Susana Narotzky

Reciprocity's dark side Negative reciprocity, morality and social reproduction

This article proposes the concept of negative reciprocity as a necessary and substantive aspect of the general concept of reciprocity. We contend that the concept of reciprocity is useful only when conceived simultaneously in its negative and positive forms as they are articulated in historical processes. If treated in all its complexity the concept of reciprocity might help us to understand the ambivalence often present in social relationships. Reference to a moral domain is the central tenet that differentiates reciprocity from exchange. Reciprocity is based on a shared morality in its positive form and on the break, transformation or suspension of the moral order in its negative form. We base our discussion on the ethnographic account of the social relations that supported circulation of resources in the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, a comparative perspective indicates that the negative reciprocity pervading Auschwitzs social relations is an extreme example of a broader category of human interaction in no way unique.

Between Inequality and Injustice: Dignity as a Motive for Mobilization During the Crisis

Structural adjustment policies in Europe underscore the lack of sovereignty and responsibility of nation-states towards the well-being of their citizens. As a result, in popular mobilizations arguments of inequality and injustice, expressed in a demand for dignity, are intertwined. The article explores this shift away from older arguments of exploitation and domination. Using ethnographic material from an industrial town in Galicia (Spain), I analyse two apparently different types of mobilization that have emerged after the 2008 crisis, trying to understand what grievances and objectives pull people together. One is the local expression of new social movements; the other is the remaining expression of working-class organization. Each of these models reinterprets a particular historical tradition of struggle while developing a new interpretation of the social objectives and subjectivities of the future. My hypothesis is that a “moral economy” framework has superseded a “political economy” framework in the motivation for struggle.

Memories of Conflict and Present-Day Struggles in Europe: New Tensions between Corporatism, Class, and Social Movements

This lecture addresses the connection between the production in the present of particular memories of the past and the ability to frame present-day conflicts in ways that render certain possibilities legitimate while excluding others. Through the ethnographic material I have gathered during my career I will show how different projects of the future (personal and collective) appeal to memories of conflict that link responsibilities and generations at different scales. Taking as my object of observation the transformations in economic relations in a heavy industrial region of northwestern Spain I will trace the connections between the languages and practices of contention, the reconfigured structures of production and governance, and the production of diverse memories (and silences) of conflict. Diverse memories produce struggles framed in class terms, or struggles framed in terms of corporatist interests, or in terms of contingently defined social claims. Through this often ambivalent delimitation of conflicts between past and present, the field of possible futures gets configured and with it the spectrum of possible political action.

The organic intellectual and the production of class in Spain

The unique and extraordinary character of working-class selforganization has been that it has tried to connect particular struggles to a general struggle in one quite special way. It has set out, as a movement, to make real what is at first sight the extraordinary claim that the defence and advancement of certain particular interests, properly brought together, are in fact in the general interest. That, after all, is the moment of transition to an idea of socialism. (Raymond Williams 1989 [1981]: 249)

Being politico in Spain: An Ethnographic Account of Memories, Silences and Public Politics

This article focuses on attitudes toward participation in public politics (being politico) in contemporary Spain and the ways in which they have been affected by the violence and fear generated by the Francoist regime (1939–1975). Social memories and silences are an important part of the processes that produce a social space for public politics today. Strategies and agency regarding basic everyday struggles in the present are deeply embedded in the history of the practices and meanings of being politico after the Civil War. We will use an ethnographic approach based on fi eldwork carried out in 1978–1979 (Gavin Smith) and in 1995–1996 (Gavin Smith and Susana Narotzky) in the area of the Vega Baja del Segura, the irrigated plain in the basin of the Segura River on the southeastern Mediterranean coast.

On waging the ideological war: Against the hegemony of form

This article seeks to rehabilitate the concept of ideology as a necessary tool of struggle against present-day capitalism. Post-structuralist epistemologies, by celebrating pluralism and the emergent character of knowledge and politics, have rendered the intellectual production of a unitary theory an obsolete remnant of a Modernist past. I contend that these well-meaning anti-authoritarian epistemologies unwillingly express the hegemony of a form that the Austrian school proposed for market competition in the first half of the 20th century. Based on ethnographic material of Spain, I acknowledge the need to develop a new conceptual framework that captures the singular experienced realities of the present but links them in a coherent unitary theoretical structure. The productive power of the ‘hegemony of form’ requires the construction of an ideology that may not only destroy it but also provide the basis of a counter-hegemony for producing a better future.

Rethinking the concept of labour

Is labour a useful concept for anthropology today? This essay attempts to respond theoretically to the challenge that the contributions to this special issue empirically pose. The essay rethinks the concept of labour by addressing three questions that deal with the relation of human work effort and capital accumulation: the first refers to alienation; the second to the difference between abstract and concrete labour; and the third to ambiguity. Over the years, these issues have addressed particular aspects of social reproduction, helping define labour as a concept, albeit a heterogeneous one, that is relationally linked to capital. Dislocation, together with the parallel concepts of dispossession, disorganization, disconnection, and differentiation, emerges prominently in the analyses of contemporary labour transformations and specificities. Finally, the essay engages with seemingly disappearing labour futures and what this means for the concept of labour. What is the value of work for capital and, conversely, the value of labouring for people today?

Hecha la ley, hecha la trampa: el espíritu "cooperativo" en la transición

Los datos de que hago uso para el planteamiento de la hipotesis han sido recogidos durante dos anos de trabajo de campo discontinuo entre diciembre de 1984 y febrero de 1986 en una zona rural olivarera de la comarca de Les Garrigues, Lerida. Concretamente los datos se refieren a Ceral y a la cooperativa de trabajo asociado S.J. del sector de la confeccion de Arges. Los datos generales provienen del Registro General de Cooperativas de Catalunya y de la legislacion sobre cooperativas de los ultimos anos (Ley de 1974, Reglamento de 1978, Ley de 1983 de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Proyecto general de Cooperativas de 1985), asi como de la bibliografia institucional que ha surgido para alentar la creacion de Cooperativas de trabajo asociado en toda Espana.