Simone Weil's Political Theology

This article suggests that Simone Weil's political theology is characterized by the idea of labor and the event of laboring. I begin by arguing that her thinking is shaped by a materialist reading of Christianity that employs Marx's concepts — labor, capital and alienation — to examine the political implications of three theological ideas, fall, slavery and sin. Next, I suggest that although laboring should be understood as a creative endeavor, Weil argues that it is always conditioned and constrained by a force she terms social matter. This constraint produces what Marx called alienation and Weil will refer to as enslavement (and even sin). Finally, I contend that Weil's idea of labor — and its call for a minimization of constraint — provides a counter-force to social matter. I conclude by suggesting that Weil's labor provides a different way of conceptualizing not just the political subject, but political theology itself.     

“The producers on the one side,and the capitalists on the other”: Labor Reform,Slavery, and the Career of a Transatlantic Radical

Abstract

Through exploring the neglected career of John Campbell, an Irish-born Chartist refugee who ascended to a leadership role in the antebellum American labor movement, this article seeks to shed light on how revolutionary upheaval in Europe, debates over immigration, and sectional conflict affected working-class politics. Focusing on the period 1848 to 1851, and tracing Campbell's rapid evolution from a radical opponent of slavery to an ardent supporter of black subjugation, I argue that labor historians need to pay closer attention to shifting local and national contexts to understand the racial politics of labor agitators. Yet even as Campbell's views changed, his commitment to a producerist vision remained constant; by 1851 he had simply added people of African descent to a list of “idle” nonproducers who lived off the labor of workingmen. His proslavery twist on producer ideology suggests historians of antebellum social relations may need to go beyond interrogating the racial dimensions of artisan republicanism to gain a fuller understanding of the variety of working-class attitudes to race.     

Trans-border Exchange between Russia and China: The Case of Blagoveshchensk and Heihe

Two Russian-trained geographers investigate the multiple and largely informal and illicit forms of exchange between two provincial cities of roughly similar size located on opposite banks of the Amur River, namely Blagoveshchensk, in Russia's Far East, and Heihe, in neighboring northeast China. The study is based on interviews and field observations from 2002 to 2009 in Blagoveshchensk, as well as official statistics from the relevant Russian and Chinese provincial governments. Particular attention is focused on the activities and treatment of Chinese guest workers comprising a material component of the labor force in Amur Oblast (e.g., in construction and agriculture), unregistered Chinese entrepreneurs in retailing and catering, and trans-border logging operations of Chinese timber/wood products companies. Also covered are the activities of visiting Russian nationals in Heihe and the extralegal activities of Russian entrepreneurs and bureaucrats. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F20, J61, O17, O18. 5 figures, 1 table, 50 references.     

Exchange Rate Policy and Economic Growth after the Financial Crisis in Central and Eastern Europe

In a paper on the effects of the global financial crisis in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), a European Union economist reacts to a companion paper (Åslund, 2001) published in the same issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics on the influence of exchange rate policies on the region's recovery. The author argues that post-crisis corrections in current account deficits in CEE countries do not in themselves signal a return to steady economic growth. Disagreeing with Åslund over the role of loose monetary policy in fostering the region's economic problems, he outlines a number of competitiveness problems that remain to be addressed in the 10 new EU member states of CEE, along with improvements in framework conditions supporting future macroeconomic growth.     

Technology and gay identity: the case of the pre-Second World War male flight attendant

This article examines 1930s aviation in the USA through an unconventional lens – the male flight attendant, a figure who served as a cultural touchstone for negotiating gender roles in the emerging business of commercial air transport. As aviation had broad resonance as a symbol of modern and cosmopolitan life, the male flight attendant, too, became bound to this larger context of technological development and the futuristic transformations of society it promised. My aim is to detail these connections between the flight attendant and technological innovation, but also to make a deeper claim: that the occupation of flight attendant, the place of gay men therein, and the cultural acceptance and resistance to this fact were constituent, not ancillary, to the history of the 1930s. In the process, I am arguing not only that gender serves as a fundamental category of historical analysis – via the assumptions and power relations through which historical actors make history – but also that issues of gay identity and homophobia are integral to such analysis     

Creating a socialist canon for children: Lea Goldberg dictates a revolutionary dualism in labor movement children's literature in the 1940s and 1950s

Lea Goldberg served as a key literary taste-maker in the labor movement children's literature for a period of about 25 years, from the mid-1930s until the end of the 1950s. This essay focuses on the peak of her activities in this field, a period beginning in 1943 and ending around 1960. These were the years of her uncompromising struggle to establish a children's literary canon through Sifriyat Po'alim, the publishing house of Hashomer Hatza'ir and Hakibbutz Ha'artzi federation. The essay explores the strategies employed by Goldberg in her pursuit of a meaningful balance between two contrasting labor movement approaches towards the revolutionary role of children's literature: the “political” approach, which recruited children's literature in order to promote revolutionary kibbutz values; and the “poetic” modernist approach, which defined literature itself as revolutionary. By maintaining a dialectic tension between the two models of a revolutionary “literary beautiful,” Goldberg led a quiet revolution in the hegemonic labor movement children's literature of her time.     

Gender trouble: Women and the making of Italy's ‘active population’, 1861‐1936

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the complex sociocultural and ideological reasons that lay behind the well‐known fall in the number of women workers in the Italian population censuses from the post‐Unification period to Fascism. This was a time when the statisticians of the whole ‘civilized’ world were engaged in the definition of the modern statistical notion of ‘active population’. Through an examination of material published by Italian as well as non‐Italian statistical institutions and of the debates on women's work at the turn of the century, the article shows how the statisticians sought to make their data comparable to those of other, more modem countries and argues that an important turning point in the changing statistical representations of women's work in Italy occurred with the census of 1901. This coincided with growing interest in the question of women's work and the campaign for the introduction of legislation ‘protecting’ women workers. As state constructions, the censuses clearly contributed to the production of a more masculinized image of the labor force, an image which, however, eventually became too distant from reality even for the statisticians themselves.     

我国对外劳务输出现状与对策

对外劳务输出有利于增加外汇收入、缓解就业压力、培养锻炼人才 ,也有利于减轻我国环境和生态压力 ,减少非法移民。我国具有发展对外劳务输出的巨大潜力和广阔前景。在扩大对外劳务输出方面 ,除了要加强立法 ,规范管理 ,多渠道改善我国对外劳务输出环境和政策外 ,也要充分利用海外华侨华人的优势和世界华商网络的功能 ,并发挥地方及边境各少数民族在劳务输出方面的优势。     

国共党争与阶级分野--广州国民政府时期工商关系的实证考察

广州国民政府时期,不仅是国民革命迅速发展的高潮阶段,也是革命统一战线发生斗争与分化的转折点.以国共党争为主线,此阶段的工商关系因党派政治的渗入而愈趋复杂,并呈现出"对抗与合作"的双重态势.这主要表现为中国共产党领导的广州工人代表会与商界的阶级对垒,而广东总工会等国民党右派工会则与商界取合作姿态.尽管此时工商间的阶级分野取得明显实效,但也毕竟有限,这与国民党"阶级协调"的政治统治逻辑及广州"劳资混合"的行会传统有着密切关联.     

清末民初广州的行会工会化

“工商合行”是广州传统行会组织结构的主要特色。然而,随着清末民初资本主义生产关系的发展,尤其“劳工神圣”西潮的浸润与激荡及革命政权扶助劳工政策的实施,使得“工商合行”的行会模式开始了以“工商分离”为主题特征的行会工会化的艰难蜕变。不过,这种由行会孕育出来的工会组织的肌体上不可避免地附着“工商合行”的深深烙印,这在一定程度上削弱并阻碍了国民革命时期中国共产党对广州工人的政治与阶级动员。从阶级斗争与“工商合行”两种理念交锋而导致行会工会化“曲折与艰辛”的事实中,可以窥视到传统行会近代转型“变”与“不变”的新旧交合的复杂面相。