Industrial and Urban Anthropology

Quai du Grognon, Quai des Chasseurs Ardennais, Quai de Meuse, à Namur. Amarrées à ces quais, des péniches : le Mary, l’Orly ou le Nana. Jadis, elles ont rallié Liège à Charleroi, les cales chargées de sable ou de houblon. A présent, elles demeurent amarrées à leur emplacement de prédilection, habitées par des gens-d’à-terre, comme les appellent les bateliers. Car ces nouveaux propriétaires ne sont pas nés à bord, au contraire d’Alice et Ernest par exemple, dont le Queen Potamos a également cessé sa course. Quels rapports ces personnes entretiennent-elles à leur bateau, à son lieu d’amarrage et aux autres ? Ce sont ces questions qui ont animé mon travail de terrain ainsi que la présente monographie.

Este libro consiste de algunos ensayos que tratan de los campesinos queretanos que están inmersos en los procesos que están transformando la sociedad rural mexicana. Los autores creen que el lector de estos ensayos obtendrá una visión amplia de los logros y los retos que definen al compo queretano hoy.

This call for paper aims to bring together historians and social scientists of different hues who study the factory in a historical perspective to discuss new research focused on the factory as a unit of analysis. The focus is on thematic and methodological perspectives that engage with dimensions such as gender, race, the spatial and transnational turn, the discourse analysis etc. that have cross-fertilised with the perspective of class that was traditionally adopted by the labour history of the factory. Monographs on the factory were once frequent, and some were models of their genre, but they sometimes adopted an overly narrow industrial relations lens (or, worse, the hagiographic tone of a company history) that obfuscated what could be gained from an integrated, interdisciplinary and multi-focal gaze. We aim to foster a novel research agenda on the factory that would be located at the intersection of different disciplines and sub-disciplines, looking at a variety of agents, and crossing the boundaries of national historiographies of industrialization and de-industrialization. While this perspective argues for a history of the factory that is interdisciplinary, labour historians have much to gain from it. As a field labour history has widened in scope in the past thirty years: the history of everyday life, of communities, of urban space, of gender and the reproductive sphere are now part and parcel of labour histories. These methodological and theoretical developments have had a tremendous influence on labour history. We look for contributions that build upon these developments and further encourage a dialogue between labour history and other fields. As a complex organization employing large number of workers the factory is a point of convergence of different social phenomena, some transnational in scope such as resources, employees and circulation of commodities. Studying a factory in all its aspects encompassing the transnational flows of capital and trade, internationally shaped investment decisions, the interactions between international and national regulation, national and international labour migration could move our research questions from the fallacies of a narrowly national focus. We also recognise that the definition of factory is open to interpretation as models of organisation of production have been arguably adopted in the service sector (call centres) or in logistics and distribution (warehouses) where workers are highly regimented and constantly gauged against statistical performance standards, primarily speed. These workplaces adopt Taylorist practices that once characterized factory production, such as the strategic use of technology to control the pace of working and the fragmentation and mechanization of tasks to deskill workers. The onus is on the researcher to argue why a particular workplace should be considered a " factory " and benefit from intellectual dialogue with the papers of this working group. We are calling for papers that focus on a factory or a coherent group of factories from any aspects, but in particular from an integrated, interdisciplinary and multi-focal gaze. Papers that deal with the politics of the working-class in general, not linked to a particular factory, are better suited to other working groups in the European Labour History Network. We invite proposals for papers and roundtables addressing one or more of the following themes:

Las transformaciones urbanas van siempre acompañadas de polémicas, ya que el sentido y la direccionalidad de los cambios nunca colman los intereses de todos los sectores sociales, especialmente en las grandes urbes, caracterizadas por una gran heterogeneidad de públicos y de ciudadanos. Tomando como elemento central de análisis el barrio del Raval de Barcelona, se caracterizarán los contrastes entre las políticas urbanas (y específicamente, de las urbanísticas) frente a los anhelos e imaginarios de la abigarrada población que lo habita. Como elemento de contraste se analiza brevemente el significado de las grandes transformaciones urbanísticas asociadas a los grandes eventos transnacionales, Juegos Olímpicos, Expos o Forum de las culturas.

It is an interesting time to write about factories. The once very popular industrial
workplace has lost its charm for labour historians with the geographical and thematic
broadening of the field. As theoretical interventions encompassing transnational dimensions
brought forms of non-wage and non-industrial labour to the fore, labour historians
have moved away from the industrial workplace. Just as the large Fordist factory ceased to
be the political and cultural reference point for policymakers, employers, and organized
labour, writing about factories has largely gone dormant.

Despite many calls to bring anthropology and history closer to each other in the past, interdisciplinary research symposia happen rarely. This workshop on “re-articulating the factory as an object of study” has addressed this paucity of interdisciplinary conversation, in the idea setting of re:work, which hosts scholars from different discipline. The workshop resulted in a productive, rare encounter between labour history and industrial anthropology, two fields that share similar objects of analysis, but are quite apart as for the methodologies and theoretical approaches they deploy. The workshop aimed at gathering state-of-the-art research focus on the factories, to discern the similarities and differences between the two disciplines in terms of research questions, conceptual vocabulary and methodological tools, and to evaluate the potential for collaborative research in the future.

This workshop aims to bring together historians and anthropologists to discuss new research that chooses the factory as a unit of analysis. The focus is on inquiring new methodological and epistemological perspectives on the subject in order to explore the historical and contemporary dynamics of capitalism at the point of production in an interdisciplinary fashion. The workshop aims to initiated a collaborative, interdisciplinary conversation preliminary to the preparation of a thematic issue on factory as an object of inquiry.

"This thesis considers local residents’ perceptions of Cornish mining landscapes, with a particular focus on tin and copper mining. The aim of the thesis is to better understand the changing economic, political and cultural values which Cornish mining sites and features have embodied during the post-war period (from 1950 to 2010). This research has focused on the familiar and the everyday including industrial remains of the later 20th century. The three case studies examined, Botallack, St Agnes, and Minions, are part of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site (designated in 2006).

This research has been strongly informed by social archaeology of industry and contemporary archaeology, and a number of complementary ethnographic and statistical techniques have been utilised, supplemented by archival research and visual data methods. The themes which have been examined include: site descriptions; paths and networks; significant features; metaphors of industry; time and change; contention in the landscape; and World Heritage Site status.

This research has concluded that public perceptions of Cornish mining landscapes are strongly informed by romanticism whilst the use of demonic, heroic and romantic tropes is another key theme. Since mine shafts were closed for health and safety reasons perception is now focused on the surface of mines and the subsurface world is largely out-of-sight and out of mind. Changes in the landscape are often defined around concepts of the ‘local’, the ‘incomer’ and the ‘outsider’; the latter largely standing for external authority. Statistical analysis has shown that longevity of residence is a significant factor in shaping perception, whilst qualitative data has demonstrated different ways in which incomers become ‘local’. There are many different connections to Cornish mining landscapes and these relict industrial sites are not dead or derelict spaces."

O estudo antropológico da indústria e do perigo não constitui uma usurpação do terreno doutras disciplinas, mas uma demarche socialmente pertinente e com potencialidades heurísticas específicas. Torna-se necessário desconstruir o conceito tecnocrático de "risco" e conhecer os pressupostos, factores e processos que, nas empresas, influem sobre o perigo, por forma a evitar efeitos perversos e possibilitar opções sociais informadas. Seguidamente, a partir duma pesquisa de terreno numa refinaria, o artigo mostra, por um lado, de que forma a ideologia de gestão dominante, a preocupação de maximizar a produção e os processos hierarquicos e de dependência se conjugam numa potencialização dos perigos inerentes à laboração e, por outro, o papel que, informalmente, o "factor humano" e a aprendizagem e reprodução dos saberes profissionais assumem na sua minimização.

Com base numa pesquisa antropológica inovadora, este livro mostra-nos o que é trabalhar na refinaria de Sines e os complexos factores sociais que, nessa fábrica, potenciam ou limitam os perigos de origem tecnológica. Se estes são aumentados por princípios de gestão, objectivos produtivos e relações de poder, os operários recusam a lógica probabilística do "risco" e constroem, a partir da sua aprendizagem e experiência profissionais, processos de protecção colectiva que em muito reforçam a segurança.