Book Review: How We Struggle

How We Struggle: A Political Anthropology of Labour, by Sian Lazar (2023). London: Pluto Press.

In How We Struggle, Sian Lazar advocates for a labor anthropology that examines and compares the different ways that working people navigate the intersections of global processes and local contexts within formal and informal economies. Central to this analysis is the concept of labor agency, which Lazar describes as any decision—individual and collective—made by working people to improve their lives both within and beyond their workplace. Notably, the boundaries between these decision-making poles are often blurred. This polytheoretical framework posits that work can be characterized on a wide spectrum between material or immaterial and paid or unpaid, all of which produce the variable relations of care necessary for sustaining life. As such, the kinds of labor agency that exist are plentiful and prolific. While not entirely rejecting the Fordist model of unionism, Lazar urges anthropologists and activists to recognize that certain types of work, such as unpaid domestic labor, may make some forms of agency, like accommodation or resilience, more viable than collective action and resistance. Drawing on ethnographies from around the world, How We Struggle offers crucial insight into the assorted and creative strategies that working people employ in their daily lives. Regardless of whether these actions challenge the status quo, Lazar argues that they should be considered legitimate responses within an overall political economy that fails to serve them.

Many commentators and scholars have written on the relative decline of the power of organized labor after decades of widespread corporate and political union-busting. Considering this context, How We Struggle serves as a critique of labor scholarship and activism that continue to focus narrowly on traditional trade unionism as the quintessential form of labor agency. Anthropologist E. Paul Durrenberger and other authors in Uncertain Times (2017) have warned that outsourcing and subcontracting are major threats to organizing efforts and worker power. Relatedly, Lazar notes in Chapter 6, for example, that the rise of digital remote work marks a shift away from a standard employment relationship often assumed to be the most amenable for union organizing. Indeed, a “sharing” economy is a difficult environment in which to organize and mobilize with fellow workers, as gig apps use algorithmic management to obscurely oversee independent contractors—a classification meant to evade the provision of benefits. Additionally, the gig workers themselves value autonomy: freedom from overbearing managers, restrictive schedules, and geographically tethered offices. Even so, in instances when gig workers on the same platform are able to communicate with each other, Lazar describes how organized collective action is still possible—as was the case for Deliveroo riders in London, who organized a strike via WhatsApp and won a hiring freeze, which increased the number of orders per rider and, therefore, their pay (156). However, labor agency for gig workers may, perhaps more likely, take the form of information sharing off the platform, providing technical knowledge or helping other contractors or freelancers avoid undesirable clients. This highlights Lazar’s argument that labor agency need not be molded in the shape of a traditional labor union. In a political economy that prioritizes a lean workforce and keeps workers isolated, the number of people relying on inconsistent gig and informal work can be expected to grow, making collective action increasingly challenging. In this environment, Lazar argues that however workers choose to struggle for survival, those struggles should be respected by activists and studied by labor anthropologists, as they can reveal valuable insight into workers’ material conditions in particular times and places.

While it is reasonable for individuals to make decisions that best serve their own lives and those of loved ones, lasting improvements in working conditions—whether industry wide or more broadly—are likely to result from sustained, collective action. In Necessary Trouble, by observing the eruption of protest movements after the 2008-09 financial crisis (particularly Occupy Wall Street), Sarah Jaffe (2016) described how disruption is the best way for working people to exercise power and shift the status quo. Indeed, in one of labor anthropology’s foundational texts, June Nash’s ethnography of Bolivian tin miners (1979) revealed that workers needed adversarial organizations to demand improvements in their working and living conditions, highlighting the rollback of rights in times of repressive anti-worker regimes. Even outside overtly violent dictatorships, seemingly peaceful partnerships between unions and management have often harmed labor movements and workers more broadly, as evidenced by the correlation between the decline in organized labor and the stagnation of real wages in the United States. Depending on the context, worker organizations will likely need to choose contention over cooperation to win demands. While Lazar reveals numerous instances of collective resistance and disruption worldwide—such as wildcat strikes organized by copper miners in Zambia and garment workers in Bangladesh—even unions in historically entrenched industrial sectors must adapt to evolving economic conditions. In response to these global shifts, which frequently spread precarity locally, Lazar urges anthropologists to consider labor agency beyond mere resistance. I would argue, then, that the question for labor activists becomes, rather than expecting all workers to organize traditional unions in their workplaces—which may not physically exist or be risky in terms of retaliation—how can working people who are able to organize and resist do so for the benefit of their entire communities? Labor anthropologists will have an important role in answering such questions, as current research seeks to understand the social structures around new forms of work. In this pursuit, How We Struggle points to the need to consider labor agency as a fundamental constituent in the overlapping local and global processes of the contemporary political economy.

Although the shift toward a sharing economy has developed unevenly across the world, it ironically involves little actual sharing within formal sectors, as individual workers are largely responsible for securing their own livelihoods. Based on the broad spectrum of agency that Lazar identifies across industries, one commonality among working people is the shared struggle, each in their own way, to provide for themselves and their families and communities. This reality could serve as a foundation for a shared identity at the global level; however, it is often difficult to look beyond our immediate surroundings, as local particularities make identities far more complex. As Lazar suggests, examining the differences in how we struggle and identifying similarities in specific contexts may reveal how strategies and solutions to precariousness in one instance—even at the individual level—could be applied elsewhere. Perhaps by sharing stories of struggle and understanding the underlying conditions that drive it, we may inspire new forms of collective action capable of shifting the status quo and thus alleviate individual struggles worldwide.

References

Durrenberger, E. P., ed. (2017). Uncertain Times: Anthropological Approaches to Labor in a Neoliberal World. Denver, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Jaffe, S. (2016). Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt. New York: Bold Type Books.

 Nash, J. C. (1979). We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines. New York: Columbia University Press.

Author Biography

Franklin Kennamer is a second-year graduate student in the Anthropology of Peace and Human Rights MA program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research focuses broadly on political economy, social movements, and labor activism.