Brazilian Steel Town - Machines, Land, Money and Commoning in the Making of the Working Class

Volta Redonda is a Brazilian steel town founded in the 1940s by dictator Getúlio Vargas on an ex-coffee valley as a powerful symbol of Brazilian modernization. The city's economy, and consequently its citizen's lives, revolves around the Companha Siderurgica Nacional (CSN), the biggest industrial complex in Latin America. Although the glory days of the CSN have long passed, the company still controls life in Volta Redonda today, creating as much dispossession as wealth for the community. Brazilian Steel Town tells the story of the people tied to this ailing giant - of their fears, hopes, and everyday struggles.

List of contents

List of Figures

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Brazilian Steel-Town and the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN)

Chapter 1. Capital Enclosures, Labour Abstraction and the Struggle over Value Forms

Chapter 2. Cyclops at Work: Capital as Technology

Chapter 3. Old and New Land Questions: Capital as Land

Chapter 4. Of Ants and Steelworkers: Capital as Labor

Chapter 5. The Invention of People's Money: Capital as Money

Chapter 6. Labor as Commons

Conclusion: Towards an Anthropology of Uneven and Combined Development

References

Index

About the author

Massimiliano Mollona is Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, London, where he teaches Economic and Political Anthropology and Art and Anthropology. Among his publications are Made in Sheffield, an Ethnography of Industrial Work and Politics (2009, Berghahn) and with Don Kalb, Worldwide Mobilizations : Class Struggles and Urban Commoning (2018, Berghahn).

Product details

• Authors: Massimiliano Mollona, Mollona Massimiliano
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2019
• EAN: 9781789204339
• ISBN: 978-1-78920-433-9
• No. of pages: 334
• Series: Dislocations
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Brazil, 20th Century, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Urban, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural anthropology, Social classes, Urban communities, Rio de Janeiro (State), Iron, Steel & Metals Industries