Preliminary Programme

There are many co-operatives of coffee growers throughout the world, but Indian Coffee House is perhaps the only instance where coffee-shops are run by the workers themselves. Since the late nineteenth century, when the British began enquiries with regard to the prospects of economic co-operation in India, various experiments had been undertaken particularly in the field of agricultural credit. Co-operation was high on the agenda of the post-independence government (1947-64) formed by Nehru. Till the mid-1950s more than 95 percent of the workers in the coffeehouses were recruited from Kerala, where the first Communist state government was formed in 1955. With the active support of A.K. Gopalan, the Communist leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, the more than 1000 members of the class-four staff of the Coffee Board organized themselves into a movement that led to the formation of the co-operative societies.
With special reference to the Indian Coffee Houses under the Thrissur Society in Kerala and the Calcutta Society, and drawing on interviews carried out in Allahabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi, Thrissur and Trivandrum, this paper will provide an analysis of the structure and functioning of the coffee workers’ co-operatives. At a time when the liberal economic agenda pursued by the government of India since the early 1990s is under scrutiny for the sectors it leaves out, this chapter underlines how the attempts made by a handful of underprivileged members of society in challenging the decision of their employers and successfully forming the co-operatives they have been running for more than fifty years, are demonstrative of the power of the subaltern in taking their lot in their own hands provided they are backed by the state and the classes they serve. At the same time, it will be further argued, the weakness of the coffee workers’ cooperatives is inherent in their structure.
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Since the 1930s, boxing has become one of the most popular sports among Brazilian workers. São Paulo, the country’s largest industrial area was the main centre of practice and organization of the national boxing. Practiced in specialized academies, but also in trade unions, neighbourhood clubs and factories, pugilism achieved huge notoriety between the 1940s and 1960s. This paper analyzes the particular role that activists from the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) played both in the practicing and dissemination of this sport. I am also interested in the connections between boxing and the working class culture in that period. Special attention will be given to the Zumbano family, the most traditional and famous “dynasty” of Brazilian boxing. The patriarchs of this family played an important role in the trade union and communist politics, alongside a successful construction of a space in the sporting world in São Paulo and Brazil in the mid-twentieth century. In addition, the paper will explore the connections between the sportive and political "militancy ". (Show less)

In this presentation we will realize of some of the results at which we have arrived in the study of the Chilean migrant, which they saw forced to the coup d'état establish itself in our zone after produced against the government of Salvador Allende in September, 1973. They interacted and contributed to the conformation of the working class re-dressing particular interest for us, to know how they articulated a conscience of class developed during the experience of the Government of the Popular Unit, and the dizzy development of a society who was constructed from an industrialization protected and subsidized in our region.


Keywords: Exile Chile Chubut

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Guilds in early modern France portrayed themselves as harmonious institutions that seamlessly integrated their members into hierarchical relationships that encouraged efficient production and social concord. Master craftsmen justified the substantial economic benefits they reaped from guild status by arguing that they prevented workers from riotous behavior and compelled them to contribute productively to the economy. Without the guilds, workers would create social havoc by working sporadically, if at all, and engaging in disruptive behavior.
Historians of guilds have challenged this understanding of corporations, showing how strife and conflict, both formal and informal, marked relations within the regulated crafts. Numerous court cases involving the guilds themselves as well as their members demonstrate how much guild culture revolved around enforcing self-definition, exclusion of rivals and simple animosity. Far from the amicable rituals described in statute, reception banquets, judging of masterpieces and confraternal events were occasions for brawling and score settling as often as not.
An aspect of guild culture that has been overlooked is the charged emotional content of court cases and police complaints. When masters and journeymen testified they employed emotionally charged language that couched their positions not simply in terms of interest and advantage, the lexicon Steven Kaplan and Michael Sonenscher for example, have employed. Their analysis stresses the economic and honorific dimensions of dispute. My analysis, which uses William Reddy’s framework of emotions as another tool for grasping culture, shows how artisans, as participants in the emerging 18th century culture of sentiment, used emotional language tactically, as a means to support their interests, and as a tool to express how they understood identity as members of guilds. I argue that artisans used emotional expressions to push back against the conception of guilds endorsed by masters and jurés and assert their own vision of artisanal identity and culture.
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