Course Description

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FIMS 9620   Special Topic: The Politics of Labour in the Knowledge Economy

Course Description
This course seeks to study the politics of labour within the context of neoliberal networked capitalism. It takes a critical historical approach, seeking to situate labour – both organized and unorganized – within the context of capitalism’s ongoing deployment of technology to enhance the circuit of production, distribution and exchange of commodities. It seeks to answer the following questions: How do we understand labour in relation to capital? In what ways has the development of new technology affected the relations of power between employers and labour? What normative discourses are used to legitimate the use of new technologies in the accumulation process? What are their effects? Attention will be given to the strategies used by labour to assert independence from capital. Special focus will be given to understanding the unstable labour market in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. There is a growing body of literature arguing the hegemony of neoliberal discourse has come to an end, and that current labour struggles are occurring in what political theorist Antonio Gramsci called the “interregnum” – a moment in which the consensus of dominant social factions no longer holds sway. Course readings will explore this thesis alongside actual examples of union mobilization.

0.5 course



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