drawn from a wide variety of disciplines and areas of expertise and this provides a breadth and depth to the analysis of Brexit that is unrivalled. The volume also provides large amounts of expert-informed speculation on the future of both the EU and UK and which is both stimulating and anxiety-inducing.’
Professor Richard Whitman, Head of School, Professor of Politics and International Relations, Director of the Global Europe Centre, University of Kent

‘what this collection of essays does is …set out the post-Brexit challenges, even if they do not provide any obvious answers. According to the editors, Brexit is a classic example of a ‘wicked problem’, by which they mean it is ‘characterized by having innumerable, complex causes, yet no precedent’. Each wicked problem is unique, and there are no right or wrong answers, only good or bad ones’
Quentin Letts, The World Today

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