helena,
i read your article and thought i post methoughts, because i see promise
in the prospect of providing labour relations with different methods for
thinking
about labour as a set of relations.
having read a bit of the academic lit on labour and labour relations,
(don't ask why) i've found the analyses to be more "managerial" in
looking at the ways relations are "managed" - very similar to education,
where the ways curriculum, or student behaviour is "managed" by the
teacher -
while i am not sure how AT can help unwrite some of these discourses of
management, i see possibilities for complicating the ways relations are
hierarchically structured, by norms of traditional practice written in any
industrial or commercial history -
to think about how tradition functions in these settings, i highly
recommend
Raymond Williams as a source for critiques on tradition, that is, how
tradition
functions to reify practice, language, relations, and so on,
and how traditions are coded in ways to affirm their existence as normal
and invisible at the same time, -
i wonder how AT can deal with issues of racism, for example, in particular
labour
settings, like agricultural; how it can deal with sexism in traditionally
male-dominated
contexts, such as military, police, fire-fighters, heavy industrial
labour,
construction, and technology development -
and i wonder how AT addresses the situation of queers in-relation to
unions -
i read an article about union changes being made at a GM plant and the
ostracization of queers who tried to participate, to extent that several
quit, unable to tolerate their being specific targets during the union
negotiations, -
i wonder how AT can address sweat-shops, where immigrant women work for
piece-work wages in intolerable conditions, unable to negotiate for fear
of being
reported to immigration authorities, or because of language differences.
mostly i wanted to tell you that i appreciated your concluding paragraph,
>But for
>academics in industrial relations, a theoretical framework that lays out
>an
>approach that is essentially non-unitary, that looks for problems rather
>than norms, that enables a shifting perspective, that requires us to
>consider how the subject -- the worker, for example -- is socially
>constructed as an individual and as part of a collective, might be
>refreshing. In addition, employed on a very large scale, it might help us
>reflect on the multiple nested contexts of academic disciplines that are
>presently neighbors, but not always engaged, in our interdisciplinary
>field.
in the way it points to progress amongst academics, in-relation to
labour policy and labour changes, that is, bridging the distances within
the academy towards more
(and much needed) interdisciplinary approaches.
thanks for the read.
i enjoyed it.
diane
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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