Article,
From Critical Sociology to Combat Sport? A Response to Michael Burawoy's `From Polanyi to Pollyanna: The False Optimism of Global Labour Studies' (GLJ 1.2)
Global Labour Journal, 1 (3): 384–387 (September 2010)
DOI: 10.15173/glj.v1i3.1085
Abstract
A key feature of GLS is its focus on agency, on labour as an active maker of ‘spatial fixes’, rather than simply a passive victim of the logic of capital. Only time will tell whether this privileging of agency and the experiments in new forms of labour activism and organisation that GLS describe, is over optimistic. Optimism is an emotive word. Whether it is false or cautious depends not only on what the author thinks is possible, but also what is desirable. My short term goals for labour are quite modest: assisting working people in their struggle for an organisational ‘voice’ in the workplace and in society. Grounding Globalisation: Labour in the Age of Insecurity (GG) is a cautious case for incremental reform in the short term with a longterm radical vision of a participatory democracy. I call it radical reform.
