Call for paper: Session “Organized Labor and environmental strategies in global capitalism”
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, New York City
(http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting)
Conference dates: 24.02.2012-28.02.2012
Session Conveners: Romain Felli (University of Manchester) and James Nugent (University of Toronto)
A number of recent studies, often by sociologists, have engaged with labor’s environmentalism, at different scales and contexts. However, we feel that these studies could be fruitfully connected with, on the one hand, the field of “labor geography”, and on the other hand, of the “global labor studies”. In this regard, particular attention should be paid to workers (individual and collective) agency; to how workers agency is at the same time constrained by, and redefines, the international division of labor, states interventions and capital’s accumulation; to the politics of scale involved; to the (international) solidarities and/or the competition and divisions amongst labor; and to the (re)definition of the boundaries and forms of union’s interventions.
We would be interested in papers dealing, theoretically and/or empirically with these issues, in a broadly critical framework (political economy, political ecology, Marxism, feminism, etc.). Possible themes to be considered include:
- Which “moral” geographies, or values, are revealed by labor’s engagement with the environment? What kind of environmentalism is organized labor promoting?
- Empirical studies of strategies such as “green jobs”, “sustainable jobs”, “just transition”,…
- Studies of alliances between unions and states, companies, international organizations, non-governmental environmental organizations or other groups. Comparisons between these types of alliances.
- Studies of labor’s environmentalism in the context of union’s renewal, new forms of labor’s organizations, engagement with the sphere of “reproduction”, etc.
- Patterns of collaboration and competition amongst labor, at various scales.
- Studies of the participation of trade union in international environmental negotiations.
Abstracts (limited to 250 words) and AAG pin number should be sent to Romain Felli ([log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]) and James Nugent ([log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]) by 20th September 2011.
- - -
Romain Felli
Visiting research Fellow
School of Environment and Development
University of Manchester
[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]