The Political Economy of Transition: Socio-Ecological Change in Medellin & Antioquia

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically transformed perceptions of work (Hodder, 2020). Wide-scale socioeconomic changes, including furlough pay, work-from-home arrangements and debates about what constitutes a "key-worker" have demonstrated that work is malleable, and can be transformed through human action. The determining role which human agency maintains with regards to work, although under-researched across the wider literature, has fascinated me throughout the pandemic. In the United States, this determination has taken the form of resistance against work and working conditions. A resurged trade union movement has mobilised against poor working conditions and withheld labour in a challenge to employers. During October 2021 alone, over 100,000 US workers participated in industrial action (By contrast, 44,500 US workers went on strike in the entirety of 2010), with commentators suggesting that this marks a significant shift in power from business to labour (Thorbecke, 2021; Economist, 2021). At the same time, resistance to the very notion of work has developed. Online communities such as "R/Anti-work," which aim to expose a "fundamental inadequacy and sweeping problem with paid work as a system of income allocation," have witnessed substantial growths in following and media coverage (Ehrlich, 2021 unpaginated). Anti-work groups have grown to such a degree that major financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, have designated them as a "long-term risk" to labour market participation (Financial Times, 2022). This project seeks to explore and critically assess the growth and potential of these two movements.

Research Question
To what extent, and why, have trade union and anti-work movements in the USA grown and developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This research question is underpinned by three objectives:
1. To use an innovative combination of 'real-world' and digital ethnographic methods to collect data on trade union and anti-work movements.
2. To critically assess the impact that these social movements have had as forms of resistance, investigating their influence and potential to transform the future of work.
3. To identify the prospective directions which work may take globally, in light of these movements.

Literature Review
This research project will offer a novel contribution into debates concerning the "crisis of work." The current literature, which can be traced back to Frey and Osborne's paper The Future of Employment (2013; Hester, 2018), posits an existing and accelerating state of affairs in which workers are increasingly forced into precarious employment, buttressed a seemingly ubiquitous risk of job automation (Mason, 2015; West, 2018; Smith, 2020). Importantly, this crisis is framed as an 'automatic' objective technical process stemming from job-replacing technological advancement and overarching economic developments (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; Srnicek & Williams, 2016; Bastani, 2018). As such, existing approaches to the future of work neglect the role of subjectivity and human intervention in favour of a technological determinism which has been contradicted by the realities of the pandemic (Dinerstein & Pitts, 2021 p.6). The literature therefore fails to account for the influence that struggles and resistances can have on changing our relationship to work. This produces a one-dimensional narrative which risks impeding the political and social calls for a "more inclusive" post-pandemic recovery by 1) ignoring the influence that labour movements and human agency can have on changing 'work,' and 2) leaving unchallenged the assumptions made about mass automation and the future of work (Mendoza, 2020; Spencer, 2018). To mitigate against this risk, this project will research the concrete resistances to work which have developed during the pandemic. Conceptually, I will draw on the 'critique of political economy as a critical social theory' theoretical approach to accomplish this project.