Bossnapping:situating repertoires of industrial action in national and global contexts

Abstract

French industrial relations were shaken in the spring of 2009 by a series of labour struggles which featured the forcible detention of company managers and threats to commit major acts of sabotage. In this article I focus on the first of these two types of action, placing industrial sequestration in the context of the pattern of collective negotiation processes in France, and comparing it with previous cycles of the same phenomenon, particularly in the post-1968 period. I argue that the current cycle of sequestrations needs to be understood as a response to the deterritorialisation processes of neo-liberal globalisation, and is the product of asymmetries of power between the fixity of labour and the fluidity of global capital. I conclude by arguing that sequestration is a public melodrama of protest which might point to the development of a resistant politics of corporeality in France, in common with struggles in other social and economic sectors.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2012.665577
Divisions: ?? 29721300Jl ??
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
Additional Information: This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Hayes, G. (2012). Bossnapping: situating repertoires of industrial action in national and global contexts. Modern and contemporary France, 20(2), 185-201. Modern and contemporary France 2012 © 2012 Association for the Study of Modern & Contemporary France. Published by Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09639489.2012.665577
Uncontrolled Keywords: History,Cultural Studies,Sociology and Political Science
Publication ISSN: 1469-9869
Last Modified: 14 Mar 2024 17:23
Date Deposited: 19 Dec 2012 11:45
Full Text Link: http://www.tand ... 489.2012.665577
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2012-05-01
Published Online Date: 2012-04-10
Authors: Hayes, Graeme (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-1871-1188)

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