Working The Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers

The talk includes three parts: first, it makes an argument for the use of workers’ inquiry as a method to study contemporary work conditions, in this case involving an undercover activist ethnography; second, it draws on heterodox and critical Marxist theory to understand the transformation of work; third, it focuses on the challenges of resistance and organization in contemporary work through a concrete example.

Heavy Radicals

As a result of research conducted by author and historian Aaron Leonard and Conor Gallagher, including systematic filings of Freedom of Information Act requests, we now know that this “investigation” included: office break-ins, poison-pen letters, ‘bad-jacketing’ (claiming dedicated members were police agents), deportations, firings, setting organizations and individuals against one another through rumor and provocation, and informant penetration into the very top of the group’s leadership.

Abe and Julia: Honor and Survival During Hoover’s Reign

Kotelchuck reveals his parents as “persons of great moral courage” who “refused to change their views in the face of governmental persecution.” He also reveals Hoover’s FBI as using dirty tricks, forgeries, illegal wiretaps, and intimidation while “hounding . . . domestic opponents of U.S. policies during the Cold War period, often illegally…