Description
“Jrg Nowak has written an ambitious, wide-ranging and very important book. He outlines a new theory of mass strikes, focusing on emerging economies in the wake of the global economic crisis. Based on extensive empirical research in Brazil and India, and a thorough analysis of the secondary literature, Nowak reveals that numerous labour conflicts develop in the absence of trade unions, but with the support of kinship networks, local communities, social movements and other types of associations. This impressive work may well become a major building block for a new interpretation of global workers’ struggles.” -Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands “In this timely and important study, Joerg Novak examines the surge of worker-based mass strikes in developing countries between 2010-2014. He convincingly challenges the dominant Eurocentric approach to labour conflict and calls for a new theory of strikes. Such an approach must go beyond the workplace and the trade union as the central ‘places’ of mobilisation and organisation of workers. Focusing on Brazil and India, he stresses the need to engage in a wider perspective that includes social reproduction, neighbourhood mobilisations, and the specific traditions of struggles in the Global South.” -Edward Webster, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa This book explores new forms of popular organisation that emerged from strikes in India and Brazil between 2011 and 2014. Based on four case studies, the author traces the alliances and relations that strikers developed during their mobilisations with other popular actors such as students, indigenous peoples, and people displaced by dam projects. The study locates the mass strikes in Brazil’s construction industry and India’s automobile industry in a global conjuncture of protest movements, and develops a new theory of strikes that can take account of the manifold ways in which labour unrest is embedded in local communities and regional networks. Jrg Nowak is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations at University of Nottingham, UK. He works on South-South investment, labour unrest in emerging economies, Labour Geography and Althusserian Marxism. 1 Introduction 2 A New Theory of Strikes: Moving Beyond Eurocentrism 3 The Political Economy of Mass Strikes in the Global Crisis 4 A Protracted Struggle: Strikes in the Automobile Sector in India 5 An Ascending Wave: Mass Strikes in the Brazilian Construction Sector 6 Conclusion Index
