CfP – 40 years after Labor and Monopoly Capital by Harry Braverman

Der Klassiker der Arbeitsprozesstheorie / Labor Process Debate erschien vor 40 Jahren. Aus diesem Anlaß gibt es einen Call einer brasilianischen Zeitschrift:

Labor process/appreciation

40 years after Labor and Monopoly Capital, by Harry Braverman

Cadernos EBAPE.BR

Deadline for submission of articles: January 31, 2014

(Articles in Portuguese and English)

Guest Editor

Elcemir Paço Cunha

Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF)

“The distinctive capacity of human labor power is, therefore, not its ability to produce a surplus, but rather its intelligent and purposive character, which gives it infinite adaptability and which produces the social and cultural conditions for enlarging its own productivity, so that its surplus product may be continuously enlarged. From the point of view of the capitalist, this many-sided potentiality of humans in society is the basis upon which is built the enlargement of his capital” (BRAVERMAN, 1998, p. 38).

The purpose of this call is fostering discussions on the labor process in the capitalist mode of production, having in mind the 40th anniversary of the publication of Labor and Monopoly Capital: the degradation of work in the twentieth century, by Harry Braverman. As is generally known, this book resumed the discussions of Sociology of Work worldwide by evoking the links between the labor process and the monopoly phase of capital. From this copious influence, remained the so-called Labor Process Theory, which engenders discussions and events abroad (http://www.ilpc.org.uk/). The discussions from Braverman’s book, under the critical guidance of Micheal Burawoy, also, prompted considerations that, right or wrong, staked out the conditions for setting what came to be the Critical Management Studies (KNIGHTS and WILLMOTT, 1990).

Additionally, all movement in the different chains that put on hold the category work discussing its validity for a social criticism or its centrality to social life (Jürgen Habermas, Claus Offe, and Andre Gorz, and resonances in the recognition theory as it appears in Axel Honneth, in addition to authors having even postmodernist attitudes, such as Zygmunt Bauman), also served to greatly deviate research on the work problem (compare, notwithstanding, to different movements which do not claim such centrality under the terms of criticism, as György Lukács, Ernest Mandel, István Mészáros, etc.). Not by chance, the so-called Organizational Studies, which partly reflect on the issues of social and economic sciences, manifest the tendency to pass off the problems of the labor process as valorization process of capital by preferring other themes also important that, however, keep away from the key determinations of this sociability observed, whose guiding core is still (against the most varied prognoses) the logic of value.

Therefore, celebrating this work by Braverman means opening the possibility for discussions which bring up the issues directly associated to work and labor process in the capitalist production, addressing, by way of example, these possible points:

·         Issues concerning the centrality of work;

·         New expressions of work degradation;

·         Work, work division, and command technique (administration) at work;

·         Work, State, and social policies;

·         Work and new expressions of the “social question”;

·         Work and feminism;

·         Others.

We would like to invite authors to prepare theoretical and empirical papers.

Cadernos EBAPE.BR is an online journal on Administration published in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by EBAPE/FGV (Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration of Getulio Vargas Foundation) and it is an open access journal – http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/ojs/index.php/cadernosebape/index. All approved papers will be published in the original language. The Cadernos EBAPE.BR is classified by the CAPES Qualis system as B1.

The authors should follow the guidelines for submitting articles to Cadernos EBAPE.BR in:http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/ojs/index.php/cadernosebape/pages/view/normas.

The articles should be submitted through the link:http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/ojs/index.php/cadernosebape/login. You must register as an author, if you have not done it previously.

The deadline for article submission is January 31, 2014.

Note: please indicate in the field „AUTHOR’S COMMENTS” (bottom of the page – 1st stage of the procedure) that your article is for the special issue: “Labor process/appreciation 40 years after Labor and Monopoly Capital, by Harry Braverman”.

Specific questions about the special issue should be directly addressed to the guest editor: Elcemir Paço Cunha (elcemirpacocunha@gmail.com). Associate Professor of the Post-Graduation Programs in Social Service and Law at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora.