Agency within a socially regulated labour market: A study of ‘unorganised’ agricultural labour in Kerala

Sportel, Terah

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.02.007

Cited by 23 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…As we will see, changing labour relations were also a major reason for recent crop shifts in Kerala (Sportel, 2013a). As we will see, changing labour relations were also a major reason for recent crop shifts in Kerala (Sportel, 2013a).…”

Section: Did Declining Prices Motivate Farmers To Shift Away From Cocmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…It has also a spatial advantage due to its proximity to Tamil Nadu, which is becoming the centre of coconut production and trading (Sportel, 2013a(Sportel, , 2013b. These variations reflect a restructuring of social space.…”

Section: Discussion: Juxtaposing Local Findings With the Crisis Narramentioning

confidence: 99%

“…'Agrarian crisis' encompasses structural and institutional change, particularly through policy reform from state-centred to market-driven approaches. and farmers pointed to the additional importance of regional shortages of skilled labour to pluck the coconuts, adulteration practices and regional coconut market integration leading to increased competition in south India (Sportel, 2013a). The agrarian crisis is widely connected with farmer suicides in India, and Kerala in particular, where the majority of deaths have occurred in Wayanad District (Mohanakumar and Sharma, 2006;Münster, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives

Sportel¹,

Véron²

2016

Development and Change

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India's oilseeds sector, which includes its coconut economy, experienced drastic changes in the wake of agricultural liberalization in the mid-1990s. A persistent coconut crisis 'narrative' emerged after sharp price declines between 2000 and 2002 in which small farmers in the state of Kerala, India's main coconut producer, were identified as victims of the liberalized importation of cheap palm oil. This article describes this crisis narrative based on a literature review of academic and official reports, and challenges its problem analysis by juxtaposing it with information from ethnographic research with local farmers and traders. The research indicates that local labour shortages and increased regional competition also had a strong impact on Kerala's coconut market, production and processing, which varied from region to region. Furthermore, small farmers, with their diversified livelihoods, did not recognize a 'crisis' as such. Drawing upon the 'advocacy coalition framework', the article also indicates reasons for the emergence and persistence of the coconut crisis narrative and points to complex processes of restructuring social space in the age of globalization.

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Section: Did Declining Prices Motivate Farmers To Shift Away From Cocmentioning

confidence: 64%

Section: Discussion: Juxtaposing Local Findings With the Crisis Narramentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives

Sportel¹,

Véron²

2016

Development and Change

Self Cite

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“…Another study argues that factory workers utilise connections with the church to undermine quality controllers in the firm (Neethi, 2012). In addition, Sportel's (2013) account of coconut workers in India demonstrates how workers operating in marginal enclaves rework caste identities to adopt forms of work beyond their traditional social roles. Through these practices, workers can carve out sufficient space within local LCR arrangements to meet their needs, helping to limit and at least partly defuse class antagonisms in the local LCR (Kelly, 2001).…”

Section: Agency Labour Process Theory and Local Labour Control Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-embedding agency at the workplace scale: Workers and labour control in Glasgow call centres

Hastings

MacKinnon

2016

Environ Plan A

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Following recent calls for the development of a more embedded sense of labour agency, this paper focuses on the scale of the workplace which is largely absent from recent labour geography debates. Drawing on studies in the labour process tradition, the paper presents empirical research on call centre work in Glasgow, utilising this to revisit the concept of local Labour Control Regimes. We argue that rather than being simply imposed by capital and the state 'from above', workplace control should be seen as the product of a dialectical process of interaction and negotiation between management and labour. Labour's indeterminacy can influence capital in case specific ways as firms adapt to labour agency and selectively tolerate and collude with certain practices and behaviours. Workers' learned behaviours and identities are shown to affect not only recruitment patterns in unexpected ways, but also modes of accepted conduct in call centres. Accordingly, the case is made for the influence of subtle -yet pervasive -worker agency expressed at the micro-scale of the labour process itself. This, it is argued, exerts a degree of 'bottom-up' pressure on key fractions of capital within the local Labour Control Regime.

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“…Agency is always agency toward something, the ways in which actors shape their relationships with surrounding persons, places, meanings and events (Emirbayer and Mische 1998: 973). To analyse the agency of migrant construction workers, this chapter draws, following studies in labour geography (Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2011;Carswell and De Neve 2013;Sportel 2013), on the disaggregated conceptualisation of agency developed by Katz (2004). Katz's theoretical approach analyses a wide variety of (small-scale) social practices and not only large-scale protests and manifest, organised acts of resistance.…”

Section: From Collective Agency To a Refined Understanding Of Worker mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stepping up to strike: a union mobilization case study of Polish migrant workers in the Netherlands

Berntsen

2015

Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research

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This article examines a union mobilization of Polish temporary agency workers in the Netherlands. The case study contributes to the migrant organizing literature a micro-level account of the dynamics of mobilization from the viewpoint of the migrants and organizers involved. The findings emphasize the importance of key actors in building solidarities within and between different groups of workers in fragmented workplaces, with implications for unions seeking new ways to respond to changing employment practices. This study highlights some of the possibilities and limitations of organizing among contractually fragmented workforces.

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Agency within a socially regulated labour market: A study of ‘unorganised’ agricultural labour in Kerala

Cited by 23 publications

References 30 publications

Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives

Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives

Re-embedding agency at the workplace scale: Workers and labour control in Glasgow call centres

Stepping up to strike: a union mobilization case study of Polish migrant workers in the Netherlands

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