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Jan Breman guest lectures in Copenhagen

Guest lectures to be held by Prof Jan Breman at the University of Copenhagen.

On October 20th and 21st 2015 the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen hosts two talks by Professor Jan Breman from the University of Amsterdam. The first lecture takes place on the 20th of October from 12.00-13.30 in room 16.2.55 CSS at the Department of Sociology and is titled Informalizing the Economy: The Return of the Social Question at a Global Level. The lecture will look at how the classical model of collective bargaining is now increasingly undermined by the rapid spread of informal or precarious labor in the global North. The lecture will argue that the ‘classical’ view of the working class and workers’ collective action is fundamentally biased and takes as a norm or standard what was in fact an historical exception. 

The real norm or standard in global capitalism is insecurity, informality or precariousness, and the Standard Employment Relationship is an historical phenomenon which had a deep impact in a limited part of the world for a relatively short period of time. If, as we argue, the ‘Rest’ (i.e. Asia, Africa, and Latin America) is not now becoming like the ‘West’, but the other way round, then the ‘traditional’ forms of collective action that have developed in the North Atlantic region during the last two centuries are gradually losing much of their impact. New forms of collective action are emerging, though these are often still at an embryonic stage.

It is, therefore, high time to rethink the concept of the working class and the ways in which it can further its interests.

The second talk on the 21st of October from 10.00-12.00 at the same venue is a book launch of Professor Breman’s latest book called Pauperism in India: Past and PresentFull information