Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: This special issue brings together a series of commentaries, intervention, and projects in various stages of completion, all centred on the theme of workers inquiry 1 .Workers' inquiry is an approach to and practice of knowledge production that seeks to understand the changing composition of labour and its potential for revolutionary social transformation.It is the practice of turning the tools of the social sciences into weapons of class struggle.Workers' inquiry seeks to map the continuing imposition of the class relation, not as a disinterested investigation, but rather to deepen and intensify social and political antagonisms.While the pieces in this issue differ vastly in their approach, theoretical orientation, and political alignment, several common strains can be detailed.Consistent with our call for papers, the authors critically interrogate workers' inquiry rather than accept received knowledge and methodological tools as given.Of course, this is entirely consistent with workers' inquiry, which has always been an intensely self-critical practice.Indeed, the post-War Italian ferment from which workers' inquiry emerged consisted of a number of competing schools (Quaderni Rossi, Classe Operaia, Potere Operaria, Lotta Continua), each with its journals and allied forces, characterized more by antagonism rather than camaraderie.But if the pages of this special issue are any evidence, many of these debates are far from settled, and the contemporary social moment invokes still new questions.1 About half of the pieces that follow were presented in some form at ephemera's 2013 annual conference, held 2-3 May at the University of Essex under the banner 'The politics of workers' inquiry', while the remaining pieces were solicited for this issue alone.
Authors: Joanna Figiel, Stevphen Shukaitis, Abe Walker
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2139230331