Doctoral Dissertation Research: Disintermediation and the Reorganization of Labor

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

Research exploring changes in the contemporary workplace have tended to focus on the shift from waged, contracted employment to more flexible labor arrangements. Some view these as preconditions for creative economies that can transform productive landscapes. Others are concerned with the extent to which these regimes have generated precarity in the labor force. But what conclusions can be made when the focus of study is on those who have historically functioned outside the discipline of contract labor practices, such as artisans, merchants, and middlemen? This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically grounded scientific fieldwork, addresses a broader phenomenon that economists refer to as "disintermediation," in which middlemen are being cut out of industries and supply-chains. Global in scope and interconnected in configuration, disintermediation is rapidly transforming the lives of workers everywhere: in the fast-fashion apparel and fair trade coffee supply-chains, the hospitality and tourism sectors, and the taxi service industry. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, findings will be disseminated to organizations and individuals that explore and manage the causes, consequences, and complexities of economic precarity. Samuel Shuman, under the supervision of Dr. Jatin Dua of the University of Michigan, will explores what role disintermediation has in the reorganization of labor. The research takes place among a Hasidic community in Antwerp, Belgium, who is now in the process of reskilling its male workforce and refashioning them into local entrepreneurs. After World War II, thousands of Jewish refugees fled Eastern Europe to Western Europe. Among these refugees were Hasidim, a pietistic sect of Judaism, which landed in the port-city of Antwerp. Over 80% of its workforce depended upon the diamond industry for their economic livelihoods. In recent years, however, through the rise of national and supranational forms of regulation and e-commerce, Hasidic Jews are being cut out as middlemen in the diamond supply-chain. Within the context of this transition, the study asks three series of questions: 1) How are attitudes toward work, value, and virtue becoming reshaped through this economic transformation and through austerity policies? 2) How is surveillance informing how transactions are both conducted within the regulated industry and within an emerging, local community of entrepreneurs? 3) What does this economic transition reveal about the role of the middleman within the long history of global Capitalism and what might it illuminate about a new phase of Capitalism where middlemen may no longer be needed? Data will be gathered through a range of established ethnographic techniques over a 12-month period, including participant observation and interviews among attendees at a vocational school, traders, brokers, and artisans in the diamond bourse. In contributing to scientific work in legal and economic anthropology, this project emphasizes the economic middleman as the exemplary figure through which to understand the reorganization of modern political economies and the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within these worlds.