Doctoral Dissertation Research: Disintermediation and the Reorganization of Labor

探索当代工作场所变化的研究往往集中在从有偿合同雇佣到更灵活的劳动安排的转变上。一些人认为，这些是创意经济的先决条件，可以改变生产格局。其他人则担心这些制度在多大程度上造成了劳动力的不稳定。但是，当研究的重点是那些历史上在合同劳动实践的纪律之外发挥作用的人，如工匠、商人和中间商，又能得出什么结论呢？这个项目训练一名研究生如何进行严格的、以经验为基础的科学实地考察，它解决了一个更广泛的现象，经济学家称之为“去中介化”，在这个现象中，中间商正在被从行业和供应链中剔除。全球化的范围和相互关联的配置，去中介化正在迅速改变世界各地工人的生活：在快时尚服装和公平贸易咖啡供应链，酒店和旅游部门，以及出租车服务行业。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，研究结果还将传播给探索和管理经济不稳定的原因、后果和复杂性的组织和个人。在密歇根大学Jatin Dua博士的指导下，Samuel Shuman将探讨去中介化在劳动重组中的作用。这项研究是在比利时安特卫普的一个哈西德派社区进行的，该社区目前正在对男性劳动力进行再培训，并将他们改造成当地的企业家。第二次世界大战后，成千上万的犹太难民从东欧逃到西欧。这些难民中有犹太教的虔诚教派哈西德派，他们在港口城市安特卫普登陆。超过80%的劳动力依靠钻石产业维持经济生计。然而，近年来，随着国家和超国家形式的监管和电子商务的兴起，哈西德派犹太人在钻石供应链中的中间商地位正在被淘汰。在这种转变的背景下，该研究提出了三个系列的问题：1)通过这种经济转型和紧缩政策，人们对工作、价值和美德的态度是如何被重塑的？2)监管如何告知交易如何在受监管的行业内进行，以及如何在新兴的当地企业家社区内进行？3)这种经济转型揭示了中间人在全球资本主义漫长历史中的作用，以及它可能对不再需要中间人的资本主义新阶段有什么启示？数据将在12个月的时间里通过一系列既定的民族志技术收集，包括参与者观察和对职业学校参与者、交易员、经纪人和钻石交易所工匠的采访。为了对法律和经济人类学的科学工作做出贡献，该项目强调经济中间人是理解现代政治经济学重组以及这些世界中包容和排斥界限的典范人物。

Research exploring changes in the contemporary workplace have tended to focus on the shift from waged, contracted employment to more flexible labor arrangements. Some view these as preconditions for creative economies that can transform productive landscapes. Others are concerned with the extent to which these regimes have generated precarity in the labor force. But what conclusions can be made when the focus of study is on those who have historically functioned outside the discipline of contract labor practices, such as artisans, merchants, and middlemen? This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically grounded scientific fieldwork, addresses a broader phenomenon that economists refer to as "disintermediation," in which middlemen are being cut out of industries and supply-chains. Global in scope and interconnected in configuration, disintermediation is rapidly transforming the lives of workers everywhere: in the fast-fashion apparel and fair trade coffee supply-chains, the hospitality and tourism sectors, and the taxi service industry. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, findings will be disseminated to organizations and individuals that explore and manage the causes, consequences, and complexities of economic precarity. Samuel Shuman, under the supervision of Dr. Jatin Dua of the University of Michigan, will explores what role disintermediation has in the reorganization of labor. The research takes place among a Hasidic community in Antwerp, Belgium, who is now in the process of reskilling its male workforce and refashioning them into local entrepreneurs. After World War II, thousands of Jewish refugees fled Eastern Europe to Western Europe. Among these refugees were Hasidim, a pietistic sect of Judaism, which landed in the port-city of Antwerp. Over 80% of its workforce depended upon the diamond industry for their economic livelihoods. In recent years, however, through the rise of national and supranational forms of regulation and e-commerce, Hasidic Jews are being cut out as middlemen in the diamond supply-chain. Within the context of this transition, the study asks three series of questions: 1) How are attitudes toward work, value, and virtue becoming reshaped through this economic transformation and through austerity policies? 2) How is surveillance informing how transactions are both conducted within the regulated industry and within an emerging, local community of entrepreneurs? 3) What does this economic transition reveal about the role of the middleman within the long history of global Capitalism and what might it illuminate about a new phase of Capitalism where middlemen may no longer be needed? Data will be gathered through a range of established ethnographic techniques over a 12-month period, including participant observation and interviews among attendees at a vocational school, traders, brokers, and artisans in the diamond bourse. In contributing to scientific work in legal and economic anthropology, this project emphasizes the economic middleman as the exemplary figure through which to understand the reorganization of modern political economies and the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within these worlds.