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Precarious Work, the Fate of Care and Activist Research in a Globalizing Spain

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Precarious Work, the Fate of Care and Activist Research in a Globalizing Spain Social Movements as Sites of Knowledge Production: Precarious Work, the Fate of Care and Activist Research in a Globalizing Spain María Isabel Casas-Cortés A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved By: Dr. Arturo Escobar (Advisor) Dr. Lawerence Grossberg Dr. Dorothy Holland Dr. John Pickles Dr. Charles Price Creative Commons License- 2009 María Isabel Casas-Cortés This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. ii ABSTRACT MARIA ISABEL CASAS-CORTES: Social Movements as Sites of Knowledge Production: Precarious Work, the Fate of Care and Activist Research in a Globalizing Spain (Under the direction of Arturo Escobar) This dissertation centers on the shifting cultures of labor within the European Union due to economic flexibilization, new patterns of feminine work and transformations in immigration. I analyze how civil society efforts are engaging these overlapping processes through the practice of activist research. These grassroots projects design, conduct and distribute their own research, influencing public debates and everyday understandings of labor. The study focuses on contemporary european movements engaging transforming notions and practices of work: mainly, the increasing “precarization” of labor conditions and everyday life; and the effects generating what these movements call a “care crisis” with reference to changes in social reproduction. I focus on Spanish feminist organizations as exemplary of alternative development models stemming from social movements. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS What this dissertation does not show is the indispensable web of caring practices behind it. My main acknowledgement is to the steady and everyday support from family, friends, as well as Tata (my toddler’s way to refer to God), who accompanied me during this doctoral journey. I especially like to mention my parents, Flaviano Casas y Maribel Cortes, for their joy-filled encouragement and understanding throughout the PhD program, despite being a high-demanding project in terms of distance and time. My brother Antonio Casas and his pareja Teresa Benito for their affinity and complicity. My in-laws, Juan and Maria Cobarrubias, full of personal experience in the matter, have always provided indispensable advice and staunch support. Our son Gabriel himself also deserves some thanks for all the playtime missed because mama was “working with letters”. Furthermore, this text is the fruit of many unexpected encounters and long term collaborations. As such, rather than a lonely endeavor, it feels more as a process of writing with. Writing with many individuals, networks and groups -both within and outside the university- that have been central through this six-year project. This holds especially true to the intimate teamwork conducted with my life-long journey companion, Sebastian Cobarrubias, conducting a PhD program in Geography at UNC-CH. Nonetheless, due to institutional requirements this work appears as authored by a single person. The following is an attempt to name, albeit partially, the many contributors to this PhD dissertation. iv Firstly, I would like to thank and acknowledge Dr. Arturo Escobar as my advisor, intellectual mentor and personal companion. Since I first contacted him in 2003 inspired by his innovative anthropological work and political commitment, he has been a pillar throughout my family’s years in North Carolina. His intellectual breadth and openness, his consistent advice to improve my work, his support in navigating institutional labyrinths or financial duress have been constants. I would be hard-pressed to even imagine a better mentor or supervisor. Also, I would like to thank the other members of my doctoral committee: the cutting-edge anthropologists Dorothy Holland and Charles Price; the leading Cultural Studies figure Lawrence Grossberg; and finally, the prolific and generous geographer John Pickles. The four of them have been central in guiding me through the politics of academia with a critical and open perspective, offering personal, financial and political support throughout. Secondly, this dissertation is the result of the intellectual growth gained in several working groups. My advisor and committee members are active initiators and participants of a series of inter-disciplinary working groups hosted through the University Program in Cultural Studies during the years of my PhD program. Being able to fully participate in these dynamic research groups -especially the Social Movements Working Group, the Cultures of the Economies Working Group, and the Autonomous Politics Working Group-, have provided me a unique intellectual background on politics, economics, and research methodologies. The Duke-UNC collaborative working project on the Geo-Politics of Knowledge has also nurtured my intellectual trajectory with questions of post/de-colonial studies. I hope that relevant university administrators are aware of the importance of maintaining these spaces of multi-departmental interdisciplinary work and debate, allowing renown professors from various fields to work in v collaborative projects with graduate students, producing publications and conference presentations on leading issues. Also, I would like to mention the Anthropology Department at UNC, which through faculty, staff and other colleagues has been a great host, intellectually and personally, for me. Thirdly, a large reason for the project being carried to its conclusion is the long-term relationship with other graduate students, with whom I have developed not only unique friendships, but also collectively produced papers, panels and workshops at UNC, Duke and for several editions of the Anthropological American Association Conference. I am especially thinking of Dana Powell and Michal Osterweill, who have been key during the final stages of the writing process, mainly thanks to a consistent dissertation writing group. This dissertation then bears the stamp of their careful reading and ability to provide critical and constructive feedback. Furthermore, and very importantly for the production of this work is the inspiration and input provided by different activist groups in Spain, the United States and Argentina. Anyone who knows Sebastian and myself or has read this/both of our dissertations knows how these groups have been central to much of our political thinking and action in recent years. Colectivo Situaciones in Buenos Aires sparked our imagination about the possibilities of activist research. Emily Forman and Daniel Tucker, companeros from our days in Chicago-Direct Action Network, helped attune our senses to research and mapping practices as sites of political intervention. Their work and militancy continues to provoke and delight us. The Team Colors collective, the editors of the Atlas of Radical Cartography, Constituent Imagination as well as the Transform/ Transversal journal of the European Institute of Progressive and Cultural Politics, all believed that different aspects of the work for this dissertation were relevant enough to current political vi struggles, publishing them both online and in print or otherwise helping to push similar debates forward. Finally, our active engagement, development of affinity and practices of mutual aid with two activist research/mapping projects have been key to provide not only inspiration for many of the ideas in this manuscript but many of our own political practices of the last years. These two referential groups are Precarias a la Deriva, based in Madrid, and the Counter Cartographies Collective (3C’s), based in Chapel Hill. Indeed, this dissertation itself is the result of the powerful impact of Precarias in my understanding of politics, research and care practices. In a similar fashion, 3C’s has been a great lesson in how to politicize one’s own terrains and everyday life in the American university and in how to make the personal political without being heavy handed or self-righteous about any of these. Thanks to Liz Mason-Deese, Tim Stallman, Craig Dalton, Cecilia Durbin, Tu Lan and John Pickles for being such a great team and cohort of solid friends. In addition to those, many friends and colleagues at UNC and the Carrboro area have been key companions over these years in both the professional and personal spheres: Leslie Alabi, Elena Yehia and Mario Blaser, Vinci Daro, Gretchen Fox, Paul Dione and Jennifer Esperanza, Sara Akreman, Eric Katchmer, Matt Reilly, Joseph Palis, Christian Sellar, Angela Cacciaru, Kevin Wilkinson and Flor Evangelista, Mark Hayward, Sushmita Jha and Siddharth Vastav, Diane Nelson and Mark Driscoll. Last, but not least, I would like to mention the intellectual encouragement and professional advice for developing an academic career in Spain, received by anthropologists and social scientists from the other side of the Atlantic, including Susana Narotzky, Ubaldo Martinez, Francisco Ferrandiz, Fatima Cruz, Jose Antonio Fernandez de Rota, Mercedes Cano, Jose Luis vii Anta, Liliana Suarez, Cristina Sanchez Carretero, Antoni Luna, Cristina Vega, Francisco Sanchez Perez, and Anthony Arnhold of the Anthropological Association of Castilla y Leon “Michael
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