Ursula Huws
Supply chains are becoming ever more tightly integrated as corporations vie with each other to bring their products to global markets before they lose their value through replication or obsolescence. This restructuring of supply chains involves the interaction of a range of different public and private, local and global actors, including companies involved in ’knowledge-based’ activities as well as those producing and shipping material goods. Both intellectual and manual labour are implicated in these processes of consolidation and acceleration and feel the squeeze: in intensification of work, the precarisation of working conditions and the fragmentation of the workforce, raising challenges for the organisation and representation of labour. This volume brings together accounts of what is happening to logistical labour along global supply chains with theoretical discussions of the problematic relationship between the ’knowledge-based’ and real economies, and material and immaterial labour. It also presents research on other dimensions of labour precariousness, with contributions from Europe, Asia and the Americas. This volume makes important contributions in the fields of political economy, geography and labour sociology.
