ABSTRACT

This article examines the ways militant (Maoist) unionism has affected labour relations in industries within an industrial area in the mid-hills of Nepal. Much of the ethnography of industrial factories around the globe, I argue, has stressed workers’ growing precarity and the deteriorating conditions of employment. This article, however, outlines a case of a different trajectory, where militant unionists managed to successfully challenge precarious labour conditions in larger factories within the industrial area. Yet, as I also show, such successful union interventions in the relationship between capital and labour remain limited to large factories, and over the past years union activism has been in decline. I give various reasons for the decline in labour activism including the changing political context, the continuous antagonistic relationship between Nepal’s two major unions which is historically rooted in violence, and the shift from radical militant unionism to a more bureaucratic and standardized form of unionism at the central level. In doing so, the article opens a new dialogue between the ethnography of work, labour history, and the social study of radical political groups.

摘要

本文探讨了激进（毛主义）工会主义如何影响尼泊尔中部山区工业区内的工业劳资关系。我认为，全球工业工厂的大部分民族志都强调工人日益不稳定和就业条件恶化。然而，本文概述了一个不同轨迹的案例，激进的工会成员成功地挑战了工业区内大型工厂不稳定的劳动条件。然而，正如我还表明的那样，工会对资本和劳动力之间关系的成功干预仍然仅限于大型工厂，并且在过去几年中，工会积极性一直在下降。我给出了劳工激进主义下降的各种原因，包括不断变化的政治背景，尼泊尔两大工会在历史上根植于暴力的持续对立关系，以及从激进的好战工会主义转变为中央层面更加官僚和标准化的工会主义形式。在此过程中，本文开启了工作民族志、劳工历史和激进政治团体的社会研究之间的新对话。