Mapping the discursive in labour geographies

Bibliographic Data

ID5697113
AuthorsRohini Anant (0000-0001-5166-9220, National University of Singapore, corresponding author), Neil M Coe (0000-0001-7720-5061, National University of Singapore)
Year2021
Volume15
Issue10
Publication date2021-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeography Compass (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1749-8198 • E-ISSN: 1749-8198
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/gec3.12594
OpenAlexW3204071123
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited64

Geographical debates surrounding labour have hitherto tended to sideline its discursivity - that is its ongoing construction as a category of the economy - and the politics of the discourses of labour involved in this process. To address this lacuna, this paper engages with three bodies of scholarship in the social sciences which explicitly foreground the discursive construction of labour: work on subjectivity and power in the labour process; feminist investigations into gendered globalization processes; and studies on the discursive power of labour. These reveal labour discourses as multiscalar phenomena that operate at workplaces, as mechanisms of work organization and control within transnational capital circuits, as knowledge networks that underpin how labour is valued, and as resources for labour agency. The paper closes by proposing a distinctively geographical research agenda which involves mapping the discursive geographies of labour, examining how labour discourses are 'placed' and encountered, and exploring their role in building geographies of labour agency

Epistemology · Geography · Globalization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Employment and Welfare Studies · Gender Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law

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