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Labour Geog Citations (Marxism (Started in the late 70s and was driven by…
Labour Geog Citations
Marxism
Started in the late 70s and was driven by David Harvey and Doreen Massey who were phd students and revolutionised geographies
Started to consider social inequality and uneven distributions of power, this was used to understand the economy better
Interests were shown into the relationships between workers and capital however labour was still quantified as an input into production.
Looked at the ideas of maximising profits by depressing wages enough to make sure they return the next day, to feed and clothe them and can afford the products youre selling but keep wages low enough to keep profit margins high.
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Herod, 1997
'An effort to see the making of economic geography and capitalism through the eyes of labour' Herod, 1997.
1990s onward - followed roots of feminism and Marxism -shift to a critical 'labour geography' an expanded focus on worker agencies
Worker agencies: workers capable of fashioning geography of capitalism to suit their own needs and self-production; identify geographical possibilities through which workers may challenge, outmanoeuvre and perhaps even beat capital' Herod, 2001
A modern day example of this is delivery drivers - Yodel - moving the clutch up and down which ruins the algorithm tracker on their van which means they can't be times on how long it takes them to do a drop,
This is where labour geographies came out, everything previous had been geographies of labour.
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Lier (2007)
Labour has mostly been viewed as a cost that influences investment decisions instead as a social force with its own right.
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Workers and capitalists are mutually dependant upon each other for employment relations where labour is a commodity exchanged for a wage - two forms of commodity is purchased; labour and the means of production (materials and machinery)
Labour sells themselves for a wage however they are actually pseudo-commodities because in reality they are social beings (Castree et al., 2004)
Peck, 2017 - Robitistan
'Don't think of a tin man. Think of a software process running on a virtual machine in your data centre. Its doing fairly routine, mundane and repetitive work that is usually outsourced however these robots works around the clock, don't need holidays or lunch breaks or wages'
An example of this is callcentres. Started in the UK in the 80s by banks to sort peoples issues quicker and cheaper but then started outsourcing for easier and cheaper now to no-shore - robots answer calls using algorithms and AI.
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Garments without guilt? Uneven labour geographies and ethical trading—Sri Lankan labour perspectives (Ruwanpura, 2016)
Sri Lanka's adoption for ethical production has been a success, it is a low-growth, high-social development country which is an alternative route of development to many countries (Sen, 1988). Much of this is due to historical legislations put in place during colonial and immediate post-colonial years.
Restructuring the global economy has caused academics to look at the uneven consequences for labour and the asymmetrical power dynamics in capitalism.
Sri-lankan apparels are adopting ethical production through state regulation and minimum wages from the 80s. This was done due to the unease of northern retailers to labour exploitation.
Labour
Labour is not like other inputs in economic cycles, it can riot and protest unlike machinery. Artificial intelligence and robots undermine labour making labour necessary in certain domains.
Labour now has its own domain which is no longer seen as just an element in production which is the outdated idea economic geography gives it (Gregory et al., 2009)
labour market
The labor market, also known as the job market, refers to the supply and demand for labor in which employees provide the supply and employers the demand. It is a major component of any economy and is intricately tied in with markets for capital, goods and services (Rodgers and Castree, 2007)