Workshop: National and International Contexts for Worker Organizations - University of Iowa; August, 2015

文化人类学方案的供资优先事项包括调查社会文化系统的复原力和稳健性，包括关于适应、解决冲突以及合作和利他主义的研究。该奖项支持一个关于工会的国际研讨会，工会是美国经济传统上促进工作场所冲突解决和合作的机制之一。然而，在过去几十年中，工会的普遍性有所下降。研究提出了几种不同的解释，包括经济变化，政府政策和个人主义的民族文化。然而，人类学是经验和比较的，我们几乎没有来自其他国家的经验证据进行比较，这将有助于研究人员确定哪个因素更重要，或者它们如何协同工作。虽然希腊、以色列、阿根廷、瑞典、中国、巴西、土耳其、瑞士、后苏联东欧、墨西哥和西班牙的人类学家一直在对各自国家的工会进行实地研究，但他们不一定解决了同样的问题。比较的观点将帮助研究人员确定所涉及的过程的动态。这个研讨会将汇集一个国际人类学家小组在爱荷华州大学讨论和比较他们的发现。目标是发展工会和影响他们在当代国家和国际经济的因素的新的，比较的理解。每个讲习班参加者将为一本编辑成册撰写一章篇幅的文稿，这本书将成为讲习班的主要产品。这本书将提供跨文化和跨国家的经验人种学证据，以了解有组织的劳动在全球化过程中的作用以及文化和政策的影响。研讨会将包括研究生，因此也将启动一个多代人类学家网络，以国际视角开展这项工作。

The Cultural Anthropology Program's funding priorities include investigations into the resilience and robustness of sociocultural systems, including research on adaptation, conflict resolution, and cooperation and altruism. This award supports an international workshop on labor unions, which are one mechanism through which the American economy has traditionally promoted conflict resolution and cooperation in the workplace. However, the prevalence of unions has declined over the past few decades. Studies suggest several different explanations, including economic change, government policy, and a national culture of individualism. However, anthropology is empirical and comparative and we have little equivalent empirical evidence from other countries for comparison that would help researchers determine which factor is more important or how they might work together. While anthropologists in Greece, Israel, Argentina, Sweden, China, Brazil, Turkey, Switzerland, Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, Mexico and Spain have been doing field studies of labor unions in their countries, they have not necessarily addressed the same questions. A comparative perspective will help researchers determine the dynamics of the processes involved.This workshop will bring together an international group of anthropologists at the University of Iowa to discuss and compare their findings. The goal is to develop a new, comparative understanding of labor unions and the factors that affect them in contemporary national and international economies. Each workshop participant will write a chapter-length contribution to an edited volume that will be the major product of the workshop. The book will provide cross-cultural and cross-national empirical ethnographic evidence for understanding the role of organized labor in the process of globalization and the effects of culture and policy. The workshop will include graduate students and so will also launch a multi-generational network of anthropologists to carry on this work with an international perspective.