Beyond Decent Work explores the history of the Indonesian labor movement, using three contemporary case studies to shed light on the development of Indonesia’s labor struggles and trade union strategies. Drawing on extensive and recent qualitative fieldwork, Felix Hauf argues that the economic idea of “decent work” plays a central role in current trade union strategies at the expense of more radical—or traditional working-class—strategies of industrial action, even though the latter have been more effective in fulfilling workers’ demands for higher wages and better working conditions. Hauf’s analysis offers unique insight into the labor dynamics of Indonesia and Southeast Asia more broadly, revealing how genuinely democratic and independent unions—confronted with rival unions controlled by businesses, Indonesian subcontractors, multinational corporations, and the Indonesian state—struggle to create an economy outside the confines of neoliberal capitalism.

A unique account of labor relations in the modern Chinese economy, Beyond the Iron Rice Bowl brings together more than thirty in-depth case studies of key multinational, Chinese, and overseas Chinese enterprises in the automotive, electronic, and garment industries. Analyzing the regimes of production and their segmentations in the context of global and national production networks, the authors discuss Chinese and international industrial relations theory and labor sociology and explore the perspectives of collective bargaining, trade union reform, and democratic workplace representation in China. 

Research into biography has historically focused almost wholly on the lives of people in the wealthier nations of the Global North. This book corrects that with a focus on the biographical histories of people—seen as part of larger groups or collectives, whether religious or political—from the Global South, with a particular focus on Africa and the Middle East. Taking the perspective of biographical research and figurational sociology, the essays gathered here break new ground in the study of biography.