In a context marked by the precariousness of working conditions and the proliferation of intermittent, invisible and unpaid forms of employment, a study involving the participation of the University of Barcelona questions the foundations on which work has traditionally been understood within capitalism. The article, "Simultaneous disruptions: forms of livelihood, fragmentation of classes, and social labor in the twenty-first century" and published in the scientific journal Dialectical Anthropology , is signed by researchers Susana Narotzky, professor of Social Anthropology at the UB, and Sharryn Kasmir, professor at Hofstra University (United States).
The main thesis of the study is clear: wage labour, understood as the central social relation of capitalism, should not be considered the universal or dominant model. On the contrary, the global economy is based on a wide range of informal, precarious and often invisible forms of work, ranging from temporary and informal jobs to labour practices strongly conditioned by the extraction of natural resources or by situations of social and economic confinement. These activities, although they do not fit into classic labour schemes, are fundamental to the production of value in the capitalist system.
The authors argue for a redefinition of the concept of "social labour", understood not only as work that is remunerated through a wage, but also as the collective human effort - often unrecognized - that enables the reproduction of life and capital accumulation. This perspective makes visible forms of work that have often been relegated to statistical and legal marginality, but which underpin a large part of modern economies, both in the north and south. Thus, it offers a profound critique of the interpretative frameworks inherited from classical political economy, and presents a new grammar for understanding labour in the era of fragmented capitalism.
The article is structured around several ethnographic cases that exemplify this reality. In Mexico, indigenous families collect pebbles from the beach to export them to the United States, an informal and environmentally destructive activity that combines family labour, child exploitation and a total lack of labour protection. In the Spanish region of Doñana, migrants hired to pick strawberries work in precarious conditions, subject to restrictive work permits that prevent any mobility or possibility of collective organization. Meanwhile, in the United States, many young people opt to combine multiple part-time jobs in the face of distrust of traditional stable work, a strategy that reflects decades of labour market flexibility and weakening labour rights.
Far from considering these cases as exceptional or typical of peripheral contexts, the researchers argue that they are representative of the very heart of capitalism today. The authors note that "wage labour has never been the only social relation of capitalism, and today it is more evident than ever". This phenomenon, they point out, is not new, but it has become structural and globalized. The article also analyses the role of the state in the consolidation of these forms of precarious work, as well as the way in which nature - environmental resources - becomes another element exploited in the name of economic development.
