Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity

*Winner of the 2009 Distinguished Scholarly Monograph Prize, awarded by the American Sociological Association Labor and Labor Movements section*

Claims have been made on the emergence of a new labour internationalism in response to the growing insecurity created by globalization. However, when persons face conditions of insecurity they often turn inwards. The book contains a warning and a sign of hope. Some workers become fatalistic, even xenophobic. Others are attempting to globalize their own struggles.

• Examines the claim that a new labour internationalism is emerging by grounding the book in evidence, rather than assertion
• Analyzes three distinct places – Orange, Australia; Changwon, South Korea; and Ezakheni, South Africa – and how they dealt with manufacturing plants undergoing restructuring
• Explores worker responses to rising levels of insecurity and examines preconditions for the emergence of counter-movements to such insecurities Highlights the significance of 'place' and 'scale', and demonstrates how the restructuring of multi-national corporations, and worker responses to this, connect the two concepts

Edward Webster is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Sociology of Work Unit (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Rob Lambert is the Chair of Labour Studies at UWA’s Business School and is the Director of the Australian Global Studies Research Centre.

Andries Bezuidenhout works as a senior researcher in the Sociology of Work Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand.