Retail Worker Politics, Race and Consumption in South Africa : Shelved in the Service Economy

Bridget Kenny

ISBN 10: 3030098958 / ISBN 13: 9783030098957

Edité par Springer, 2019

A propos de cet article

Druck auf Anfrage Neuware - Printed after ordering - This book argues that we need to focus attention on the ways that workers themselves have invested subjectively in what it means to be a worker. By doing so, we gain an explanation that moves us beyond the economic decisions made by actors, the institutional constraints faced by trade unions, or the power of the state to interpellate subjects. These more common explanations make workers and their politics visible only as a symptom of external conditions, a response to deregulated markets or a product of state recognition. Instead - through a history of retailing as a site of nation and belonging, changing legal regimes, and articulations of race, class and gender in the constitution of political subjects from the 1930s to present-day Wal-Mart - this book presents the experiences and subjectivities of workers themselves to show that the collective political subject 'workers' ( abasebenzi ) is both a durable and malleable political category. From white to black women's labour, the forms of precariousness have changed within retailing in South Africa. Workers' struggles in different times have in turn resolved some dilemmas and by other turn generated new categories and conditions of precariousness, all the while explaining enduring attachments to labour politics.

N° de réf. du vendeur 9783030098957

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Retail Worker Politics, Race and Consumption in South Africa : Shelved in the Service Economy
• Éditeur: Springer
• Date de parution: 2019
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 3030098958
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9783030098957
• Reliure: Taschenbuch
• État de l'article: Neu
• Dimensions: 210 L x 148 H x 17 P (en millimètres) 210 millimètres de largeur par 148 millimètres de hauteur par 17 millimètres de profondeur
• Poids: 391 grammes

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Gives flesh to precarious women service workers' subjectivities
Follows workers' struggles from white to black women's labour
Contextualizes debates around employment, inequality, poverty alleviation and labour politics from the perspective of a developing economy

À propos de l'auteur

Bridget Kenny is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She works on labour, gender and consumption with a specific focus on service work, precarious employment, and political subjectivity.