Abstract
Using apt comparative historical enquiry, apposite in-depth case studies and appropriate observational technique, Jennifer Jihye Chun, in this seven chaptered book, showcases the bewildering political and symbolic leverages wielded by some of the most marginalized, low-paid service workers such as subcontracted university janitors, independently contracted home care workers and golf caddies in the USA and South Korea. In fact the beauty of her comparative analysis lies in juxtaposing an unlikely pair of countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation and cultural politics. Her lucid narratives about subcontracting in four sample cases leave a big question mark on the style of HR functioning and reputation of such otherwise famous universities.
In the book, the author’s application of Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of classification struggle and symbolic power demonstrates that workers at the margins, their organizations and allies are in a position to force a dispute into the public arena and frustrate all the attempts at suppression by employers, ultimately gaining just treatment of improved wages and job security from their employers and the state.
The thematic focus is on the renewed vigour of recent union campaigns by labour organization of the excluded and the disenfranchised workers in the context of broader shifts in power between labour, capital and the state leading to a reclassification of the nature of employer–employee relations in the eyes of the public. The rights to union representation were demonstrated in the form of confrontation through ‘public dramas’ for ‘generating widespread moral crisis in a given community’s conception of “justice” and “fairness” ’. The ‘weapons of the weak’ include protests and demonstrations with banners and posters, occupations of symbolic buildings and occupying public spaces with ‘tent-towns’. Mainstream unions in the nations referred to here have been complicit. Chun provides an excellent road map for recognizing the prominence of ‘unorganized’, unprotected, unremunerated and unregulated workers, social movement-inspired organizing and the resurgence of symbolic politics which testify to a redefinition of ‘worker’ and ‘employer’ and their mutual obligations, ethical and legal in the neoliberal era.
On the whole from the methodological, theoretical and thematic angles, Chun’s work is a step beyond Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic domination and Michael Burawoy’s extended case method. Thus this extremely original, handy and handsome volume will provide significant insights to students and teachers interested in the sociology of industry, labour studies in the context of globalization and unionism in the urban informal sector (UIS).