Seit Jahrzehnten gilt für die meisten Wirtschaftszweige: Güter werden in globalen Warenketten arbeitsteilig und global verteilt produziert. Globale Warenketten haben nicht nur Auswirkungen auf die Versorgung und die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Ländern und Regionen, sondern auch auf Löhne, Arbeitsbedingungen und Arbeitskämpfe.

 

Welche Erfahrungen machen Arbeitende in globalisierten Warenketten, wenn es um ihre Interessen geht? Kann transnationales Kapital nur auf der transnationalen Ebene bekämpft werden? Oder bleibt die lokale und nationale Ebene der zentrale Ort für den Kampf um soziale Rechte?

Globalisation has led to globally interconnected production structures and the spread of global value chains. Globalised production not only influences economic development prospects, but also working conditions and wages as well as workers’ power and struggles. This special issue is dedicated to labour organising in the context of globalised production. Jeroen Merk, leading scholar on questions of transnational labour organising, presents opportunities and challenges of the scaling up of labour activism, focusing on the global apparel and footwear sectors.  Comments are provided by Kruskaya Hidalgo Cordero, Madhumita Dutta and Luke Sinwell on the background of their own contributions in the issue covering experiences of union and non-union actors from different sectors and world regions.

 

Speaker: Jeroen Merk (independent researcher)
Comments: Kruskaya Hidalgo Cordero (London School of Economics and Political Science), Madhumita Dutta (The Ohio State University) and Luke Sinwell (University of Johannesburg)
Presentation of issue: Cornelia Staritz (University of Vienna)
Chair: Karin Fischer (Johannes Kepler University Linz)

Special issue presentation (JEP 2021-4, JEP 2022-1)

 

To secure the resource intensive prosperity of the Global North, the so called imperial mode of living externalises social and environmental costs that are both shifted to the Global South and within society along class, gender and racialised lines. The imperial mode of living has also spread across societies, which have been sites of exploitation since colonial times. Despite multiple social conflicts and resistance to the effects of the imperial mode of living, it became the dominant model of development in Latin America. The event will address the question of how the imperial mode of living was able to assert itself despite its manifold contradictions. Authors of two JEP special issues (JEP 2021-4 and JEP 2022-1) will discuss the interplay of everyday actions and social structures that enable and support the reproduction of the imperial mode of living in the Global South.

 

Speakers:  Felix Malte Dorn (Innsbruck University), Anna Landherr (Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich), Jakob Graf (Friedrich Schiller University Jena), Teresa Millesi (University of Innsbruck) and Camila Moreno (Humboldt University of Berlin)

 

Chair: Anna Preiser (University of Vienna)

The 2007-8 global financial crisis and the waves of mass rebellions in Eastern Europe and the Arab world around the same time marked a major turning point in China’s strategies of development and domination. On the one hand, the drastic shrinkage in foreign demand spelled the end of China’s export-led high growth era, presenting a crisis of accumulation. On the other, global popular revolts that toppled or destabilized autocratic regimes raised the specter of a potential crisis of governance. The Chinese Communist regime responded with two grand projects—global expansion (officially labelled Going Out, Belt and Road Initiative, Made in China 2025, China Dream) and digital authoritarianism (platform economy and rule by high-tech surveillance). This talk analyses the practices of these elite strategies and assesses their effectiveness for maintaining economic growth and political control amidst a “new cold war” and a global pandemic.

 

Vortrag mit Ching Kwan Lee (UCLA)

Ort: Hörsaal 2 (HS) im Neuen Institutsgebäude (NIG)