Mundos del Trabajo en Transformación

Mundos del Trabajo en transformación: entre lo local y lo global
Rossana Barragán y Pilar Uriona

Place: 
La Paz
Publisher: 
CIDES UMSA
Year: 
2014

Mundos del Trabajo en transformación: entre lo local y lo global (“Changing Worlds of Labour: between the Local and the Global”) is an edited volume by Rossana Barragán and Pilar Uriona published in 2014.

Five axes are present in the book:  Global Labour History, Recent Changes in Labour, Domestic Workers, Migration and Labour, Organizations, Labour Struggles and Conflicts.

In the first section, the reader will find the contribution of Dr. Marcel Van der Linden, a leader in the field of Global Labour History.  He received recently a prize recognising his achievements in the field of economic and social history, particularly in delineating the concept of Global Labour History and in creating the institutional foundations for a strong global network.  Marcel Van der Linden’s article is the first one in Spanish Latin America about the Promises and Challenges of Global Labour History.

The reader will also find other contributions to think Global Labour History (Stefano Bellucci and Rossana Barragán) but also important articles about the changes in labour due to the neo liberal globalization (Mauritzio Atzeni) or the main features in precarious work (Federico Porrez) or in the quality of work (Elizabeth Jimenez).

Domestic Workers is another important axe of the book with contributions of Seemin Qayum for India and of Fernanda Wanderley for Bolivia.  The migration in its historical roots area analysed for the early XXth. century Bolivia (María Luisa Soux) and for the impressive growth of Sao Paulo in the 50’s (Paulo Fontes).  The Bolivian migration to Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires in the industry of garment discuss the subcontracting and the importance to consider circulatory territories (Patricia Tavares).  In the last part of the book, the scholar Touraj Atabaki analyses how labour movement in Iran contributed to the refashioning of the civil society.  Last but not least two contributions of young scholars dealt with two seamstresses’ strikes in Argentina (María Ullivarri) and with the analysis between workers and employers in Brazil between 1953 and 1964 (Larissa Correa).

This book is the result of a seminar held in La Paz-Bolivia, in December 2012, thanks to the editor’s coordination of several institutions:  The International Institute of Social History of Amsterdam (IISG), the Centro de Postgrado en Ciencias del Desarrollo de la Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (CIDES-UMSA) in La Paz, Oxfam, the Connecting Emancipation Fund and CLACSO. The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), a prestigious non-governmental international institution that brings together more than 300 research centers in Latina American and the Caribbean, will have this book on line very soon.