7-10 NOVEMBRE 2012
Facultat de Geografia i Història - Universitat de Barcelona
Dimecres 7/11/2012
Dijous 8/11/2012
Divendres 9/11/2012
Dissabte 10/11/2012
Pussies, Veggies and Booze: Urban Labour and its Class‐Struggle Implications within Production as a Totality
PhD Candidate, Universitat de Barcelona; Professor associat, Universitat de Les Illes Balears (marc.morell@uib.cat)
Abstract
NOTE: This talk could be held by videoconference
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest for working out what objective classes look like within the ever‐lasting changing physiognomy of capitalism. This update on class has led to the analysis of the relation State and Capital nowadays maintain and how this relation morphs the exploitation of labour on the lines of expanding the logic of production elsewhere, e.g. the field of reproduction. The most apparent result of such dealings has been the development of new categories of labour beyond the traditional understanding of the commensurability of commodity labour. However, if we are to look into the subjective character of class, as in movements, we will realise that such a divide between the fields of production and of reproduction is absent. Nevertheless, for the case of the working class, class struggle has resulted in a loss of class consciousness, the causes of which are both transcendent and immanent to the working class, while new dubious transformative subjects are called into play (e.g. the creative and entrepreneurial classes). I stress the reach of these reflections by looking at several interlocked ethnographic sketches drawn from a long‐term fieldwork in a gentrifying neighbourhood of the old town of the capital city of Majorca (Balearic Islands – Spain). Here, gentrification becomes a concrete process from which to abstract theoretical insights on class struggle. Following the moments of disinvestment and reinvestment of capital in the built environment gentrification entails, I contend each of these moments subsumes the urban labour specific organisations and collectivities develop.
