IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/recgxx/v74y1998i3p252-271.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bridging the Gap between Class and Space: U.S. Worker Solidarity with Guatemala

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca A. Johns

Abstract

In recent decades organized labor in the United States has responded to restructuring of the global economy by increasing its commitment to international solidarity, providing moral and material support for the organizing efforts of workers abroad. The international labor solidarity strategy appears to be designed to lessen the competition among places over investment, plant location, and jobs by uniting workers in different countries on the basis of their shared class interests. Yet international solidarity programs may serve to benefit one geographically distinct group of workers over another without challenging capitalism’s allocative mechanisms. I develop criteria for differentiating between the latter kind of solidarity campaigns, which I call accommodationist, and transformatory solidarity, which attempts to prevent capital from using space to weaken workers’ organizations, thereby altering the labor-capital relationship in fundamental ways. I then examine the work of an organization of union members and workers in the United States committed to forming relationships of solidarity with workers in Guatemala. I look at the history, philosophy, and activities of the U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project (US/GLEP), which provides an informative case study of the opportunities and dangers of international solidarity. The limitations of international solidarity campaigns are identified, and I suggest ways to overcome these barriers.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca A. Johns, 1998. "Bridging the Gap between Class and Space: U.S. Worker Solidarity with Guatemala," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 74(3), pages 252-271, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:74:y:1998:i:3:p:252-271
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1944-8287.1998.tb00115.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1944-8287.1998.tb00115.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1944-8287.1998.tb00115.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giorgio Osti, 2013. "The moral basis of a forward society: Relations and forms of localism in Italy," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 28(3), pages 291-303, May.
    2. Liliana Goldín & Courtney Dowdall, 2015. "Inequality of rights: Rural industrial workers' access to the law in Guatemala," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(2), pages 278-294, June.
    3. Andrew Herod & Ron Johnston & Tim Forsyth & Glynn C Kelso & David J Reiss & Julie Guthman & David H Kaplan, 2005. "Reviews: Spaces of Work: Global Capitalism and Geographies of Labour, Human Geography: A History for the 21st Century, Thailand at the Margins: Internationalization of the State and the Transformation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(4), pages 751-760, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:74:y:1998:i:3:p:252-271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/recg .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.