TEAM

The network aims to anchor Labour Geography as an independent research field in German-speaking geography. Labour Geography places the spatially relevant actions of working people and workers’ movements at the centre of the analysis of geographical development processes. In the English-speaking world, it has become a recognised sub-discipline of geography, and in recent years increasingly includes perspectives that address everyday actions, informal work, social reproduction, new forms of organisation and actors from the Global South. The network aims to bring together German-speaking academics who research and publish with and on Labour Geography. The aim is to achieve synergy effects that contribute to the establishment of the sub-discipline in the German-speaking academic world and to the further development of international Labour Geography.

For this purpose, the network plans to work on and update two overarching thematic fields – global transformation processes and social-ecological reproduction. In the thematic strand “Global Transformation Processes”, we want to build upon cutting-edge research (also by network members) that asks how workers and their organisations react to and shape the transnationalisation and digitalisation of production processes. Theoretically, this combines a subject-focused perspective with new debates on the structures and causes of global inequality. In the thematic strand “Social-ecological Reproduction”, ongoing work of the network members on social reproductive labour and the embedding of labour in social relations of nature will be discussed and further developed. In doing so, the discussion is linked to more recent debates on the social significance and status of work. The network will also work on two cross-cutting themes: Firstly, a (global-local) Labour Geography of the Covid 19 pandemic and secondly methodological questions of Labour Geography research.

The network will work together in a goal-oriented manner over a period of three years in six intensive, three-day working meetings. The focus will be on joint publications: A German-language “Handbook of Labour Geography”; a special issue on “New Perspectives in Labour Geography” in a German-language geographical journal; as well as further topic-specific articles in German-language and international academic journals. The development of these publications is supported by an intensive exchange with renowned international representatives of Labour Geography. The network also aims to explicitly support young researchers and offer them opportunities for further development. We aim to consolidate and continue the cooperation beyond the end of the network project, for example through joint research work.

Together with the Transnational Palm Oil Labor Solidarity (TPOLS) network and the Swiss Church Aid (HEKS), the project is developing a Just Transition perspective for the palm oil industry. A collective of scholars and activists is conducting action research with palm oil workers in five provinces of Indonesia on the relationship between labour and nature. We first examine how ecological issues in the production of palm oil are perceived and problematized by workers. This is done from a perspective of social reproduction. In further steps, ideas for a socio-ecological transformation of the palm oil industry are developed, based on both ecological and social standards from the perspective of workers. The project not only collaborates with trade unions, but also with indigenous and feminist groups. The transnational aspects of such a transformation strategy (e.g. along the value chain) will be eroded e.g. through an exchange with the trade union Nahrung, Genuss, Gaststätten (NGG) in Germany.

Oliver Pye schreibt regelmäßig für die Zeitschriften Jungle World (Link: https://jungle.world/suche?keys=pye&suche%5B0%5D=autor_in%3A874), Südostasien (Link https://suedostasien.net/author/o-pye/) und iz3w (Link: https://www.iz3w.org/autor-in/oliver-pye)