Climate Finance and Labor Resistances. The Critique of Definitory Power in the South Africa Campaign One Million Climate Jobs

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Emanuele Leonardi
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2015/138
Language Italian Pages 15 P. 240-254 File size 124 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2015-138015
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The paper argues that the increasing importance of the financial dimension of climate change is mostly due to an epochal transformation in the social composition of labor (emergence of cognitive capitalism) and to its subsumption under financial capital. The author’s aim is to understand as well as criticize such twofold process. He firstly discuss the notion of definitory power - through a reference to Ulrich Beck and Christian Marazzi - and the way it reframes the links between class-situations and risk-situations. Subsequently, he analyzes how such power has historically shaped carbon markets, namely the privileged agents of the financialization of global warming. Finally, he focuses on the case study represented by the South Africa campaign One Million Climate Jobs to highlight how climate justice enacts an alternative vision of the relationship between labor and climate change.

Keywords: Carbon trading, climate justice, cognitive capitalism, financialization of climate change, definitory power, One Million Climate Jobs campaign

  1. Aa.Vv. (2011). One Million Climate Jobs [South Africa].
  2. Barca S. (2015). Greening the Job. Trade Unions, Climate Change and the Political Ecology of Labour. In: Bryant R., International Handbook of Political Ecology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
  3. Barchiesi F. (2008). Hybrid Social Citizenship and the Normative Centrality of Wage Labour in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Mediations, 24(1): 52-67.
  4. Beck U. (2000). La società del rischio. Roma: Carocci.
  5. Beck U. (2011). Conditio Humana. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
  6. Bellofiore R. (2012). La crisi capitalistica, la barbarie che avanza. Trieste: Asterios.
  7. Bond P. (2005). Elite Transition. Londra: Pluto Press.
  8. Chicchi F. (2005). Capitalismo, lavoro e forme di soggettività. In: Laville J-L., Marazzi C., La Rosa M., Chicchi F., Reinventare il lavoro. Roma: Sapere 2000.
  9. Chicchi F. (2012). Soggettività smarrita. Milano: Bruno Mondadori.
  10. Chicchi F., Leonardi E., a cura di (2011). Lavoro in frantumi. Verona: Ombre corte.
  11. Chicchi F., Roggero G., a cura di (2009). Lavoro e produzione del valore nell’economia della conoscenza. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  12. Climate Policy Initiative (2014). Global Landscape of Climate Finance.
  13. Descheneau P., Paterson M. (2012), Between Desire and Routine: Assembling Environment and Finance in Carbon Markets. Antipode, 43(3): 662-681.
  14. Edwards P. (2010). A Vast Machine. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  15. Foucault M. (1982). Il soggetto e il potere. In: Dreyfus H., Rabinow P., La ricerca di Michel Foucault. Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie.
  16. Foucault M. (2005). Nascita della biopolitica. Milano: Feltrinelli. Fumagalli A., Mezzadra S. (a cura di) (2009). Crisi dell’economia globale. Verona: Ombre corte.
  17. Gilbertson T., Reyes O. (2009). Carbon Trading. Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.
  18. Hallowes D. (2011). Toxic Futures. Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
  19. Iacomelli A. (2005). Oltre Kyoto. Roma: Franco Muzzio.
  20. IPCC (2014). Cross-Cutting Investment and Finance Issues.
  21. La Rosa M. (2005). Le dimensioni emergenti della società dei lavori. In: Laville J-L., Marazzi C., La Rosa M., Chicchi F., Reinventare il lavoro. Roma: Sapere 2000.
  22. Leonardi E. (2012a). Biopolitics of Climate Change: Carbon Commodities, Environmental Profanations and the Lost Innocence of Use-Value.
  23. Leonardi E. (2012b). Per una critica della green economy neoliberale. Culture della sostenibilità, 9(1): 30-45.
  24. Leonardi E. (2014). La natura dogmatica dei mercati-carbonio. Culture della sostenibilità. 13(1): 107-120.
  25. Lippert I. (2011). Extended Carbon Cognition as a Machine. Computational Culture, 1(1): 1-15.
  26. Marazzi C. (2005). Capitalismo digitale e modello antropogenetico di produzione. in: Laville J-L., Marazzi C., La Rosa M., Chicchi F., Reinventare il lavoro. Roma: Sapere 2000.
  27. Marazzi C. (2007). Measure and Finance.
  28. Marx K. (2012). Grundrisse. Roma: manifestolibri.
  29. Mattei U. (2011). Beni comuni: un manifesto. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
  30. Pisani G. (2014). Le ragioni del reddito di esistenza universale. Verona: Ombre corte.
  31. Ross A. (2011). Vita e lavoro nell’era del cambiamento climatico. Ii:n Chicchi F., Leonardi E., a cura di, Lavoro in frantumi. Verona: Ombre corte.
  32. Virno P. (2014). Grammatica della moltitudine. Roma: DeriveApprodi.

  • Sindacato e politiche industriali in transizione. Il caso di industria italiana autobus Charlotte Bez, Angelo Castellani, Emanuela La Rocca, Gianluca Sala, in ECONOMIA E SOCIETÀ REGIONALE 2/2024 pp.41
    DOI: 10.3280/ES2024-002004

Emanuele Leonardi, Finanza climatica e resistenze del lavoro. La critica del potere di definizione nella campagna sudafricana One Million Climate Jobs in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 138/2015, pp 240-254, DOI: 10.3280/SL2015-138015