Labour Questions in the Global South

This book provides a focus on some of the main markers and challenges that are at the core of the study of structural transformations in contemporary capitalism and their implications for labour in the Global South. It examines the diverse perspectives and regional and social variations that characterise labour relations as a result of the uneven development which is an important facet of the intensification of capitalist accumulation..

The book provides important insights into the impact of the crises of capitalism on the wellbeing of labour at different historical junctures. Some of the issues covered by it include the conditions of work, and the changing composition of laboring classes and/or working people. The chapters also throw light on the multiple trajectories in the development of labour relations and employment in the Global South, especially after the ascendancy and domination of neoliberal finance capitalism. Some of the major aspects considered by the essays include the decentering of production and development of global value systems, crisis of social reproduction, and the rising informalisation of work.

Section I: Conceptualizing Labour Questions in the Global South.- Chapter 1: Labour questions in the Global South.- Chapter 2: The Concept of ‘Working People’.- Chapter 3: The Agrarian Question of Gendered Labour.- Chapter 4: Rent and Surplus in the Global Production Network: Identifying ‘Value Capture’ from the South.- Chapter 5: From ‘Relative Surplus Population’ and ‘Dual Labour Markets’ to ‘Informal’ and ‘Formal’ Employment and Enterprises: Insights About Causation and Consequences.- Section II: Informal and Precarious Labour in Global Value Systems.- Chapter 6: Whither African trade union movement? Lessons for restitution and reform.- Chapter 7: From ‘Labour Dividend’ to ‘Robot Dividend’: Technological Change and Workers’ Power in South China.- Chapter 8: Labour Trends in Latin America and the Caribbean in the Current Crisis (2008–2016).- Chapter 9: Primitive accumulation and exploitative labour relations and in Zimbabwe’s Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) sector: The case of Mhondoro Ngezi.- Chapter 10: Informal Economy in India: Persistence and Meagerness.- Section III: Agrarian Labour and the Semi-Proletarian Condition.- Chapter 11: The historical transformations of rural workers category in Brazil and the effects on labour unionism politics.- Chapter 12: Peasants of Manipur: Agrarian Change, Land Tenure and Emerging Patterns of Re-peasantization in India.- Chapter 13: Changing Forms of Wage Labour in Zimbabwe’s New Agrarian Structure.- Chapter 14: Re-organizing Peasant Labour for Local Resilience in China.- Chapter 15: The Semi–proletarian Condition and Urban Land Occupations in South Africa: Emergent Form of Working Class Self Organization.- Chapter 16: Land and Agricultural Commercialisation in Ghana: Emerging Employment and Labour Relations.

Praveen Jha is Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, and Adjunct Professor, Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He is one of the editors of the Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. His most recent books include (ed. with Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros) Reclaiming Africa: Scramble and Resistance in the 21st Century (2019), (with Paris Yeros and Walter Chambati), Rethinking Social Sciences with Sam Moyo (2020) and (ed. with Avinash Kumar and Yamini Mishra) Labouring Women: Issues and Challenges in Contemporary India (2020). 

Walter Chambati is Executive Director of The Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies, Harare, Zimbabwe, Associate Editor of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy and Research Fellow at the College of Graduate Studies, School of Transdisciplinary Research and Graduate Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He has published extensively on land, labour and agrarian relations in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa. Some of his select publications include (along with Sam Moyo)  Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe (2013), (ed. with Praveen Jha and Paris Yeros) of Rethinking the Social Sciences with Sam Moyo (2020). 

Lyn Ossome (PhD) is Senior Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, and Associate Editor of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. Her research and teaching focus on politics and feminist political economy, with specializations in gendered labour, land and agrarian studies, and the political economy of gendered violence. She is the author most recently of Gender, Ethnicity and Violence in Kenya’s Transitions to Democracy: States of Violence (2018).