Workers, state and development in Brazil

Powers of labour, chains of value

By (author) Benjamin Selwyn

Publication date:

22 February 2012

Length of book:

224 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9780719085314

How do changing class relations contribute to processes of capitalist development?

Within development studies the importance of class relations is usually relegated to lesser status than the roles of states and markets in generating and allocating resources. This book argues that the changing class relations are central to different patterns of capitalist development and that processes and outcomes of class struggle co-determine the form that development takes.

Workers, State and Development in Brazil, nominated for the International Political Economy Group (IPGG) Book Prize 2013 and now available in paperback, illuminates these claims through a detailed empirical investigation of class dynamics and capitalist development in North East Brazil’s São Francisco valley. It details how workers in the valley’s export grape sector have won significant concessions from employers, contributing to a progressive pattern of regional capitalist development.

The book will appeal to students and researchers interested in processes of capitalist development, agrarian political economy and international political economy.

Introduction
1. Global commodity chains, labour history and capitalist development.
2. Emergence of export grape production in North East Brazil.
3. Grape workers: structural power and associaitonal power.
4. Women workers.
5. Managing labour
6. Class compromise
7. Conclusions
Bibliography

"'Workers, states and development in Brazil' is a well-structured, well-researched and theoretically sophisticated book... Selwyn masterfully combines institutional and structural analysis in the explanation of how workers in export grape production in Northeastern Brazil's Sao Francisco Valley organised around Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais (STR), the valley's trade union, managed to achieve considerable advances in their working and living conditions.", Ana Margarida Esteves, Brown University, Interface: a journal for and about social movements, 1 November 2012|...a lengthy investigation, Renaud Lambert, Monde diplomatique, 1 December 2012|The book should appeal to researchers, students at all levels and activists interested in processes of capitalist development, political economy, class formations and women’s employment., Reviewed by Emine Erdogan, University of Warwick, UK, Work, employment and society 29(3), 16 June 2015