Volume 61 part 3 (December 2016)

Abstracts

Andrea Rapini. Can Peasants Make a Revolution? Colonialism, Labour, and Power Relations in Pierre Bourdieu’s Algerian Inquiries
This article analyses the Algerian inquiries of Pierre Bourdieu. It begins by retracing the most pervasive, medium- and long-term interventions of French colonial power in Algerian society: the introduction of capitalism and the internment of civilians in the centres de regroupement. Next, it outlines the social subjects studied by the young agrégé of philosophy and his representation of labour. The following sections deal with shifts in the public stance of Bourdieu regarding the revolutionary propensity of these people. On this tricky testing ground Bourdieu engaged with the ideas of Germaine Tillion and Frantz Fanon, confronting them critically. His position is reviewed from a historical-philological approach in order to set the texts in their temporal and spatial contexts, establish parallels and/or divergences, and verify the effects such comparisons produced. The conclusions emphasize the richness and originality of Bourdieu’s inquiries for the era in which they were made and highlights, in the light of the recent global reorientation of labour studies, some of the vital viewpoints expressed therein on the origins of capitalism in the colony.

Karuna Dietrich Wielenga. Repertoires of Resistance: The Handloom Weavers of South India, c.1800-1960
The article describes and analyses contrasting forms of protest employed by handloom weavers in south India at two key points in time – the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Following Tilly, it examines how changes in the state's regulatory regime influenced modes of resistance, but extends this analysis to the influence of production structures and social/cultural factors such as caste. It also maps internal structures of solidarity and the changing role of caste and class in shaping them. It tries to show how repertoires of resistance altered with changes, not just in the regulatory regime, but the broader socio-economic context, and foregrounds their adaptability and dynamism. It explores forms of protest and organization shared by weavers with workers from a wide range of occupations (including factory workers). Above all, it questions the notion of the unchanging character of “primordial” identities while seeking to provide a fuller understanding of the emerging dynamic of collective consciousness amongst non-factory workers in modern India.

Janet Greenlees. Workplace health and gender among cotton workers in America and Britain, c.1880s–1940s
This article clarifies the differences between occupational health and workplace health and reveals how the two overlap. It unravels a multi-layered narrative about cotton textile workers’ understandings and experiences of ill-health at work in America and Britain, utilizing a combination of oral histories, government documents, company and union records, and the trade press. It aims to identify the multiple influences on contemporary debates about health at work. Contrary to current historiography, I argue that gender was only occasionally important to such discussions among workers, and that gender did not significantly influence their responses to unhealthy conditions. Workers’ understandings of, and responses to, workplace hazards were individual and related to knowledge about risk, ill-health and socioeconomic factors. American and British workers’ understandings of and responses to their working environment reveals more convergence than divergence, suggesting a universal human response to the health risks of work that is not significantly influenced by national or industrial constraints, or by gender.