Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms

Over the last 10 or 15 years there has been a revival of labor and trade union internationalism. This regeneration is attracting the attention of a new generation of committed thinkers who are deploying new types of scholarship. Labor internationalism is looked at not only in terms of political economy or industrial and international relations, but also in terms of social movement theory and in relationship to global civil society. Notions of labor-community alliances, or the alliance of labor with radical-democratic social movements, are being projected onto the world stage. Radical social geographers have made a notable contribution to this debate by focusing on the scaled politics of labor organisation. This collection, co-edited by scholars from an older and younger generation, is a very original attempt to grapple with the challenges of globalization for labor. The collection includes contributions from academics and activists based in the North and South. bull; bull;Includes chapters from leading labor activists including Kjeld Jacobsen, International Secretary of the largest Brazilian trade union federation (the CUT) and Dan Gallin, Chair of the Global Labor Institute, Geneva bull;Focuses on the interconnections between labor internationalism and the environment, women and race in North and South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South Africa. bull;Provides an up-to-date review of the academic literature on labor internationalism while exploring contemporary examples of workers' organization.

Peter Waterman (London, 1936) is the author of Globalisation, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms (Cassell, London, 1998), and co-editor, with Ronaldo Munck of Labour Worldwide in the Era of Globalisation: Alternative Union Models in the New World Order (Macmillan, London, 1999). He has published widely in academic and political journals, in English and Spanish. Since 1994 he has had visiting positions or fellowships at universities in the UK, US, South Africa and Mexico. He worked for over a quarter century within the labour studies and politics of alternative development strategies programmes of the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. He took early retirement in 1998. His current interests are: global solidarity movements, in political, communicational, and cultural terms; the life histories of internationalists - and his long-suffering Global Solidarity website.

Jane Wills is Lecturer in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. She is co-author of Union Retreat and the Regions: the shrinking landscape of organised labour (Jessica Kingsley, London, 1996), Dissident Geographies: an introduction to radical ideas and practice (Prentice Hall, London, 2000) and co-editor of Geographies of Economies (Arnold, London, 1997). She has long-term political and research interests in orgasnised labour and has undertaken ESRC-funded research into European Works Councils, union renewal and partnership agreements.