ABSTRACT
Recent insights in Anthropology of Labor highlight the analytic centrality of unevenness and combination to an accurate understanding of particular social formations (Kalb, D., 2018, “Trotsky over Mauss: Anthropological theory and the October 1917 commemoration.” Dialectical Anthropology 42: 327–343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-018-9525-6" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-018-9525-6; Kasmir, S. and L. Gill, 2018,“No smooth surfaces: The anthropology of unevenness and combination.” Current Anthropology 59, 4: 359–377; Carbonella, A. and S. Kasmir, 2015, “Dispossession, disorganization and the anthropology of labour.” In The Anthropology of Class, edited by D. Kalb and J. Carrier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). On the other side, the emergence of a set of global labor institutions draws attention to the shaping of common identities and interests at that level and their implications for working-class dynamics. The paper aims to discuss Latin American working-class organization dynamics through the assessment of the relationships between unions and workers’ collectives, engaging with a current strand of anthropological debate (Dialectical Anthropology special issue, 2020; Zlolniski, C., 2019, Made in Baja: The Lives of Farmworkers and Growers behind Mexico’s Transnational Agricultural Boom. Oakland: University of California Press; Durrenberger, E. P., 2017, Uncertain Times: Anthropological Approaches to Labor in a Neoliberal World. Boulder: University of Colorado Press; Durrenberger and Reichart, 2010, Anthropology of Labor Unions. Boulder: University of Colorado Press). I grasp these dynamics through long-lasting fieldwork with Latin American steelworkers employed by a transnational corporation, encompassing workplace and union relationships at the local, national and international scales. Recently, the formation of a Global Workers Council became a space of encounter between uneven and interconnected groups of steelworkers, which express national working-class traditions and local balances of forces. Based on this extensive fieldwork, I aim to discuss a twofold dimension of global–local relationships in the (re)making of industrial working classes:
The uneven capitalist expansion in Latin American countries that shaped uneven working classes as political subjects vs transnational corporate policies aiming to make a “global collective”, connecting workers from different locations through competition and cooperation relationships.
The constraints to unions’ local dynamics arising from uneven development vs the prescriptive dimension of a Global Organizing Program. It can also be considered as the contrast between two development theses: uneven and combined vs advanced countries as mirroring the future of backward ones.
