Labour Process, Global Regimes, and the Dynamics of Social Change 3700-ISSC-LPGR-MON

This course provides a critical investigation into the "hidden abode" of workplaces, examining the structural mechanisms through which the human capacity for work (labour power) is converted into actual work effort to generate surplus value. Students will trace the evolution of Labour Process Theory (LPT) from its foundational concerns with deskilling and Taylorism to modern debates regarding the "double indeterminacy" of labour effort and mobility. The curriculum highlights how labour regimes are not static entities but historically formed, multi-scalar phenomena that emerge from the articulation of local social relations with global production networks and state policy.
A central theme of the course is the analysis of social change, specifically how broad transformations in capitalist development, such as the transition from Fordist hegemonic regimes to the hegemonic despotism of neoliberal globalization, reshape the lives of workers. We will examine how contemporary social change is driven by digitalization and the rise of the platform economy, where "algorithmic management" and "Digital Taylorism" create new, reactive temporalities that extend managerial control beyond the workplace into the domain of citizenship and private life. The course further addresses social change by integrating the sphere of social reproduction, analyzing how the biological, daily, and intergenerational maintenance of the workforce is co-constitutive of the labour process.
Through comparative case studies, students will explore specific manifestations of these shifts, such as the "dormitory labour regime" in East Asia and Central and Eastern. Finally thee course investigates worker agency as a primary catalyst for social change, exploring how migrant mobility, autonomous digital communities, and "networked solidarity" challenge the dictates of capital accumulation. By the end of the term, students will be equipped to identify how the shifting configurations of production and reproduction continue to drive the "maelstrom" of contemporary social and economic transformation.
During the course, classical texts in labor process theory by Michael Burawoy, Harry Braverman, and Andrew Friedman will be examined alongside recent research on labor regimes by scholars such as Gabriella Alberti, Devi Sacchetto, Paul Thompson, Maurizio Atzeni, Dario Azzellini, among others. The reading list for each class session will be presented during the first meeting.
Topics to be covered during the course:
1. Labour process theory (LPT) as a contemporary research project
2. Scientific management (Taylorism) and the logic of labour control
3. Machines and the deskilling debate
4. Michael Burawoy and the “manufacturing consent” thesis
5. Direct control and responsible autonomy
6. Resistance and workers’ struggles on the shop floor and beyond
7. Gender in the labour process
8. Social reproduction
9. Linking labour to global political economy: the labour regime approach
10. Migration and labour regimes
11. Precarious workers and the labour process
12. Class composition and political autonomy