Dr Adam Fishwick

Job: Associate Professor/Reader in International Political Economy and Development Studies

Faculty: Business and Law

School/department: Leicester Castle Business School

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH

T: 0116 207 8723

E: adam.fishwick@dmu.ac.uk

W: dmu.ac.uk/bal

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Personal profile

Adam Fishwick is an Associate Professor/Reader in International Political Economy and Development Studies at the Department of Politics, People and Place at De Montfort University, Leicester. He currently holds two research leadership roles as Associate Head of Department (Research and Enterprise) in the Department of Politics, People and Place and Faculty Head of Research Students for the Faculty of Business and Law, where he is responsible for postgraduate research.

Adam is an active, interdisciplinary researcher and a member of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity and the People, Organisations and Work Institute in the Faculty of Business and Law. He is also co-founder of the Global Inequalities Research Group, which includes researchers from across politics, international relations, and law.

His research interests include: the political economy of work and development, labour and social movements in Latin America, and alternatives to capitalism. He has published widely on these topics and, for 2020/21, was awarded a Leverhulme Trust International Academic Fellowship for his research on labour activism and austerity in Argentina and Chile. Adam has conducted extensive research on and in these countries, working in collaboration with researchers from the region in ongoing research projects on trade unions and grassroots collective self-organising.

Adam is interested in supervising PhDs and supporting postdoctoral applications in any of these research areas as well as (but are not limited to) the following:

International political economy of/and development
Political economy of work and labour in the Global South
Labour and social movements in Latin America
Alternatives to capitalism and collective self-organisation

Research group affiliations

Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA)

People, Organisations and Work Institute (POWI)

Global Inequalities Research Group (GIRG)

Publications and outputs

Post-capitalist Futures: Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope
Post-capitalist Futures: Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope Fishwick, Adam; Kiersey, Nicholas This book critically engages with the proliferation of literature on postcapitalism, which is rapidly becoming an urgent area of inquiry, both in academic scholarship and in public life. It collects the insights from scholars working across the field of Critical International Political Economy to interrogate how we might begin to envisage a political economy of postcapitalism. The authors foreground the agency of workers and other capitalist subjects, and their desire to engage in a range of radical experiments in decommodification and democratisation both in the workplace and in their daily lives. It includes a broad range of ideas including the future of social reproduction, human capital circulation, political Islam, and the political economy of exclusion. Rather than focusing on the ending of capitalism as an implosion of the value-money form, this book focuses on the dream of equal participation in the determination of people's shared collective destiny.
Mapping Post-capitalist Futures in Dark Times
Mapping Post-capitalist Futures in Dark Times Fishwick, Adam This chapter explores the forms through which pathways towards post-capitalism might emerge, situating his argument through the work of George Ciccariello-Maher and his ‘decolonised dialectic’. In doing so, it foregrounds the violent dynamics of exclusion that characterise capitalism as a means to conceptualise how this might present the grounds on which prefigurative practices can generate a forceful rupture with the crises of the present. This chapter argues that these paths exist beyond any inclusive technological utopianism and Western-centric universalisms in a multiplicity of agency rooted in diverse particularisms. As Wark notes, the question driving politics now is no longer how to ‘manage biopower’ – that living component required for the reproduction of global capitalism – but rather: ‘from whom is the maintenance of life to be withdrawn first?’ (Wark 2014). This is hideously exemplified in recent times. Violent border regimes in Europe and North America oversee those fleeing intersecting crises, withdrawing any ‘maintenance of life’ as they die in deserts or at sea, while the pandemic crisis of Covid-19 has seen governments neglect marginalised communities through reckless approaches to public health, leaving hundreds of thousands dead. Drawing on the ‘decolonising dialectic’ of George Ciccariello-Maher (2017), the chapter argues that we can fruitfully rethink routes toward an uncertain post-capitalist future from the starting point of these dynamics of exclusion. The drive to exclude, and its centrality to capitalism’s own self-reproduction, creates sites and spaces in which excluded actors organise through the particularism of their exclusion to engender a rupture in and against the prevailing political order. It is, I argue, this understanding of dialectical motion that can better help us to situate possible routes toward post-capitalism in the lived realities of excluded populations in the Global South and beyond.
The Endings of Capitalism Beyond Crisis and Hope
The Endings of Capitalism Beyond Crisis and Hope Fishwick, Adam; Kiersey, Nicholas
Living in the Catastrophe
Living in the Catastrophe Fishwick, Adam; Kiersey, Nicholas
The Political Economy of Work in the Global South: Reflections on Labour Process Theory
The Political Economy of Work in the Global South: Reflections on Labour Process Theory Hammer, Anita; Fishwick, Adam Part of the Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment series, this edited collection brings together contributions from leading international scholars to initiate an important dialogue between labour process analysis and scholarship on work in the Global South. This book characterises the forms of work and labour process that characterise globalising capitalism today and addresses core analytical concerns within Labour Process Theory and research on work in the South. It explores how a wide range of production relations in the Global South, ranging from formal to informal employment and self-employment, are embedded in wider social relations of gender, caste, religion and ethnicity, and are related to wider patterns of commodification and resistance. Drawing on cutting-edge research, the book’s chapters consider a diverse range of working situations, covering migrant workers in the Middle East, commercial surrogacy work in India and cooperative garment workers in Argentina. In offering a novel reading of the political economy of work in the Global South and shedding light on lesser-considered fields of work and worker organization, this volume will provide new insights for making sense of the changing world of work for students, scholars, labour activists and practitioners alike.
Book Review: Workers’ Movements and Strikes in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective by Jörg Nowak, Madhumita Dutta and Peter Birke (eds)
Book Review: Workers’ Movements and Strikes in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective by Jörg Nowak, Madhumita Dutta and Peter Birke (eds) Fishwick, Adam The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
Book review: Ambassadors of the Working Class: Argentina's International Labor Activists and Cold War Democracy in the Americas‐by Semán, Ernesto
Book review: Ambassadors of the Working Class: Argentina's International Labor Activists and Cold War Democracy in the Americas‐by Semán, Ernesto Fishwick, Adam
El “socialismo cotidiano” de los trabajadores textiles chilenos: Trazando una politica radical a traves de la prensa obrera, 1936-1973
El “socialismo cotidiano” de los trabajadores textiles chilenos: Trazando una politica radical a traves de la prensa obrera, 1936-1973 Fishwick, Adam A diferencia de las experiencias en otros países, en Chile, luego de 1968, un gobierno socialista llegó al poder con el triunfo electoral de Salvador Allende y la Unidad Popular, respaldado por movimientos obreros que pregonaban la constitución de un socialismo. Mediante el uso de fragmentos recogidos de la prensa obrera durante los años 1930, 1950 y 1970, el objetivo de este artículo será identificar el contenido cambiante de la política socialista y de los sectores radicalizados que convergieron en esta victoria electoral. Asimismo, estos cambios serían registrables a través de la “experiencia cotidiana” de los obreros de la industria textil. Los trabajadores de este sector estaban en la vanguardia de los cambios profundos durante este periodo, desde la industrialización por sustitución de importaciones comenzada en la década de 1930 hasta el gobierno socialista de Salvador Allende de 1970 a 1973, donde las principales empresas textiles se encontraban en proceso de ocupación y nacionalización. Al trazar la evolución de las ideas socialistas en estas publicaciones —por los sindicatos, los partidos políticos y, en la década de 1970, por los trabajadores en las mismas fábricas ocupadas—, podemos desentrañar el desarrollo de una ideología de tipo radical y socialista que luego convergió en la victoria electoral de la UP. Metodológicamente, tomamos como apoyo el trabajo del sociólogo chileno Tomás Moulian (1993) y su concepto de las ideas “en uso” para examinar cómo las ideas radicales se desarrollan y cambian en su interacción con los conflictos sociales de cada época. En consecuencia, identificamos cuatro áreas en las que se desarrollaron estas ideas: expresión desde el puesto de trabajo; interpretación del descontento a través del discurso legalista y radical; la complejidad de las ideas socialistas y antiimperialistas chilenas; y la construcción de la memoria histórica. En definitiva, intentaré demostrar cómo estas cuatro características de las ideas socialistas chilenas estuvieron representadas en el “socialismo cotidiano” que interactuó en las ocupaciones de fábricas y transformaciones sociales nacientes desde 1970. This article has been published open access - the journal is fully open access.
Workplace Occupation and the Possibilities of Popular Power in Chile and Argentina, 1972-6
Workplace Occupation and the Possibilities of Popular Power in Chile and Argentina, 1972-6 Fishwick, Adam The recent wave of occupations has had a transformative effect on radical politics, but as Michael Hardt (2015) has noted, many have been restricted in their social and spatial expansion. Reflecting on these challenges, this article examines workplace occupation in the coordinadoras interfabriles in Argentina (1975-6) and the cordones industriales in Chile (1972-3) to understand how they overcame barriers to such expansion. Following debates on space and occupations (Halvorsen 2017a; Vasudevan 2015; Risager 2016), I unpack the possibilities for popular power that emerged using approaches from critical labour studies (Atzeni 2010; Azzellini 2016) and autonomist Marxism (Zibechi 2012; Negri 2005). First, I outline the generative role of the workplace in producing these possibilities in a context of wider social change. Second, I demonstrate how the capacity for expansion lay in the simultaneous capacity to disrupt and reconstruct social relations derived from solidarities that exceeded the existing physical space of occupation.
Labour Control and Developmental State Theory: A New Perspective on Import-Substitution Industrialisation in Latin America
Labour Control and Developmental State Theory: A New Perspective on Import-Substitution Industrialisation in Latin America Fishwick, Adam Drawing on historical research on the period of import-substitution industrialisation (ISI) in Chile and Argentina between the 1930s and 1960s, this article claims that developmental state theory (DST) on Latin America obfuscates a crucial feature of state intervention in the region. Specifically, despite a long-standing interest in state-society relations, it has thus far been unable to adequately incorporate labour-state relations and labour control in the workplace. This is because, in various guises, DST privileges state-society relations mediated by institutions from which labour is implicitly or explicitly excluded. In seeking to extend the analytical lens of DST, I combine critical labour relations and labour process theories to identify the purposive establishment of ‘regimes of labour control’ via changing institutional and workplace relations. Using this framework, I show how the often-vacillating strategies pursued by the state under ISI in Chile and Argentina and its inefficient outcomes can be better understood by incorporating these efforts designed to exert control over labour. The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. open access article

To see all of Adam's research outputs click here.

Key research outputs

Fishwick, Adam & Nicholas Kiersey (2021) Post-capitalist Futures: Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope (Pluto Press)

Hammer, Anita & Adam Fishwick (2020) The Political Economy of Work in the Global South: Reflections on Labour Process (Red Globe Press)

Fishwick, Adam (2019) 'Workplace occupation and the possibilities of popular power in Chile and Argentina, 1972-6', Globalizations

Fishwick, Adam & Heather Connolly (2018) Austerity and Working-Class Resistance: Survival, Disruption and Creation in Hard Times (Rowman and Littlefield International)

Fishwick, Adam (2018) 'Labour Control and Developmental State Theory: A New Perspective on Import-Substitution Industrialisation', Development and Change

For further details of Adam's publications see here.

Research interests/expertise

International political economy and/of development

Political economy of work and labour in the Global South

Labour and social movements in Latin America

Alternatives to capitalism and collective self-organisation

Areas of teaching

International political economy

International relations

Development studies

Urban studies

Qualitative Research Methods

Qualifications

PhD International Relations

MSc Comparative and Cross Cultural Research Methods

MA Global Political Economy

BA International Relations and Development Studies

Courses taught

Adam has led and taught across a wide range of modules in the Department of Politics, People and Place, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has supervised multiple undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations. He also delivers regular sessions on the Doctoral Training Programme, particularly around qualitative methods.

Postgraduate modules: Globalisation; Democratising Urban Spaces; Fundamentals of Empirical Social Resesarch.

Undergraduate modules: The Making of a Global World, Political Research in Action, Introduction to Contemporary International Relations, Introduction to Globalisation, Introduction to Politics.

Honours and awards

Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (2019)

BAL Research Oscar for Excellence in International Collaboration (2019)

Future Research Leaders, De Montfort University (2017-18)

Membership of professional associations and societies

Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economic, 2021-

British International Studies Association, 2013-18.

International Studies Association, 2014-19.

Society for Latin American Studies, 2015-20.

International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy, 2016-

European International Studies Association, 2018-20.

Professional licences and certificates

PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 2018

Projects

1. Trade Union Solidarity and Crisis in Latin America. This project focuses on trade unions, crisis, and trade union solidarities in Latin America, focusing specifically on Argentina and Chile. This ongoing comparative project was supported by the Leverhulme Trust annd aims to incorporate theoretical insights from global labour studies to explore the changing conditions and mobilisations of solidarity in crisis.

2. Surviving the Informal City. This project explores the intersections of informality across work and everyday life, incorporating perspectives on precarious work, informal relations of governance at neighbourhood levels and the ways in which communities navigate and survive these dual conditions of informality. This collaborative project focus on cities across the Global South in Argentina, India, and Ethiopia.

3. Radical Labour and the State in Chile and Argentina, 1930-1976. This project aims to produce a research monograph on the relationship between labour movements and development in the period of rapid industrialisation in Argentina and Chile during the twentieth century. ocusing on leading industrial sectors of the time, the book will aim to demonstrate the formative impact of labour protest on development strategy by mapping the trajectory of industrial development through the combination of economic policy measures adopted by the state and in the labour process.

You can find out more about Adam's current research projects here.

Conference attendance

Selected recent and upcoming conference attendance:

Post-capitalist Futures: Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope, Panel Chair and Organiser, IIPPE 11^th Annual Conference, 12-16 September 2021.

Essential work in social infrastructures: surviving in the informal city (with Valeria Guarneros-Meza and Maurizio Atzeni), Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference, 31 August-3 September 2021.

Growth-regime transition and organized labour (with Adrian Bua Roberts), Critical Political Economy Research Network, European Sociological Association Annual Conference, 31 August-3 September 2021.

Post-capitalist Futures: Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope, Panel Chair and Organiser, SASE Annual Conference, 2-5 July 2021.

Trade union solidarities under austerity: Labour activism in Argentina 2015-19 (with Lucila D’Urso), Economic Worlds Seminar Series, University of Nottingham, 25 March 2021.

Trade unions under austerity: labour activism in the post-2015 automobile sector in Argentina (with Lucila D’Urso), IV ISA Forum of Sociology, Porto Alegre, 23-27 February 2021.

‘More of the same? Union mobilization in Argentina’s automobile sector after the end of the Pink Tide’, Labour Struggles and Development, International Workshop, University of Nottingham, 25-26 June 2019.

For further details of conference attendance see here

Current research students

Martina Locorotondo, 1st Supervisor (with Arianna Giovannini and Julia Shaw), October 2019 -

Planning a Common City: Experimental Community Practices and the Making of Alternative Art Institutions in Italian Cities

Sharon Ball, 1st Supervisor (with Steve Parker and Julia Shaw), October 2019 -

The Right to Food in the UK? Examining opportunities for, and barriers to, innovative approaches, collaboration and transformative possibilities towards just and sustainable food access

Heather Powell, 1st Supervisor (with Dave Walsh), November 2017 -

Working conditions in supply chain re-shoring. A case study of Leicester garment manufacturing

Completed research students:

Marco Gottero (with Anita Hammer), October 2017 -September 2019

Workers Out of Control: Recuperations, Reverberations and Communalism from Argentina to Greece

Externally funded research grants information

Leverhulme Trust International Academic Fellowship, 2019

Methodological innovation for comparative labour research in Argentina and Chile

Internally funded research project information

Selected internal grant funding awards:

DMU QR Global Challenges Research Fund

Surviving the informal city, PI with Valeria Guarneros-Meza (Co-I), Maurizio Atzeni, Andreas Admasie, Supriya Roy Chowdhury, and Ephrem Shiferaw (International Partners), £4 350, February - July 2021.

Surviving the informal city: Precarious workers and the local state in Argentina, India and Ethiopia, Project Principal Investigator with Valeria Guarneros-Meza (Co-I) and Maurizio Atzeni (Lead Project Partner), £22 040, December 2019 – July 2020.

Professional esteem indicators

I have been an editor with the following journals:

Sage Open (article editor)

I have peer-reviewed articles for the following journals:

- Labor History
- New Perspectives in Sociology
- Nationalities Papers
- Bulletin of Latin American Research
- European Political Science
- Globalizations
- Journal of Labor and Society
- Capital and Class
- Comparative European Politics
- Journal of Peasant Studies

I have peer-reviewed manuscripts and proposals for the following academic publishers:

- Oxford University Press
- Sage
- Zed Books
- Bristol University Press
- Oxford University Press
- Routledge