[lbo-talk] Photographs of Workers

[Ismail Lagardien]

Completely agree with Wojtek! I was once asked to speak at a meeting in Pittsburgh (World Economics, Global Economics, or something. I really don't recall. it was more than 10 years ago) I spoke on the ways in which globalisation caused sub-national communities to renegotiate almost everything, from their personal and familial identities to choices about their children's material futures. Much of which they did against their will; but... once this process started it becomes difficult to return to "a better world" or an imagined glorified past....

Anyway, I asked a room full of high school students from around the state (i think they were final year students; there were about 250) how many of them wanted to go into manufacturing and industry. Probably five raised their hands. I asked how many of their parents worked in industry. About 100 raised their hands. I then asked how many of their grandparents worked in industry - all of them raised their hands.

Someone from the local trade union spoke after me and applauded 

It's a "trick" l learned from someone, and I have applied it to very many of my undergraduate classes in various permutations about from access to electronic gadgets to clothing. Sometimes we forget that undergraduates, at least in most of the US, don't know a world without cellphones and computers that you can carry about. Why, one adult colleague told me that it was inconceivable among children in the US to imagine a world in which they will not have a car by the age of 18, but that's another story.
 

Call me old fashioned, but I feel nostalgic seeing images of people
actually making things, even if those things are war-machines, as
opposed to pushing paper and speculating.

-- Wojtek