The alienation of labour is both classical and contemporary. In its classical form, it speaks to the potential dehumanisation of workers in capitalist societies. In its contemporary form, it manifests itself in the disenfranchisement of the individual because of changes in organised global workplaces. Over the years, Africa’s labour transition from traditional spirituality to contemporary organised global workplaces has fuelled new forms of public labour alienation. Civil servants, in some African countries, experience labour alienation reminiscent of work under capitalism. This (...) is in contradiction to the pre-colonial and traditional view of work as a vocation. Zimbabwe is undergoing negative economic, social, and political growth that has resulted in the alienation of civil servants. The government reneges on its public role of providing space for individual growth and well-being in preference for ‘public capitalism’ and cultural alienation. The potential for an effective public service lies in changing the work culture. Contribution: This article interrogates the impacts of the work culture within the public service in Zimbabwe in an attempt to proffer a return to the African traditional spirituality of work that was founded on the principles of ubuntu. It recognises the traditional symbiotic relationship between being and doing among the indigenous African communities as the panacea for the continent’s human capital development. (shrink)

The article discusses the works of Samara researchers T.N. Sosnina and L.B. Chetyrova in the field of the philosophy of labor. The analysis is carried out in the context of the need to resolve the socio-epistemological situation of the “death of labor” and to rethink the content of the concept of labor. T.N. Sosnina opened this thematic field of research in Samara in the 1970s with the development of philosophical theory of the subject of labor. As (...) a result, the proper activity of the subject of labor was explained, the subject of labor in the system of spiritual production was singled out, and the prospect of a broad interpretation of labor activity that would include spiritual and managerial components was outlined. Methodological potential of the theory of the subject of labor was further used in the framework of noosphere paradigm approach for the analysis of material production flows and life cycles of the formation of products of nature and society. Taking into account the activity of means and subjects of labor, T.N. Sosnina presented the picture of the world as a universal cooperation. L.B. Chetyrova, discussing historical and cultural panorama of conceptions of labor, interpreted labor as a spiritual and practical activity. Obvious diversity of spiritual culture of the society naturally determines plurality of labor interpretations. Of particular interest is the analysis of the labor concept from the position of linguoconceptology as well as from the prospect of the images of labor in the history of mythology, religion, philosophy, and other worldviews. The Samara philosophy has answered the intellectual challenge of the concept the “death of labor,” proposing pan-ergonism – a worldwiew asserting the totality of labor. This worldview ontologizes the concept of the “labor of the being” and continues the tradition of ergodicy, various versions of which were developed by thinkers of the Silver Age of Russian culture. (shrink)

Nurses are the closest healthcare providers to patients and emotional labor is the most invisible part of nursing work. However, the management of emotions to promote organizational goals and to ensure patient satisfaction may have both positive and negative impacts on nurses' working life. The purpose of this cross‐sectional, descriptive study was to examine the emotional labor behaviors of nurses and their opinions on emotional labor. Two hundred nineteen nurses working at public hospitals in Ankara between September (...) and December 2018 participated to this study. Data were collected using the sociodemographic characteristics form and “The Scale of Emotional Labor Behavior for Nurses.” Nurses had higher scores on the deep and sincere emotional acting subdimensions of the emotional labor scale than the surface acting subdimension. Findings suggest that nurses act deeply and intimately, instead of surface acting. Most of the nurses expressed that nurses were emotionally affected when caring for patients; however, nurses had to control their feelings toward patients and behave professionally to meet the expectations of their managers, which may lead to an implicit emotional dissonance. Based on the results of this study, we suggest to support nurses emotionally and to incorporate the topic of emotional labor into educational programs. (shrink)

Child Labour in Kashmiri Society: A Socio-human Rights Study The Constitution of India guarantees fundamental rights and the full freedom to enjoy childhood. In spite of that millions of children are being put to arduous work for short and narrow gains. By 1989, the standards concerning children were brought together in a single legal instrument agreed to by the international community. It unambiguously spelt out the rights to which every child is entitled, regardless of place of birth, descent, sex, religion, (...) or social origin. A number of aspects, such as gender, family background, cultural acceptance, issues of health and recreation, the legal aspect and so on, have been covered. The life worlds of working children, legal protection to children from exploitation and the human rights perspective of child labour is the main focus of this article. (shrink)

Workers in East Asia have shown over the past 50 years that they are capable of challenging capital, despite facing vehement opposition by corporations, oftentimes joined by governments and their m...

The practice of early modern natural history depended on the collective collecting activities of a great variety of people. Among them, artisans played a major role in acquiring and distributing knowledge about the natural world and they contributed significantly to the scholarly labour in natural history. This distributed labour was both acknowledged by contemporaries as well as hidden from sight, reflecting the period′s dominant norms for class and gender. By combining an interpretation of the visual representation of labour in European (...) insect studies with an examination of written sources about natural history practices from about 1680 to 1810, this article decodes the often‐codified frontispieces and other more symbolic illustrations to offer new insights into the labour of natural history. Those who identified as scholars and artisans (or both) conceptualised their own intellectual and practical engagement with natural history within the semantic field of work. Some seemed to have even envisioned a new social role for academics as well as artisans. This article analyses the diversity of the “productive forces” in insect studies as they changed over time and it reconstructs what I will call the social imaginaries of participation. (shrink)

This study examines the social impacts of labor-related corporate social responsibility policies or corporate codes of conduct on upholding labor standards through a case study of CSR discourses and codes implementation of Reebok - a leading branded company enjoying a high-profiled image for its human rights achievement - in a large Taiwanese-invested athletic footwear factory located in South China. I find although implementation of Reebok labor-related codes has resulted in a "race to ethical and legal minimum" (...) class='Hi'>labor standards when notoriously inhumane and seriously illegal labor rights abuses were curbed, Chinese workers were forced to work harder and faster but, earned less payment and the employee-elected trade union installed through codes implementation operated more like a "company union" rather than an autonomous workers' organization representing worker' interests. In order to explain the paradoxical effects of Reebok labor-related codes on labor standards, I argue the result is determined by both structural forces and agency-related factors embedded in industrial, national and local contexts. To put it shortly, I find the effectiveness of Reebok labor-related codes is constrained not only by unsolved tension between Reebok's impetus for profit maximization and commitment to workers' human rights, but also by hard-nosed competition realities at marketplace, and Chinese government's insufficient protection of labor rights. Despite drawing merely from a single case study, these findings illuminate key determinants inhibiting the effectiveness of labor-related CSR policies or codes in upholding labor standards, and hence two possible way-outs of the deadlock: sharing cost for improving labor standards among key players in global supply chain; and combining regulatory power of voluntary codes and compulsory state legislations. (shrink)

Digital technology can facilitate collaboration and data sharing among humanities scholars, and therefore is sometimes seen as a catalyst for attempts to revise problematic canonical traditions in literary history. In this paper, I interrogate how specific ways of organising scholarly labour make possible certain forms of knowledge, and I study the obstacles scholars face when trying to adapt established organisational models. For this purpose I draw on fieldwork in a large European database project, launched to create empirical knowledge about “forgotten” (...) women writers. Literary studies is characterised by monograph-oriented scholarship, situated in regional disciplinary contexts. The collaborative use of a database, however, requires an integration of individual research practices, and it blurs the division of labour between scholars and information professionals. In the present case, the inertia of established infrastructural arrangements manifested itself as a conflict between what was required to gen.. (shrink)

This study examines the social impacts of labor-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies or corporate codes of conduct on upholding labor standards through a case study of CSR discourses and codes implementation of Reebok – a leading branded company enjoying a high-profiled image for its human rights achievement – in a large Taiwanese-invested athletic footwear factory located in South China. I find although implementation of Reebok labor-related codes has resulted in a “race to ethical and legal minimum” (...) labor standards when notoriously inhumane and seriously illegal labor rights abuses were curbed, Chinese workers were forced to work harder and faster but, earned less payment and the employee-elected trade union installed through codes implementation operated more like a “company union” rather than an autonomous workers’ organization representing worker’ interests. In order to explain the paradoxical effects of Reebok labor-related codes on labor standards, I argue the result is determined by both structural forces and agency-related factors embedded in industrial, national and local contexts. To put it shortly, I find the effectiveness of Reebok labor-related codes is constrained not only by unsolved tension between Reebok’s impetus for profit maximization and commitment to workers’ human rights, but also by hard-nosed competition realities at marketplace, and Chinese government’s insufficient protection of labor rights. Despite drawing merely from a single case study, these findings illuminate key determinants inhibiting the effectiveness of labor-related CSR policies or codes in upholding labor standards, and hence two possible way-outs of the deadlock: (1) sharing cost for improving labor standards among key players in global supply chain; and (2) combining regulatory power of voluntary codes and compulsory state legislations. (shrink)

Background Respectful care during labour and childbirth, which has recently received a great deal of attention around the world, is vital for providing high-quality maternity care. However, this area has been underexplored in developing countries including Iran. Research aim This study aimed to assess postpartum women’s views regarding disrespect and abuse during labour and childbirth in Iran. Methods A qualitative study that involved a purposive sample of 21 postpartum women was conducted in Tehran, Iran, between 2019 and 2020. Following the (...) semi-structured individual interviews, a conventional content analysis was performed. Ethical considerations This research approved by Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran, with the ethical approval number 1396.810. Following explanation of the study's objectives, eligible women consented to participate in the study. The confidentiality of the participants' information and the anonymity of the analysis were maintained at all stage of the study. All data was stored on the password protected file in the researcher computer The findings were only disseminated in summary form, with no identifying of individual participants. Results Analysis of the data resulted in two main themes: ‘inappropriate interaction’ and ‘inadequate quality care’. The ‘inappropriate interaction’ theme includes ‘lack of empathy’ and ‘verbal abuse’. The second theme includes five sub-themes ‘lack of participation in decision-making’, ‘lack of privacy’, ‘ignorance of women’s pain and medical needs’, ‘rushed labour and painful procedures’, and “unsatisfying facilities’. Conclusion Providing supportive care, respectful communication, adequate participation in decision-making, maintaining privacy, attending to women’s labour pain and medical needs, and improving the quality of the physical birth environment are all examples of what labouring women consider to be respectful maternity care. To minimise disrespect and maltreatment of women during childbirth, an all-inclusive strategy engaging women, communities, healthcare professionals, managers, and educators is required. (shrink)

This paper analyses the ethical performance of foreign-investment enterprises operating in China in comparison to that of the indigenous state-owned enterprises, collectives and private enterprises. It uses both the deontological approach and the utilitarian approach in conceptualization, and applies quantitative and econometric techniques to ethical evaluations of empirical evidences. It shows that according to various ethical performance indicators, foreign-investment enterprises have fared well in comparison with local firms. This paper also tries to unravel the effect of a difference in business (...) culture and competitive market forces on ethical performance by comparing the behavior of foreign-investment enterprises with that of the indigenous state-owned enterprises and collectives on the one hand, and with that of the indigenous private enterprises on the other. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that the concepts of work and labor have been shaped by political and feminist philosophers in ways that are more revealing of their specific visions of society than the character and significance of various socially necessary activities. Hegel, Marx, and Arendt each have particular understandings of work that illuminate other elements of society that are considered important, detrimental, or dysfunctional. Their normative understandings stem from the idiosyncratic visions of the public and private spheres that (...) are embedded in their writings and the specific moral and political characteristics that they ascribe to the concepts of labor and work. For feminist theorists such as Eva Kittay, the notion of labor as housework, childcare or carework stems from the project of offering an alternative social or political framework that accommodates women and recognizes their role in the overall functioning of society. However, feminist accounts of labor in the domestic realm also suffer from a tendency to highlight certain important dimensions and elements of society, such as care, moral labor, or the invisible conditions of capitalist production. This focus distracts us from understanding the role of work as a universal practice engaged in subjectively, idiosyncratically, by each member of society. The latter vision of work requires not a concrete definition but a broad contour of the boundaries of work activities. ;My purpose in exploring the role of work in these writings is twofold: the first is to show the normative role and meanings of work in these philosophers. The second is to clear the way for a new understanding of work. Since the recognition of one's membership in a polity is partially dependent on one's contributions to society, and one's contributions are often evaluated in terms of the concept of "work," there is a need for a more expansive vision of work. The concept and meaning of work must be reformulated in order to acknowledge the social obligations and commitments that individuals express through the performance of a broad variety of work activities. If we can arrive at a new formulation of the concept of work, then we can implement it to acknowledge the social character of various activities, and the individuals who perform them, whether or not they are wage-earners , as crucial to society, i.e. as contributing citizens. (shrink)

The present study was conducted in Quetta district Balochistan province so as to determine the perception of the respondents about causes and consequences of child labor in Balochistan province. The sample size was 100 family units selected by using the simple random sampling. Somehow of the respondents fall in the age categories of 41 to 50 years, followed by 30% of the family units who were in the age categories of 50 and above years. More than half 52% of (...) the respondents were illiterates and the other of the respondents had primary level of education. The result is further expressed that the other 20% of the male respondents were of the view that the retail trade, cycling repairing and carpet business important child labor route respectively. While 20% of the female respondents revealed that they are cycling repairing and carpet business important child labor route respectively at Quetta district. Children are the assets of any nation without their contribution in the developmental process can be null and void, therefore it should be recommended that government must take stern action against the child labor at grass-root level to eliminate the child labor in the community or society. (shrink)

Translations, whether in the form of text, illustration, or interpretive analysis, served knowledge-making in multiple ways. It offered a refuge, severed contexts, and concealed the various workers that created it. Over the course of the seventeenth century, European naturalists in Istanbul, such as Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658–1730), procured illustrations of Ottoman nature as fundamental resources to identify, collect, and compare indigenous plants and newly bred varieties. Despite maintaining an actual mediation for cross-cultural interactions, these sources of virtual communication remain largely (...) forgotten in modern scholarship. This article argues that this curious yet invisible corpus was not a nonagentive medium in an alienated leisure of a gentleman-scholar; instead, these illustrations were designed to call upon the viewer’s constant attention in self-motivated scientific labor. Such handy tools responded and contributed to early modern scholars’ modes of working, and in exchange they determined these sources’ own function, position, and visibility – either as a by-product or as a derivative. It is therefore only when integrated into the labor history of science that the degrees of invisibility pertaining to both Ottoman nature studies and self-directed labor can come into a granular view. (shrink)

This paper explores how consumers’ ethical food consumption practices, mediated by mobile phone applications (apps), are transformed into digital data. Based on a review of studies on the digitalization of ethical consumption practices and food apps, we find that previous research, while valuable, fails to acknowledge and critically examine the digital labor required to perform digitalized ethical food consumption. In this paper, we call for research on how digital labor underlies the digitalization of ethical food consumption and (...) develop a conceptual framework that supports this research agenda. Our proposed conceptual framework builds on three interconnected analytical concepts—datafication, affordances and digital labor—that enable the study of digital labor as an infrastructural element of digitalized food consumption. We illustrate our conceptual framework through our previous research concerning Buycott, a US-based mobile app whose stated aim is to facilitate consumers’ ethical purchasing decisions. Using the walkthrough method, we consider how the Buycott app engages user-generated data and what implications this holds for consumers. The app’s infrastructure, we suggest, connects ethical consumption and digital labor. A richer understanding of the digital food economy, we propose, enables social scientists not only to elucidate how consumers engage in digital labor, but also to contribute to the development of new data governance structures in the digital food economy. We therefore call for social scientists interested in food, consumption and the digital economy to contribute to a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization by empirically examining how ethical consumption apps implicate ethical consumers’ work. (shrink)

Background: Obstetric labor and childbirth are mostly regarded as a physiological process, whereas social, cultural, psychological and transcendental aspects have received less attention. Labor support has been suggested to promote labor progress. The aim of this study was to investigate whether continuous labor support by a midwife promotes labor progress and vaginal delivery.Material and Methods: A randomized controlled study at a university hospital in Sweden in 2015–17. Primiparous women with singleton pregnancy and spontaneous labor (...) onset were randomized to continuous support or standard care during delivery. The primary outcome was the duration of active labor. Secondary outcomes were delivery mode, women's need of labor analgesia and satisfaction with delivery, maternal cortisol levels, and neonatal morbidity.Results: Continuous support was followed by shorter active labor 11.0 ± 5.7 h compared to 13.7 ± 3.9 h with standard care. Women in the continuous support group tended to have lower cortisol levels and low cortisol during the first and second stages of labor were correlated with shorter active labor. Continuous support was followed by spontaneous delivery in 73%, instrumental delivery in 24% and emergency cesarean section in 3% in contrast to standard care which was followed by spontaneous delivery in 62%, instrumental delivery in 24% and cesarean in 14%. The continuous support group received combined analgesic methods more often. Women's satisfaction with delivery and neonatal morbidity were comparable.Conclusion: Continuous labor support was followed by shorter active labor compared to standard care. Women with continuous support had a high rate of vaginal delivery and tended to have lower cortisol levels during all stages of active labor reflecting a lower stress level. Low cortisol was correlated to shorter active labor. Based on these results, we recommend continuous labor support for all primiparous women during active labor. (shrink)

The large numbers of children working in developing countries continue to provoke calls for an end to such employment. However, many reformers argue that efforts should focus on ending the exploitation of children rather than depriving them of all opportunities to work. This posture reflects recognition of the multiplicity of needs children have and the diversity of situations in which they work. Unfortunately, research typically neglects these complexities and fails to distinguish between types of labor market jobs, dismisses household (...) chores as irrelevant, and conceptualizes children’s needs largely in terms of the education they require for successful careers. Based on data collected in schools in Franca, Brazil, where children often combine school with work in the shoe industry, this study first examined the implications of labor market jobs and household work for their health, life satisfaction, and education. Analyses suggested that both forms of work negatively affected children’s welfare, but the effects of household work were more extensive, especially for girls. The second part focused on children with labor market jobs and examined how facets of their jobs as well as their after-work household duties affected their welfare. A lack of discretion on the job undermined the health of both boys and girls, higher pay adversely affected boys’ education, and housework had detrimental effects on all indicators of girls’ welfare. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for further research and suggests the needs for attention to different forms of work activities within families. It concludes with suggestions for multinationals sourcing in developing areas that go beyond the usual calls for ridding their facilities and supply networks of child workers. (shrink)

Animals do a wide range of work in our society, but they are rarely recognized as workers or accorded any labour rights, and their working conditions are often oppressive and exploitative. Drawing on law, ethics, and labour studies, the essays in this volume explore the potential and dangers of animal labour.

This study examines parents’ perspectives on their children working on their family dairy farms in Wisconsin. The objective of this focus group study is (1) to gain insights on why children work on their family farms, (2) to identify those benefits that parents perceive that they and their children gain from their children working on-farm, (3) to determine the concerns that parents have about their children working, (4) to identify ways to improve the safety of children on family farms, and (...) (5) to understand how US agricultural policy impacts family decisions to use their children’s labor on their farms. The two focus groups reveal that fathers and mothers have different concerns and different perceptions regarding the benefits gained from having their children work on farms. The findings suggest that in response to US agricultural policy, parents are increasingly reliant upon their children’s labor. Children work the longest hours on economically stressed farms. (shrink)

In recent years, feminist scholarship on emotional labor has proliferated. I identify a related but distinct form of care labor, hermeneutic labor. Hermeneutic labor is the burdensome activity of: understanding and coherently expressing one’s own feelings, desires, intentions, and movitations; discerning those of others; and inventing solutions for relational issues arising from interpersonal tensions. I argue that hermeneutic labor disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders in heteropatriachal societies, especially in intimate relationships between women and men. I (...) also suggest that some of the gendered burdens of emotional labor that feminist scholars point out would better be described as hermeneutic labor. Drawing on feminist philosophy as well as findings from social psychology and sociology, I argue that the exploitation of women’s hermeneutic labor is a pervasive element of what Sandra Bartky calls the ‘micropolitics’ of intimate relationships. The widespread expectation that women are relationship maintenance experts, as well as the prevalence of a gendered demand-withdraw pattern of communication, leads an exploitative situation to appear natural or even desirable, even as it leads to women’s dissatisfaction. This situation may be considered misogynistic in Kate Manne’s sense, where misogyny is a property of social environments rather than a worldview. (shrink)

This study examines the strategies developed by Italian Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives to de-commodify, de-instrumentalise and de-monetise labour in their attempt to prefigure alternatives to dominant capitalist agri-food systems. To do so we answer the following research questions: What type of strategies do these CSA initiatives employ to that end? What insights can be gained as regards the potential and barriers to fuller and more accomplished post-capitalist labour management within CSA initiatives? Data were collected through a participatory action research (...) project involving 16 Italian CSAs, participant observation in meetings of CSA initiatives and the Italian CSA Network, and official documents collection. Across the three crucial moments considered in this study, we observe substantial difficulties in realising post-capitalist labour management as the initiatives are constrained by external requirements (e.g., legislation) and also internally by members’ weakness in implementing the CSA model due to their remaining integrated in the capitalist system. These findings point to the importance for CSA initiatives of deepening the collective process of deliberate deconstruction of valuation logics and predefined roles, as well as legal frameworks to find ways to enable the realisation of post-capitalist labour management. In this regard, we also suggest that the Italian CSA Network could play a more active role in addressing some of the internal and external factors hindering the consolidation of CSA initiatives and the manifestation of their transformative role. (shrink)

The large numbers of children working in developing countries continue to provoke calls for an end to such employment. However, many reformers argue that efforts should focus on ending the exploitation of children rather than depriving them of all opportunities to work. This posture reflects recognition of the multiplicity of needs children have and the diversity of situations in which they work. Unfortunately, research typically neglects these complexities and fails to distinguish between types of labor market jobs, dismisses household (...) chores as irrelevant, and conceptualizes children’s needs largely in terms of the education they require for successful careers. Based on data collected in schools in Franca, Brazil, where children often combine school with work in the shoe industry, this study first examined the implications of labor market jobs and household work for their health, life satisfaction, and education. Analyses suggested that both forms of work negatively affected children’s welfare, but the effects of household work were more extensive, especially for girls. The second part focused on children with labor market jobs and examined how facets of their jobs as well as their after-work household duties affected their welfare. A lack of discretion on the job undermined the health of both boys and girls, higher pay adversely affected boys’ education, and housework had detrimental effects on all indicators of girls’ welfare. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for further research and suggests the needs for attention to different forms of work activities within families. It concludes with suggestions for multinationals sourcing in developing areas that go beyond the usual calls for ridding their facilities and supply networks of child workers. (shrink)

A fierce critique of productivity and sovereignty in the world of labor and everyday life, Bruno Gullì’s Earthly Plenitudes asks, can labor exist without sovereignty and without capitalism? He introduces the concept of dignity of individuation to prompt a rethinking of categories of political ontology. Dignity of individuation stresses the notion that the dignity of each and any individual being lies in its being individuated as such; dignity is the irreducible and most essential character of any being. Singularity (...) is a more universal quality. Gullì first reviews approaches to sovereignty by philosophers as varied as Gottfried Leibniz and Georges Bataille, and then looks at concrete examples where the alliance of sovereignty and capital cracks under the potency of living labor. He examines contingent academic labor as an example of the super-exploitation of labor, which has become a global phenomenon, and as such, a clear threat to the sovereign logic of capital. Gullì also looks at disability to assert that a new measure of humanity can only be found outside the schemes of sovereignty, productivity, efficiency, and independence, through care and caring for others, in solidarity and interdependence. (shrink)

This study investigates a practice that allows workers based in India to work online on projects for corporations in the United States, representing a new mode of labor integration. In the absence of direct bureaucratic control across continents, the question arises how this rapidly growing labor practice is organized. The riddle of organizational governance is solved through an analysis of software programming schemes, which are presented as the key to organizing globally dispersed labor through data servers. This (...) labor integration through programming code is distinguished from two other systems of organization—bureaucracy and the market—while bringing out the salient features of each system in terms of its ruling principle: bureaucracy (legalrational), the market (price), and algocracy (programming or algorithm). The logic of algocratic systems is explored methodically to analyze global work. (shrink)

This study used the latent profile transition analysis to analyze whether emotional labor profiles change across time and how these profiles relate to occupational well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, quality of work life, psychological distress, and work–family conflict). A total of 155 full-time Chinese employees completed the questionnaire survey at two time points. Three latent profiles were identified at Time 1 and the same profiles were replicated at Time 2. We determined that the majority of the participants retained the original (...) profiles. Lastly, occupational well-being differed significantly across the identified profiles. The limitations and implications of this study were also provided. (shrink)

Putting migrant remittances into house construction and rebuilding is generally seen as either conspicuous consumption or productive investment, but in both cases the perspective is economistic. This article argues that only when the cultural dimension of economic action is understood will it be possible to comprehend migrant spending on houses. Specifically, this article seeks to understand why, in the case of the rural Tagalog village in this study, located in upland Batangas Province in the Philippines, overseas labour migrants build houses (...) that they do not even live in, but are given to parents or simply left unoccupied. The explanation is framed in relation to the meanings of houses in a culture of bilateral kinship, which the Philippines shares with most parts of Southeast Asia, but inflected by distinct colonial influences. The article demonstrates the ways in which houses as memorials serve as idioms of ties of relatedness within kin groups and the broader community, ties that are being transformed by global migration and experienced differently yet maintained, renegotiated yet sustained transnationally. (shrink)

As a legal aid union president in New Haven, laboring within shouting distance of a different large research university, I recall how our membership rolled our eyes when Professors Greiner, Pattanayak, and Hennesy of Harvard published their study providing evidence, through a randomized control trial, that law clinic housing work made no difference for clients.1 Representing, as I was, “lawyers, secretaries, and paralegals who have dedicated their careers to serving poor clients in crisis,”2 the authors’ conclusion generated first shock, then (...) denial, and then an anxious realization that somebody’s job was to research and disseminate such conclusions. In a 2013 United States where there was one legal aid lawyer for every 8,893 people who qualified,3 where federal Legal Services Corporation funding had dropped 40% over ten years in real dollars,4 and in an America that spends as much on Halloween costumes for its pets as it does legal aid for the poor,5 the inquiry felt like a pile-on. It made no more sense to us than asking if a teacher is “good for students,” a nurse “good for the sick,” or a chef “good for the hungry.”6. (shrink)

Assumed benefits from improved reputation are often used as motives to drive corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Are improved cost efficiencies among these reputation benefits? Cost efficiencies and cost management have become more relevant as revenue streams dry up in these tough economic times. Can a good reputation aid these efforts to develop cost efficiencies specifically when managing labor costs? Prior research hypothesizes that good reputation can create labor productivity and efficiency benefits. The purpose of this study is (...) to empirically investigate reputation's relationship with labor efficiency, labor productivity, and labor cost. Using a sample of highly reputable firms from Fortune's America's Most Admired Companies list and a corresponding matched sample of firms, we find that reputation is associated with improved labor efficiency and labor productivity. However, we do not find a significant association between reputation and reduced labor costs. Our study contributes to current research hypothesizing and finding efficiency benefits associated with good reputation. Documenting these potential reputation benefits has important implications for CSR activities and initiatives. It supports recent work that incorporates reputation into a more developed model of the relationship between CSR and performance (Vilanova et al.: 2009, Journal of Business Ethics 87, 57-69). This work is useful to businesses and supports strategies focused on "doing well by doing good" and maintaining healthy reputations. (shrink)

Purpose Underlying much recent development in data science and artificial intelligence (AI) is a dependence on the labour of precarious crowdworkers via platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. These platforms have been widely critiqued for their exploitative labour relations, and over recent years, there have been various efforts by academic researchers to develop interventions aimed at improving labour conditions. The aim of this paper is to explore US-based crowdworkers’ views on two proposed interventions: a browser plugin that detects automated quality (...) control “Gold Question” (GQ) checks and a proposal for a crowdworker co-operative. Design/methodology/approach The authors interviewed 20 US-based crowdworkers and undertook a thematic analysis of collected data. Findings The findings indicate that US-based crowdworkers tend to have negative and mixed feelings about the GQ detector, but were more enthusiastic about the crowdworker co-operative. Originality/value Drawing on theories of precarious labour, this study suggests an explanation for the findings based on US-based workers’ objective and subjective experiences of precarity. The authors argue that for US-based crowdworkers “constructive” interventions such as a crowdworker co-operative have more potential to improve labour conditions. (shrink)

This article discusses the hitherto little-studied question of women workers’ empowerment through access to labor rights in the east African export horticultural sector. It is based on the work carried out by Women Working Worldwide and its east African partners, drawing on primary research on cut-flower farms in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. The focus in discussions of women’s empowerment has tended to be on individual actors rather than collective strategies. We argue that strategies such as action research, education, organization (...) and advocacy focusing on labor rights are effective in gendered empowerment and can bring positive change to women’s working lives on African farms, and beyond. (shrink)

This study examines the intersection of individual life-histories, organisational histories and societal histories and reveals how religion, in several different expressions, serves to provide a connection between justice for workers and justice for the environment in the work of trade unionists. The trade union movement is generally seen as secular, and thus in our life-history interviews finding religion as a backdrop to labour activists' formation was unexpected. Religion becomes manifest in various ways, partly through experiences in the present or at (...) formative periods in unionists' lives, but also through its cultural embeddedness in language and collective memory. In this way it serves to provide subtle influences on beliefs, concepts of social justice and daily action. (shrink)

The dominant framing of the political corporate social responsibility discussion challenges the traditional economic conception of the firm and aims to produce a paradigm shift in CSR studies wherein the traditional, apolitical view of corporations’ roles in society is replaced by the political conception of CSR. In this paper, we show how the major framing of the political CSR discussion calls for a redirection to take international hard legal and moral regulations, as well as the need for the boundaries (...) between business and politics into account. (shrink)

In recent years, anthropologists have built a rich body of ethnography on the experience of addiction, including important cultural critiques of treatment systems. Yet little has been written from the perspective of those who work in the everyday to help others recover from substance abuse. In this article, I reflect on my labor as a clinical social worker providing therapy for homeless women and men who struggle with addiction. Building on the eloquence of those who seek to recover, recovery (...) poets, I demonstrate how the work of a team of frontline workers operates in a particular intersubjective realm that creates different conditions for understanding addiction and recovery than does anthropological fieldwork. By detailing the labor of recovery as I performed it using different evidence-based therapies to permit the emergence of a new consciousness, I aim to bring to center stage the complex labor of frontline workers so that their working conditions will be taken into account more often in anthropological work on addiction and treatment. (shrink)

Morbidity of birth asphyxia has been estimated to be 42 million disability-adjusted life years. The study sought to assess the impact of the use and completion of partograph during labour on reducing birth asphyxia at the St Anthony’s Hospital, Dzodze, in the Volta Region of Ghana. A retrospective study design using a quantitative approach was adopted for the study. A simple random sampling technique was used to select a total of 200 folders of labouring women who were admitted and delivered (...) at St Anthony’s Hospital, Dzodze, between 1st May 2015 and 30th April 2016. A structured checklist, which was developed by using labour and foetal monitoring parameters based on the standards of the World Health Organization partograph usage, was used to review all the 200 existing maternal records. The findings revealed that partographs were used by midwives at St Anthony’s Hospital with the majority of the maternal folders fully completed. The use and completion of partograph were found to be associated with less non-asphyxiated birth outcomes. Labours which were monitored with partograph were 4.29 times less likely to result in birth asphyxia [AOR 4.29 ], and those that were monitored with a completed partograph were 5.3 times less likely to result in birth asphyxia [AOR 5.31 ]. Midwives used partographs during labour at St Anthony’s Hospital. The use and completion of partograph were significantly associated with a reduced incidence of birth asphyxia at the hospital. Birth asphyxia could be reduced if partographs are used and completed by midwives during labour in all cases. (shrink)

There is a growing commitment by different parts of the alternative food movement (AFM) to improve labor conditions for conventional food chain workers, and to develop economically fair alternatives, albeit under a range of conditions that structure mobilization. This has direct implications for the process of intra-movement building and therefore the degree to which the movement ameliorates economic inequality at the point of food labor. This article asks what accounts for the variation in AFM labor commitments across (...) different contexts. It then appraises a range of activist perspectives, practices, and organizational approaches. The answer emerges through a comparative analysis of three California social movement organizations enmeshed in the particularities of local contentious food politics. The cases include a labor union representing grocery store and meatpacking/food processing workers, a food justice organization working to create green jobs and independent funding models, and an organic urban farming and educational organization. Commitment to fair labor standards varies due to differences in organizational capacity, the degree of dedication to ending economic inequality in local activist culture, and the openness of local political and economic institutions to working class struggles. The article concludes with a discussion of how these findings inform our understanding of the process of cooperation and division in the AFM, particularly regarding the complexities and contradictions of using food labor to combat economic inequality. Movement building in the midst of varying institutional, organizational, and cultural contexts reinforces the value of a reflexive approach to this imperfect politics of process. (shrink)

Emotional labour has been widely recognized in a variety of industries, but not yet in publishing. By examining 126 survey responses from current or former publishing employees, this study identifies the primary forms of emotional labour present in the publishing industry, and how these vary between employees. Also examined is the extent to which industry leaders recognize the emotional labour performed by employees, and the impact that this emotional labour has on the latter. The survey responses demonstrate a high prevalence (...) of emotional labour in the publishing industry and that this work is largely unrecognized and sometimes entirely dismissed. Emotional labour also has a generally negative impact on employees, particularly working-class and black, Asian, and minority ethnic employees, which contributes to low diversity in the industry. I conclude with recommendations for further research and for industry change to reduce emotional labour, improve employee welfare, and facilitate increased retention of working-class and BAME employees. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: We draw on empirical data and theorising that focuses on the relationship between the state, public policy and knowledge in the construction and configuration of school leadership under New Labour from 1997. Specifically we show how a school leadership policy network comprises people in different locations who operate as policy entrepreneurs in shaping policy.

While unionization rates have steadily declined in the United States, there has been a renewal of grassroots labor organizing—in many cases connected in some way with religious communities. Attending to such organizing efforts holds the potential to deepen religious-ethical reflection on questions of labor, and these religious-ethical reflections hold the potential to enrich on-the-ground organizing efforts. These opportunities have largely been overlooked. On the one hand, while scholars have recently explored connections between religious ideas and economic ideas, they (...) have often neglected questions of labor. On the other hand, labor studies scholars have often ignored the role of religion, although this is beginning to change. In this introduction we limn the resources available for religious-ethical reflection on questions of labor and we propose a direction that the field could take, bringing together engagement with religious traditions and attunement to grassroots organizing. (shrink)