Doctoral Dissertation Research: Disintermediation and the Reorganization of Labor

探索当代工作场所变化的研究倾向于关注从有薪的合同制雇佣向更灵活的劳动安排的转变。一些人认为，这些是创意经济的先决条件，可以改变生产力的格局。其他人则担心这些制度在多大程度上造成了劳动力的早熟。但是，当研究的重点放在那些历史上在合同劳动实践之外发挥作用的人，如工匠、商人和中间人时，可以得出什么结论？这个项目培训一名研究生如何进行严谨的、有经验的科学实地考察，解决经济学家所说的一种更广泛的现象，即中间商被排除在行业和供应链之外。在全球范围内，在配置上相互关联的非中介化正在迅速改变世界各地工人的生活：在快速时尚服装和公平贸易咖啡供应链、酒店和旅游业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早熟的原因、后果和复杂性的组织和个人。塞缪尔·舒曼在密歇根大学贾丁·杜瓦博士的指导下，将探索脱媒在劳动力重组中的作用。这项研究是在比利时安特卫普的一个哈西德教社区进行的，该社区目前正在重新培养男性劳动力，并将他们改造为当地的企业家。第二次世界大战后，数以千计的犹太难民从东欧逃到西欧。这些难民中有哈西迪姆，一个虔诚的犹太教教派，它降落在港口城市安特卫普。该国80%以上的劳动力依靠钻石业维持经济生计。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，哈西德派犹太人正被排除在钻石供应链的中间人之外。在这一转变的背景下，这项研究提出了三个问题：1)这种经济转型和紧缩政策如何重塑人们对工作、价值和美德的态度？2)监督如何告知交易如何在受监管的行业和新兴的本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，以及它对资本主义新阶段可能不再需要中间人有什么启示？数据将通过一系列既定的人种学技术在12个月的时间内收集，包括参与者观察和对一所职业学校的参与者、交易员、经纪人和钻石交易所的工匠的采访。在促进法律和经济人类学的科学工作方面，该项目强调经济中间人是理解现代政治经济的重组以及这些世界中包容和排斥的界限的模范人物。

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.