ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors start with a research proposal about tomato workers in the irrigated area of Autlan-El Grullo, Jalisco, Mexico. Inspired by Marxist beliefs, he delineated a framework concerned with reinforcing workers’ class consciousness, which entailed theoretical assumptions about false consciousness. His agenda also included manifesting solidarity with farmworkers and combining theory with practice. Thus, he was concerned with examining workers’ living conditions along two axes: forms of autonomy and self-organization oriented toward developing worker consciousness (the subjective aspect); and the construction of social contexts (the objective aspect). When the author presented the findings from his first three months of fieldwork to the other Mexican and Dutch researchers on the team, the author realized that hid central questions and concerns worker consciousness had not worked at all. His supervisor, Norman Long, encouraged him to take a more innovative route by using people’s working conditions for theoretical analysis and comparison.
