ABSTRACT

The traditional industrial relations approach – focused on the state, employers and unions as main actors – faces severe limits in its capacity to analyse labour conflict in the face of the specific forms of labour regulation in the Global South. This contribution argues that a solid theoretical framework for Global Labour Studies requires a critique of its forerunner, the industrial relations approach. A globally relevant understanding of labour conflict in the twenty-first century requires to abandon the main assumptions of this forerunner. A new theoretical framework for the analysis of labour conflict can build on the debates around social movement unionism and the research agenda of labour geography that include other places and spaces of labour mobilization than the workplace and the trade union into their epistemological perspective. Such a conception allows to analyse labour conflict at the level of the social formation, and not just as something relegated to or emanating from the economic sphere.

摘要

传统的劳资关系方法——以国家、雇主和工会为主要参与者——在面对全球南方特定形式的劳动监管时，在分析劳动冲突的能力方面面临严重限制。这篇文章认为，全球劳工研究的坚实理论框架需要对其先驱——劳资关系方法进行批判。对 21 世纪劳工冲突的全球相关理解需要放弃这位先驱的主要假设。分析劳工冲突的新理论框架可以建立在围绕社会运动工会主义和劳工地理学的研究议程的辩论之上，这些争论将除工作场所和工会以外的其他劳工动员场所和空间纳入其认识论视角。