Political Violence, Globalization, and Transnational Activism

这个项目考察了自由市场政策、政治暴力和新型的国家和跨国集体工人行动之间的关系。尽管有大量关于全球化的人类学文献，但很少有关于政治暴力和自由市场政策如何重塑工作和集体行动性质的研究。本研究解决了这些研究问题。实地研究将在哥伦比亚和美国进行。首席研究员将在哥伦比亚的布卡拉曼加和波哥大进行研究，那里的工人经历了不同程度的工会激进主义和出于政治动机的暴力。她还将采访美国的工人权利活动人士。首席研究员将结合多种人类学研究方法，如密集的参与者观察、半结构化访谈和生活史访谈，她将收集档案材料，将项目置于更广泛的背景下。有三个主要目标：1)探索过去二十年来哥伦比亚劳动力部门的结构调整；2)调查员工如何理解这些变化，以及他们与彼此、家庭、其他边缘化群体和公司之间不断变化的关系；3)考察在暴力和工会衰落的背景下，一些工人是如何形成新型的国家和跨国抵抗的。这项研究将促进对工会如何与其他个人、团体和机构一起面对经济全球化、概念化社会正义以及发展超越工作场所的集体行动形式的更好理解。这对扩大哥伦比亚的人权、加强民主和促进和平具有重要意义。这对于理解当前关于全球企业社会责任的争论也很重要。

This project examines the relationship between free-market policies, political violence, and new kinds of national and transnational collective worker action. Despite a large anthropological literature on globalization, there is little research on how political violence and free-market policies reshape the nature of work and collective action. This study addresses these research questions. The field research will be conducted in Colombia and the United States. The principal investigator will conduct research in the Colombian cities of Bucaramanga and Bogota, where workers experience different levels of union activism and politically motivated violence. She also will interview worker-rights activists in the United States. The principal investigator will combine a variety of anthropological research methods, such as intensive participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and life-history interviews, and she will collect archival materials to situate the project in a broader context. There are three main objectives: 1) to explore the restructuring of a sector of the labor force in Colombia over the last twenty years; 2) to investigate how workers understand these changes, as well as their shifting relationships to each other, their families, other marginalized groups, and the company; and 3) to examine how, in the context of violence and the decline of unions, some workers have crafted new kinds of national and transnational resistance. The research will foster greater understanding of how unions, together with other individuals, groups, and institutions, confront economic globalization, conceptualize social justice, and develop forms of collective action that extend beyond the work place. This has significance for broadening human rights, strengthening democracy, and promoting peace in Colombia. It is also important for understanding current debates about the social responsibility of global corporations.