Collective Action Among Service Workers
Proposed panel for the American Anthropological Association Annual
Meeting, San Francisco, USA ? November 14-18, 2012.
Organized by Kendra Coulter (University of Windsor) and Maya Shapiro (York
University)
Around the world, expanding economic polarization, unemployment,
underemployment, violence, and environmental degradation have exacerbated
many workers? feelings of insecurity, fear, and desperation. Yet
simultaneously, novel forms of solidarity and agency are being fostered.
This panel seeks to focus directly on workers? collective action, in order
to spotlight and understand how and why they are mobilizing, and what
their efforts reveal about real possibilities for promoting greater
justice and equality. Centering on the expanding ranks of service workers,
we seek papers that engage with questions such as what literal and
conceptual borders are workers crossing or reconstituting as they imagine
and articulate forms of solidarity? How is organizing conceptualized, and
what shapes does it take? What frames and emphases are workers enlisting
and why? What roles do waged work and unwaged social reproductive labour
play in their efforts? How are service workers, to quote Raymond Williams,
making ?hope possible, rather than despair convincing??
Please send queries and/or proposals to Kendra Coulter at
kcoulter@uwindsor.ca and Maya Shapiro at shapiro.maya@gmail.com by Monday
March 26th. Information about the AAA and the annual meeting can be found
at:
http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/
Dr. Kendra Coulter
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology
http://www.uwindsor.ca/kcoulter
