Feminization of Resistance: Reclaiming the Affective and the Indefinite as Counter-Strategy in Academic Labor Activism

‘Feminization’ is used either quantitatively to indicate an increased female labor market participation or qualitatively to refer to labor devaluation and to types of work that supposedly require “feminine” skillsets. This article cautiously hews to the qualitative interpretations but suggests an affirmative reconstruction of the concept in the context of collective action. It argues that contemporary grassroots academic labor movements rely more explicitly on collective emotions and aim at building long-term bases of solidarity, instead of performative activism and mass mobilizations. This ‘affective turn’ in academic labor activism is argued to signal a “feminization of resistance”, characterized by a pronounced propensity for affective and relational groundwork. This argument is substantiated in view of the Network for Decent Work in Academia (NGAWiss), a nation-wide precarious researchers’ network in Germany, and the New Faculty Majority (NFM), an adjunct advocacy group in the US. The aim is twofold: first, the article contributes to a better understanding of contemporary labor activism by elucidating the precarious collective’s incremental achievements, often ignored by the outcome-oriented labor movement literature. Second, by reframing it as a mode of affective resistance, the article extends the analytical scope of the term “feminization”.

On the Usefulness of Combining Strike and Protest Research: Some Insights from the Spanish Case (2000-2016)

During the past half century, the study of social contention has been characterized by a division between research on labor movements and studies on other social movements. This division also left its mark on the study of modes of action: while labor scholars mainly examined strikes, social movement scholars have increasingly come to focus on street protests. This article is a contribution to bridging the gap between the two research areas both on theoretical and empirical levels. On a theoretical level, I discuss the usefulness of combining economic and political models of contention from the two research areas. On an empirical level, I use official data provided by Spanish ministries to examine and relate the workers’ use of strikes and street protests between 2000 and 2016 in Spain. Examining strikes and street protests jointly does not only provide a fuller picture, it also helps to discern contrasts and thus the specificities of each mode of action. En el último medio siglo, los estudios del conflicto social se han caracterizado por una separación entre investigaciones sobre movimientos laborales y estudios sobre otros movimientos sociales. Esta división también dejó su marca en el estudio de los modos de acción: mientras que las sociólogas y los sociólogos del trabajo examinaban principalmente las huelgas, las y los especialistas en movimientos sociales se han centrado cada vez más en las protestas callejeras. Este artículo es una contribución para cerrar la brecha entre las dos áreas de investigación tanto a nivel teórico como empírico. A nivel teórico, se discute la utilidad de combinar modelos económicos y políticos del conflicto social de las dos áreas de investigación. A nivel empírico, se utilizan datos oficiales proporcionados por ministerios españoles para examinar y relacionar el uso de huelgas y manifestaciones callejeras por parte de los trabajadores entre 2000 y 2016 en España. El examen combinado de las huelgas y las protestas callejeras no sólo proporciona una imagen más completa, sino que también ayuda a discernir los contrastes y, por lo tanto, las particularidades de cada modo de acción.

Why the Global Labor Movement is in Crisis

One of the great paradoxes of the current era is that the world working class continues to grow, while at the same time many labor movements are experiencing a crisis. How can we explain this paradox? The global simultaneity of the crisis suggests that the failure of individual organizational leaderships is not the main cause, but that more general factors play an important role. The article argues and attemps to partly explain why the first wave of founding workers‘ organizations (mainly in the North, from the 1860s until the 1920s) was not repeated elsewhere after World War ii; and why many movements in the North declined since the 1980s.

Seoul as a Site of Labor Resistance: The Spatial Representation of Inequality and Injustice

Under rising insecurity and precarity in the neoliberal labor market, Korean workers have protested mass job cuts and deteriorating working conditions. Although their grievances originate from the regions and workplaces where they are employed or laid off, the protest sites often move to major political landmarks in Seoul, the nation’s capital, with demands for political redress. These labor protests in the capital demonstrate two distinctive features of Korean labor movements in the 2000s: protests go on for a protracted period of time with few tangible results and take extreme forms of resistance. Approaching Seoul as a site of contentious politics, this study analyses the mutual nexus between labor protests and urban spaces with cases that appropriate various sites, such as Kwanghwamun (Gwanghwamun) Square, the Blue House, and the National Assembly, involving diverse tactics like long-term camp-ins, sambo ilbae (삼보일배) marches, and the occupation of structurally perilous structures. It examines which layers of inequality and injustice in the labor market, or in Korean society at large, are articulated through protest methods that spatially engage with specific urban locations in Seoul. With this investigation, the paper argues that the labor movement practices novel repertoires of resistance to neoliberal precarity by choosing the urban sites with metaphoric significance and by publicly displaying bodily torment. These new forms of contention, in turn, redefine the sense and political implication of the protest site and make the space part of the new protest repertoire.

Rooted in Place, Constructed in Movement

Since the turn of the twentieth century, men and women from the greater Mexican borderlands have shared labor concerns, engaged in labor solidarities, and employed activist strategies to improve their livelihoods. Based on findings from archival research in Mexico City, Washington, DC; Texas; Tamaulipas; and Nuevo León and by engaging in transnational methodological and historiographical approaches, this article takes two distinct but related cases of labor solidarities from the early twentieth century to reveal the class and gendered complexities of transnational labor solidarities. The cases of Gregorio Cortez, a Mexican farmer and immigrant from Tamaulipas living and working in Texas in 1901, and Caritina Piña, a Tamaulipas-born woman engaged in anarcho-syndicalism in the 1920s, reveal the potential of cross-class and gendered solidarities and underscore how a variety of social contexts informed and shaped labor movements. Excavating solidarities from a transnational perspective while exposing important limitations of the labor movement sheds light on the gendered, racial, and class complexities of such forms of shared struggle; but, equally important, reminds us of how much one can learn about the power of larger, global labor movements by closely examining the experiences of those residing on nations’ edges.

Font Poster: Creative Method of Designers from Different Cultural Regions of the Alphabetic Writing System (Based on the Materials of the Collection “The 4th BLOCK: Museum, Archive, Laboratory”)

The article highlights the features of the font poster from the collection of “The 4th BLOCK: Museum, Archive, Laboratory” (further – “The 4th BLOСK: MAL”) by four leading contemporary designers from different cultural regions of the alphabetical writing system, namely: Paul Peter Piech (UK), Paula Troxler (Switzerland), Parisa Tashakori (Iran), Paula Scher (USA). Attention is paid to the peculiarities of their creative methods, experimental findings, specifics of compositional means and methods of font design. An attempt is made to assume and find out whether the mentality and worldview universals of each nation affect the specificity of cultural works of a particular country, in particular, the font used in the design of the poster. Thus, the fact that Paul Peter Piech belonged to English culture with its industrial orientation, the flourishing of the media business and labor movements, was reflected in the character of his font. Raised in the tradition of Swiss design, Paula Troxler deliberately destroys the spatial unity of the font composition. The unicity of Parisa Tashakori’s font posters lies in the attempt of the woman-designer to emphasize the contradictions in society between the need for emancipation and the need to return a woman to her traditional roles. The author, as the heir to the Iranian culture of calligraphic inscriptions, uses a single complex of font composition with the involvement of images. Paula Scher’s work is inspired by the urban graffiti language, the networked structure of New York streets and the geometric volumes of high-rise buildings. In the context of current trends and searches in the field of font posters, the prospects for further methodological analysis of the creative achievements in the design environment of individual countries and their awareness within the framework of the research nature of the work are identified. The directions in further research of the visual language of the font poster from the collection of the “The 4th BLOСK: MAL” are determined, taking into account the realities of “metamodernism”.

A Failed Experiment: Okinawan Indents and the Postwar Torres Strait Pearlshelling Industry, 1958–1963

Throughout its European history, Australia has solved recurrent labor shortages by importing workers from overseas. Situated on shipping lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the northern Australian pearlshelling industry became a significant locus of second-wave transnational labor flows (1870–1940) and by the 1880s was dependent on indentured workers from the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Exempted from the racially discriminatory Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, indentured Asian seamen, principally Japanese, maintained the industry until the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. The Torres Strait pearlshelling industry, centered on Thursday Island in Far North Queensland, resumed in 1946 amid general agreement that the Japanese must not return. Nevertheless, in 1958, 162 Okinawan pearling indents arrived on Thursday Island in a controversial attempt to restore the industry's declining fortunes. This article is intended as a contribution to the history of transnational labor movements. It consults a range of sources to document this “Okinawan experiment,” the last large-scale importation of indentured Asian labor into Australia. It examines Australian Commonwealth-state tensions in formulating and adopting national labor policy; disputes among Queensland policy makers; the social characteristics of the Okinawan cohort; and local Indigenous reactions. Also discussed are the economics of labor in the final years of the Torres Strait pearling industry. This study thus extends our knowledge of transnational labor movements and the intersection of early postwar Australian-Asian relations with Queensland Indigenous labor policy. It also foreshadows contemporary Indigenous demands for control of local marine resources.

The Labor Movement As an Educational Movement: A Conceptual History of Sivistys Within the Finnish Workers’ Educational Association 1920s–1960s

Education and popular adult education have been central in the development of Nordic societies, and as such, emphasis on education has also been an essential component of the Nordic labor movements. The article focuses on the conceptual history of sivistys (Bildung), a key concept and a characteristic element of the Finnish workers’ educational movement through the Finnish Workers’ Educational Association during its era of political education from the 1920s until the 1960s. Workers’ education took the concept sivistys from 19th century projects for people’s education, and thus tied workers’ education tightly to the broader field of Nordic popular adult education. In fact, the Finnish workers’ educational movement received more influence from Nordic people’s education than international socialist theories and programs for workers’ education – of which the use of the concept sivistys is a clear example.

Indie Weerbaar Polemic and the Radicalization of Sarekat Islam (1917-1918)

This article analyses the polemic relationship between the formation of Indie Weerbaar and the radicalization of the Sarekat Islam. The organization later protected the Dutch East Indies from the effects of the First World War. The support from Sarekat Islam initiated polemics with left groups within the Sarekat Islam. This article was written using the historical method. It emphasizes on the using of primary sources in the form of writing records from some prominent figures of Sarekat Islam. The results show that the Sarekat Islamdecentralization policy implemented by the Governor-General of Idenburg resulted in the organization's leadership losing control of its agencies. Abdoel Moeis' involvement in the Indie Weerbaar committee triggered a polemic against leftist figures in Sarekat Islam, especially Semaoen. Semaoen managed to take advantage of the formation polemic of Indie Weerbaar to increase his influence and popularity. Semaoen even succeeded in influencing the Sarekat Islam congress participants to support more radical organizational policies such as the labor movements. In other hand, Semaoen also succeeded in influencing other Sarekat Islam leaders, including Tjokroaminoto, to become more radical through the organization of Radicale Concentratie in Volksraad. Thus, it can be seen that the polemic on the formation of Indie Weerbaar led to the radicalization of the Sarekat Islam movement.