Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) - Hardcover

Silver, Beverly J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 052181751X ISBN 13: 9780521817516

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Recasting labor studies in a long-term and global framework, the book draws on a major new database on world labor unrest to show how local labor movements have been related to world-scale political, economic, and social processes since the late nineteenth century. Through an in-depth empirical analysis of select global industries, the book demonstrates how the main locations of labor unrest have shifted from country to country together with shifts in the geographical location of production. It shows how the main sites of labor unrest have shifted over time together with the rise or decline of new leading sectors of capitalist development and demonstrates that labor movements have been deeply embedded (as both cause and effect) in world political dynamics. Over the history of the modern labor movement, the book isolates what is truly novel about the contemporary global crisis of labor movements. Arguing against the view that this is a terminal crisis, the book concludes by exploring the likely forms that emergent labor movements will take in the twenty-first century.

About this title

Book Description

The book analyzes the global dynamics of labor movements, introducing a major new database on labor unrest events worldwide from 1870 to 1996. The book's purpose is to assess the contemporary crisis of labor movements, but it argues that to do so effectively labor movements need to be studied in a longer historical and wider geographical framework than is normally done. Key themes include the relationship between labor unrest and capital mobility in various global industries (automobiles, textiles, semiconductors, and service industries) and the inter-relationship between world labor unrest and world politics over the past century.

From the Inside Flap

"Beverly Silver's empirically rich and powerfully argued book provides the kind of historical and class analysis that has been so badly lacking in the globalization literature. Bravo!" Leo Pantich, York University

"By broadening the geography for understanding labor struggles, Silver shows us that these are going strong in many parts of the world even as they have weakened and fizzled in the North Atlantic. A great contribution to contemporary debates about the politics of contestation." Saskia Sassen, The University of Chicago

"Beverly Silver's new book is a challenge to political economists and economic sociologists and even to those historians who still care about capitalism trajectories. Avoiding the deceptive poles of both "race to the bottom" pessimism and liberal optimism, availing herself of both an immense database and of deep historical knowledge, Silver traces the recurring rises and declines of the world labor movement along two dimensions of capital mobility: its spatial displacement and its shift to new product lines--both in response to labor militancy. Sweeping and detailed, ponderous but readable, comparative and historical, this book takes the political economy of world systems to a new level." Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 052181751X
• ISBN 13: 9780521817516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 260