Final Report Summary - MEDEA (Models and their Effects on Development paths: an Ethnographic and comparative Approach to knowledge transmission and livelihood strategies)
Executive Summary:
MEDEA is an interdisciplinary research project developed under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme. The main objective of MEDEA is to produce an empirically informed theoretical approach that will take account of current research and make substantive policy recommendations.
The project offers a historically sensitive and multi-scalar approach to development paths and the effects of these on livelihoods. It does so through tracing the contours and effects of development models and the global flows through which they are transmitted in four empirical cases (Argentina, Brazil, Slovakia and Spain), and the manipulation of research data through qualitative modelling. Combining a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the project explores the dynamic effects of models and their context-bound implementations, as well as local and global responses to these effects. Taking into account local trajectories and complexities, the project engages in an ongoing process of comparison that takes into account the potential tensions between hegemonic models and practices and the highly specific social and historical conditions of their implementation.
The project is based on the premise that the analysis of theoretical development models and global policies must be situated within the complexities of historically unfolding conditions and relationships on the ground. The consortium has been particularly concerned with the concrete outcomes of historical processes, of global flows and the implementation of economic models within specific locations. As different models and policies succeed one another and as different sectors of the economy gain or lose prominence within the overall economic structure (nationally, regionally and globally), other industries, forms and relations of production and distribution emerge, shaped and reshaped in complex networks of mutual dependencies. Thus, the livelihoods and strategies of relevant actors and stakeholders in the steel industry are at the centre of the analysis. By focusing on the steel industry, which has played a significant role in national and regional development in Europe (for example via the European Coal and Steel Community treaty - ECSC) and beyond, the project tracks the relationship between employment, skills and economic models.
The consortium identifies the issue of skills and education as a central theme that provides important insights regarding the interface between policy, entrepreneurial strategies and local contexts and populations. There is an entanglement of skills, knowledge, education, and economic models, which has implications for the ability of individuals and groups to respond to changing circumstances. For individuals and households, this entanglement is reflected in their relative ability to find employment and secure stable livelihoods; for the industry, it is relevant to its capacity to respond to global challenges. In particular, this relates to the extent to which different skills and forms of knowledge are valued and may or may not be transferable across different productive sectors. Therefore, the effects of economic models must be understood in relation to the complexities of both local and global economic processes.
Project Context and Objectives:
The MEDEA project has aimed to make a substantial contribution to theoretical and applied approaches to development through a comparative, ethnographic investigation of the effects of and responses to models of economic development. In particular, it has focused on institutional and personal trajectories, with special reference to the transmission of key resources, such as knowledge and skills.
Key objectives:
1. The identification of key national and transnational trends and development initiatives and their effects. These are explored through the comparison of four case studies, considering the emergence and transformations of institutional patterns, development approaches and policies.
Research in four country cases identified overall trends in the steel industry in relation to changing development models over a period of sixty years. This work was carried out under work packages 4 (Trajectories I: National profiles) and 7 (Interviews: State, Unions and Stakeholders, Civil Society), and summarized in deliverable 7 (Country Report 1). The national profiles provided the basis for in-depth ethnographic research in seven sites associated with the steel industry.
2. A theoretical engagement with models and transnational flows. This informs the development of a framework for the analysis of global processes and the understanding of the relationships between local and global forces.
Because models emerge, circulate and function at global as well as local levels, the empirical research in the four countries is contextualized within the analysis of global flows of development models. Work package 5 produced a theoretical report (Deliverable 5) that stressed the power dimensions that affect the design, circulation and implementation of development models at different scales.
3. The comparative analysis of institutional and social mechanisms for the transmission of resources, particularly skills and knowledge.
4. The compilation of data sets on firms, households and work experiences to enable future research and testing of the project findings. The data sets include film and visual records.
The ethnographic research generated a range of qualitative data on work, households and livelihoods (work package 10: Ethnography of Livelihoods). Particular attention was paid to issues of change, which was approached through the study of generations (work package 9, Trajectories III: Generations). The analysis of data (work packages 11 and 12) generated through this research provides the basis for deliverables 8 and 9 (Databases Work and Households), and a detailed report (Deliverable 10: Country Reports II). This also provided the structure for work package 13, Film and Visual Record.
5. The identification of critical variables and the design of appropriate qualitative and quantitative models expressed through a range of simulations and reports.
The comparative analysis was facilitated through an interdisciplinary dialogue that identified critical variables for the preparation of models (work package 6: Models) to evaluate these variables and explore a range of hypotheses relating to economic models and concrete economic processes. On the basis of the findings of work packages 4, 7, 9 and 10, the modelling exercise focused on simulations of state-led import substitution industrialization models and market led models (Appendix 1, 2) to explore the relative significance of local and global variables (Deliverable 12).
6. A critical engagement with the relevant literature from the perspective of the empirical research and the modelling exercises, in order to contribute empirically and conceptually to current debates regarding national, regional and global economic models, trends and their effects.
The project's Conference (work package 14: International Conference, deliverable 13) brought together international experts from a range of disciplines to discuss central empirical and theoretical issues arising from the research. The conference papers have been compiled in two edited volumes ('Work and Livelihoods History, Ethnography and Models in Times of Crisis' and 'Envisioning the Future Models and Ethnography in Times of Change'). This work develops the project's engagement with the scientific community, stakeholders and the wider public. As such, it ties in with the project's dissemination strategy, which has also paid attention to visual data under work package 13. The research teams generated and compiled visual documentation pertaining to each research site. A selection of these visual materials has been organised geographically, according to each country, and made available through the project website (see http://www.medeasteelproject.org online, Deliverable 11)
Context of the project
The project was designed to address central concerns:
- In the first place, the consortium wished to address a long-standing concern within the social sciences with the apparent dislocations that arose between the intended effects of economic models and their real effects. Related to this, the aim was to contribute, through an ambitious empirical study, to current debates about neoliberalism in its various interpretations and applications and the hegemonic position of the notion of the market in current popular and scholarly debates. It was important to untangle the conceptual and ideological from the real relations that obtain in concrete situations, such as work, unemployment, livelihoods and household and community relations. The project was designed so as to avoid the 'flattening out' of social reality by the dominance of the market and the economy in current debates, while maintaining a keen interest in the concrete realities and potential futures of industrial work.
- A related concern has to do with the tensions arising between global and local processes, in particular global models that tend to universalize the character of the economy and its relation to society. This project focuses on global models of economic development while paying careful attention to local implementations and local effects. A central aspect of this focus on the local is the recovery of emphasis on the views and understandings of local actors.
- By focusing on the steel industry the consortium wished to explore the apparent decline of industry in favour of newer, 'cognitive' economies. The project, which focused on skills and knowledge, dislodges the simple opposition between manual and intellectual, mechanical and cognitive. Instead, it explores the ways in which different skills are valued and/or implemented, how they evolve to encompass or replace other skills, and how they may be differentially valued by different social agents.
- Finally, the consortium was committed to contribute to developing new impact pathways in the social sciences. This commitment was built into the design and implementation of the project, for example by the inclusion of stakeholders at an early stage of the research and by the project dissemination strategy (please refer to Impact section)
The trajectory of the steel industry offered many opportunities to explore these issues. The industry held a strategic position within import substitution development models, which resulted in important investments in the sector by states across the globe. The nationalization of steel at this stage aimed at rationalizing and promoting the industry's central role in support of infrastructural projects and the wider industrial base. It also had strategic importance as a major employer and, often, as the site of well-organized trade unions. Global and institutional pressures contributed to the privatization of the industry, which in many instances had already undergone restructuring and change. These measures were followed by closures, mergers and the concentration and globalization of the industry.
These momentous events took place in a relatively short period of time and it was feasible and important for the project to capture the experiences of different generations of workers in the industry throughout this process of radical change. Furthermore, although technological innovations have changed the organization and experience of work and permitted the industry to develop new products, the industry still faces many challenges in adapting to fluctuating markets. The consortium wished to understand the research subjects' interpretations and responses to these situations, how the past and the future informed their views of the world. Finally, the industry exemplifies, both historically and ethnographically, the complexity of relationships and actors operating at different scales and with different capacities to exert power and influence. These include workers and their organizations, their families and communities, local and global enterprises and investors, and national and supranational entities. The research posed many challenges, which were addressed through an interdisciplinary, historical and multi-scalar approach, combining theoretical and archival research, modelling and ethnography.
With these challenges in mind, the consortium from the outset included the University of Bologna, which was responsible for exploring the data through modelling, and the University of Brasilia, which focused on a theoretical exploration of the global dimensions of development models and their implementation. The ethnographic research teams were based at the University of Barcelona, Comenius University, Goldsmiths, IDES and Brasilia. The case studies were selected on the basis of their comparative value. All four countries in the study underwent economic reforms under military and/or authoritarian regimes, and all experienced the effects of pro-market policies. Indeed, all four cases have, at different points in their economic history, been examples of the successful application of economic models. Two European countries and two emerging economies in Latin America were selected in order to take into account the differential impact of supranational entities and the effects of the global market.
It was important that the selected European countries should be members of the European Union. Slovakia was interesting because, while Central Slovakia has a long tradition of metal work, the steel industry in Eastern Slovakia gained prominence under state socialism. The Velvet Revolution ushered in radical social and economic changes towards a market economy that transformed the lives of workers and their families. Slovakia joined the EU in 2004 and the Eurozone in 2009. The EU market and German industry play a crucial role in the Slovakian economy and the steel industry in particular. Spain experienced extensive economic development under Franco's regime and a renewed orientation towards the global economy from the 1980s. EU accession, which took place in 1986, entailed a number of economic reforms that radically reshaped the industry.
In contrast, Brazil and Argentina provide interesting examples of different responses to global crises and opportunities. Under Peronism and Varguism, both Brazil and Argentina experienced large-scale state investments in industry and both countries were subject to military regimes, followed by democratic governments that, to different degrees, furthered pro-market policies.
Project Results:
Country trajectories history and comparison
Industry and steel in the early 20th century
The historical and comparative analysis of the four countries that constitute the empirical basis for the project's analysis and recommendations proposed a useful periodization. While the study of each case reveals the political and economic contingencies affecting one specific national context, all four reports show similar patterns of development over time. Furthermore, although the periodization was based primarily on statistical data and secondary sources relating to general economic trends in each instance, it also highlights significant stages in the evolution of the steel industry in these countries. For example, the steel industry's early development in all four countries was heavily determined by state-led investment and economic policy, associated with efforts to create a national programme of industrialization.
In Spain, industrialization underwent a period of marked growth between 1831 and 1861. Until 1939, private firms and foreign capital funded the steelmaking industry, which comprised traditional small-scale, family owned producers or ferrerías. The gradual development of modern blast furnaces produced for sectors ranging from armaments, tools and luxury goods, to shipping, railways and manufacture of machinery, as technological development and economic policy focused on the steelmaking industry as an integral axis of economic development. During the interwar period (1919-1935), Spanish industry diversified and both the state and the banks (despite the relative undeveloped status of the banking sector) gave increasing support to basic industrial sectors. The creation of the Instituto Nacional de la Industria (INI) and, in turn, its creation of a public integrated plant, the Empresa Nacional Siderúrgica Sociedad Anónima (ENSIDESA), reshaped the steelmaking industry as the country's economic policy adapted to the nationalist and autarkist ideals of the Franco regime.
From its iron-making past in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the industry focused on basic production and the extraction of raw materials, the emergence of Slovakia's steel industry was also associated with the development of a national economy. In fact, analysts highlight that the first process of industrialization was accomplished in 1840, when legislation supported the establishment of industrial enterprises. Industrial development intensified in 1867, when the elites reached an agreement to turn the Habsburg Monarchy into the dual state of Austria-Hungary. Iron production before World War II was aimed at demand generated by the agricultural sector and, to a lesser extent, transport and the domestic market. After the economic crisis of 1900, which prompted the collapse of older enterprises, steel production declined significantly and, although it was expected that the 1918 new Czechoslovak state would encourage industrialization, old divisions between the more industrialized Czech territory and the agrarian Slovak territory endured. This is reflected in the fact that Slovakia was responsible for only 8% of the total Czechoslovak industrial production. The new state aimed to regenerate and promote industry through new economic plans, but the Second World War interrupted their implementation.
From 1879 to 1930, Argentina had an agro-export economy, which encouraged investments in infrastructural development, immigration strategies and the institutionalisation of primary education. The First World War and the Great Depression had an impact on trade and the interruption of importations of key commodities. The combined conditions of the European conflict and the economic crisis prompted a significant shift in economic strategy towards the development of a national industry. In the 1940s, protectionist measures underpinned an industrialisation policy along the lines of Import Substitution Industrialization under what was known in Latin America as desarrollismo or developmentalism. In this context the steel industry developed through private and state investments, such as the Fábrica Militar de Aceros (1935) and Altos Hornos Zapla (1943) and through the creation of a National Plan for the Steel Industry (1947) and of integrated steel plants such as the Sociedad Mixta Siderúrgica Argentina (SOMISA).
The evolution of Brazil's steel industry is entangled with the history of the country's industrialisation. In 1925 a branch of the Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira became the first integrated plant in South America. Founded by the association formed between the Luxemburg group Arbed and local businessmen from the province of Minas Gerais, the plant expanded production: in 1946 it produced 70% of Brazil's total production of 342.000 tons of steel, up from the 4.500 tons produced in the 1920s. During Getúlio Vargas' government in the 1940's the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) began its activities, and effectively supported the implementation of national policies that aimed to promote the Brazilian industrial complex and support the country's autonomy from foreign economic influence.
National industry and world markets: post WWII
In the post World War II period, the economic boom created many incentives for the steel industry. In this period, the state took a central role in promoting the industry. In this second period there are broad similarities across the four cases, though the differences between our examples are also highly significant. In Spain, the evolution of the steel industry was shaped by the policies pursued by the Franco regime. Franco's economic policies are analysed in terms of three periods (1941-1949, 1950-1959, 1960-64): the first period was characterised by the effects of the wars, with economic policy based on autarky. The aim of promoting industry was addressed by the creation of a national institute for industry (INI - Instituto Nacional de la Industria) in 1941. In the second period, the creation of the ENSIDESA integrated steel plant challenged traditional oligopolies, but also evinced the weaknesses of the INI: an obsolete production apparatus, excessive tariffs, and a management that was not oriented towards profitability. With a focus on the national market, private companies were forced to modernise following foreign models. During the 1960s and until 1974, ENSIDESA was the most important company in the country, despite the merger of private companies in Asturias (UNINSA) and despite its own operating weaknesses and management mistakes. Public funding was awarded to private companies to attract matching foreign investments. At the end of the 1970s, after the death of Franco and following the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, Spain carried out the First Industrial Reconversion in 1982 and joined the European Free Trade Association. Spain joined the European Economic Community in 1986 amidst high rates of inflation, unemployment and high public debt. There were also growing rates of tertiarization of the production structure and an expansion of the public sector (healthcare, education and pensions) during the socialist government.
In Slovakia, the effects of World War II prompted important reforms to economic policy, where the Czechoslovak state abandoned economic liberalism and paved the way for a two-year plan that included the industrialization programme put forward by the communist government of 1946. In the midst of the Cold War, Slovakia entered the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), which led the way to Slovakia's industrialization from 1950. In spite of the marked political and organization differences between COMECON and Western economies, Slovakia's socialist industrialization was also based on heavy state investments in industry and energy, especially oil, machinery, metallurgy and the chemical industry. Membership of COMECON included the introduction of Soviet planning and management methods. The nationalization of industrial enterprises and the collectivization of agriculture were fundamental elements of the economic model.
In Argentina, the investments of the state in the post-war period resulted in an expansion of the industrial base. In particular, the establishment of SOMISA resulted in an increase of 400% in the production of raw steel between 1960-1965, which meant an increase in the capacity to meet internal demand from 14% to 50%. The pro-industry ISI strategy was dismantled following the military coup of 1976, redirecting the economy towards a greater reliance on imports. The volume of imports increased from an overall value of $65 million in 1976 to $1900 million in 1980. This trend had a negative impact on national industry and on employment, which declined in the period. The military regime's policy of deindustrialization was linked to a politics of repression, especially directed towards the labour movement.
Brazilian industrialization from the 1950's onwards was aided by foreign direct investment, sometimes in the form of joint ventures such as in the case of Nippon Usiminas (Japan/Brazil 1956). Between the early and late 1960s the industry developed an institutional framework for the representation of the steel industry's demands, first through the Instituto Brasileiro de Siderúrgia in 1963 and later through the Plano Nacional Siderúrgico in 1968. During the 1970's there was an increase in productive capacity after the implementation of the second Plano de Desenvolvimento Económico and the creation of Siderbrás as a holding company in charge of state investment in steel, which effectively safeguarded state control over steel production.
The effects of neoliberalism(s) the 1990s and beyond
Important changes, directed towards moving away from state-induced and state-supported industrialization, began as early as the 1970s. But it was during the 1990s that wholesale shifts in the dominant economic model are evident in the policies and trends affecting the four countries studied in this project. During this decade various processes of privatisation take place that mark important trends and have parallel effects in all four countries, although the historical and political specificities of each establish a unique rhythm and shape in each case.
In Spain the decade was characterised by privatisation, cutbacks in government spending and social reforms aimed at reducing eligibility for government subsidies and support. In the late 1990s high rates of unemployment were coupled with steady increases in foreign investment abroad, as well as the presence of Spanish multinational companies in the world market: Spanish competitiveness in the global arena increased but still remained lower than other emerging economies. In the steelmaking industry, concentration, privatization and internationalization were envisaged as solutions to the difficult economic conditions, and Spanish companies sought 'strategic alliances' with foreign companies, significantly reshaping management strategies and crucially diminishing the number of companies involved in steel production. This process had devastating consequences for the labour-force, diminishing the number of workers and generating conflicts in the restructuring processes.
In Slovakia, changes in economic models are clearly tied to radical political change: the collapse of socialism in 1989 and the 'velvet divorce' of Czechoslovakia in 1993, resulting in the independence of Slovakia. One of the first tasks facing the new nation-state was the transformation of the economic structure through the transfer of enterprises to private ownership. The launch of a federal program of economic reforms in 1991 had a negative impact on the living conditions of the Slovak population, especially because the Slovak economy was based on heavy industry, which was particularly singled out for restructuring and reform. Consequently, by the mid-1990s, only 17,3% of Slovak products was considered competitive. The managerial elites became supporters of the Meciar government's critique of the 'shock therapy' economic neo-liberalism that had been pursued by Czechoslovakia after the collapse of COMECON and the subsequent loss of markets for Slovak production, in favour of a gradualist approach whereby industries and assets were transferred to Slovak capitals, in what might be described as 'clientship privatization'. In this context, steel production and metallurgy, which had remained the pillars of the post-socialist economy, showed a marked decline after 1996. There was significant economic growth in this period but despite this, the rate of unemployment decreased only moderately, which can be explained by higher productivity rates and the diversification of the third sector. Meciar was criticized for the isolationism that was seen to derive from his particular approach to privatization and after his defeat in 1998 a new coalition government implemented economic policies inspired by economic liberalism and neo-institutionalism. Consequently, unemployment reached a record high in 1999. Nevertheless, the liberalization of the economy, the privatization drive and the neoliberal policies adopted by Slovakia strengthened the country's bid for EU membership. The solution proposed to deal with the situation focused on foreign investment as the principal agent of economic development. Indeed, the importance of foreign investment was accentuated with Slovakia's entry into the European Union.
During the 1990s Argentina experienced an intensive programme of structural reforms, including trade liberalization, a wide-ranging drive towards the privatization of state assets, the de-regulation of the financial system and of labour relations. A central feature of Menem's Peronist government strategy was the Plan de Convertibilidad that pegged the Argentine currency to the US Dollar on a one-to-one basis. The state-owned, strategically important SOMISA was privatized in 1992, when 79,97% of shares passed to private owners, with Techint the majority buyer; negotiations between government, trade unions and the firm resulted in a 20% share for the workers via the trade unions. More broadly, the Convertibility Plan had important consequences for private and public debt and the real value of money. This affected local producers and dramatically increased the rate of unemployment, poverty and instability in the labour market. Crucially, the overvaluation of local currency and the opening of the economy to external markets created unfavourable competitive conditions for local commodities. The measures that were carried out during the period in question led to an unprecedented national crisis in 2001-2002. This crisis had a profound political and economic impact and prompted a shift in the direction of government towards a production-based economic model. This new economic direction had a positive effect on the steel industry, which underwent a period of expansion from 2002 to 2008.
The privatization of the Brazilian steel industry began in 1988, with privatization of the smaller units in the sector. Privatization of the larger enterprises followed, with the Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (CSN) privatized in 1993. This followed a longer process of transformation of production and administration to prepare the ground for privatization, in other words, to make the enterprise a desirable acquisition for private investors. It is significant that when the plant was privatized, so were all CSN's assets, including the company hospital, the technical school, outlying buildings and housing. Here, as elsewhere, privatization was accompanied by reductions in the workforce. Privatization also had implications for management, notably the separation that arose between management and ownership and the potential instabilities arising from the differences in scale between Brazilian enterprises and their European and Japanese partners. Another feature that made for potential instabilities was the internationalization of the industry, as it became an attractive destination for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).
History and comparison: issues arising
Although this report refers to the evolution of the steel industry, the project emphasizes the point that far from implying a smooth and progressive process of change, this evolution encompasses disjuncture and rupture, including the impact of crises, both political and economic.
The historical trends of national economies and their relation to the steel industry can be understood in terms of a broadly drawn periodization, as described above. It is also clear that although there are general trends in the evolution of the industry, there are important specificities to be taken into account in each case. There are, furthermore, local and regional particularities in the models implemented in each case; these differences can be explained, at least in part, through the historical trajectories of the four countries examined in the research, their place in the global economy and the characteristics of government and the articulation of class and politics that obtain in each instance. In terms of changing models, the project notes a shift from models where industry plays an important role, towards models that are articulated in relation to financial markets (for example the Plano Real in Brazil in 1994 and the Plan de Convertibilidad in Argentina in 1991).
Comparison of the four cases indicates that there are significant parallel processes across the cases relating to the implementation of models on a macro-level. Broadly, two models can be identified, following one another over a period of 70 years or so, that share broad similarities across the four cases. The principal characteristic of the first model is the commitment to industrial growth as a key feature of economic development; furthermore, state actors articulate this commitment through planned economies and/or alliances with local and international enterprises. This model entails heavy investment by the state in infrastructure such as transport and communication and urban development, as well as its involvement in the construction of plants and the advancement of technology. The steel industry played an important role in the model and could in fact be characterized as the linchpin of the strategy of economic development, supplying other national industries and providing jobs. This pro-industry model was replaced from the 1970s onwards by a market-oriented model, where the state's role was greatly restricted, in the expectation that the fluctuating demands of global markets would determine the shape of local economic performance.
What is a model?
The project's point of departure and its central question relate to economic models: how they emerge, how they circulate and how they are implemented. Crucially, the project is concerned with what models do or, in other words, their effects on local communities, lives and livelihoods. To achieve this the researchers needed to distinguish between different kinds of models that operate on very different scales and within different webs of power and influence. Indeed, the research is concerned with the different capacities of models to exercise hegemony. Thus, a range of policies that coalesced around a market-led model and that in 1989 came to be described as the Washington Consensus, became widely influential, notably through the structural adjustment programmes promoted by the International Monetary Fund. At the same time, the case histories show different degrees of adherence to the model and at particular conjunctures - notably in response to crises - governments may adapt or even overturn the basic principles of the model. At yet another level, a wide range of local actors articulate their understanding of the economic, political and social forces that affect their lives and livelihoods. Their interpretative models interact with contextual conditions to inform the strategies that individuals and groups devise to understand the past, confront the present and plan for the future.
These very different kinds of models - 'owned' by diverse actors - demand different methodological and theoretical instruments to provide a sufficiently complex account of them. Furthermore, the analysis of complex processes involving a range of actors and a range of fields of power, from global institutions through to governments, enterprises, trade unions, workers and the unemployed, requires analytical models capable of tracing connections and relationships between these actors and models and/or generating the questions that will lead to a fuller understanding of models and their effects.
In the first instance, models are ideas that are effectively articulated within more or less coherent bodies of knowledge, as well as techniques, technologies and the social relations through which or within which they are devised and actualized. Thus, the study of models involves the study of ideas in practice. Models can be understood as artefacts or devices that engage with concrete circumstances and relationships in specific contexts, in what have been described as performative entanglements. They might also be thought of as instruments of domination of particular interest groups who exert economic, political and/or cultural power.
As mentioned, models are circulated and implemented at different scales and different levels of concreteness and specificity. The project suggests a distinction between broad systems of ideas that circulate widely across different political and economic regions and more specific and tightly articulated models that, through particular practices and forms of implementation, have localized effects. Thus, the idea of industry-led, state-sponsored economic development finds a more focused expression in particular contexts under models such as Import Substitution Industrialization in Brazil and Argentina, Autarchy in Spain and state socialism in Slovakia. From this it follows that models are generated through multiple relationships in different sites, at different scales and with different temporalities. It also follows that models emerge in a relation of dynamic interactions between actors and ideas. Two questions arise in relation to this: how do models emerge and exercise influence? And what role does the distribution of power have in this emergence and circulation of models? The consortium proposes that in order to address these questions it is imperative to take into account the implications of the global context and the ways it intersects with regional and national economic configurations. This is exemplified by the privatization of the steel industry as the outcome of policy interventions that dislodged the state-sponsored model in the drive towards a market-led model. The privatization process that occurred in the steel industry from the second half of the 1980s exhibits some common features across a selected sample of countries studied in the project, albeit with different magnitudes of investment and production in the different examples.
In order to take these questions further, the project implemented a range of modelling techniques, exploring the potential of integrating qualitative data generated through fieldwork and computer modelling and simulation. The interpretation of observed empirical patterns can be impeded by a gap arising between abstract theorising and the variety of diverse empirical histories. The consortium adopted a research design that harmonises the need for rigour in abstract modelling with the need to assign empirical content to theories. For this purpose, the project integrates formal modelling, typically an instrument in the field of economics, with ethnography.
The consortium observes that the paths outlined, suggest the process of privatization in these countries followed comparable trends, of increased state intervention in the period from 1945 that peaks in the mid-seventies. In addition, researchers note that in the three countries:
- There are temporary periods of increase in the role of private production in the period 1969-1971 and in the second half of the seventies.
- There follows a period of relative stability in the role of private production in the first half of the eighties.
- There is a clearly marked process of privatisation at the end of the eighties, often anticipated by a transitory increase in the role of the state.
The observed similarities in the patterns of privatization in these three cases suggest the importance of exploring the dynamics of change affecting economic models at a global level. Rather than concentrate on local political pressures, there is a need to take into account global dynamics and the mechanisms that connect global models to country-specific political decision-making. The exploration of the data suggests the following hypotheses:
1. Economic models advocating the privatisation of state-owned firms develop at the global level.
2. Globally developed economic models generate pressures through the activity of global or international political entities (such as the International Monetary Fund, International Finance Corporation, Multinational Investment Guarantees Agency and the European Community for Coal and Steel).
3. Pressures by global and international political entities are mediated by national political elites who articulate nationally legitimised privatisation programmes.
4. Nationally legitimised privatisation programmes may be adjusted further, following political pressures by interest groups that operate at the local level (for example, regional administrations, sectorial organisation and trade unions).
How do models emerge and how are they disseminated?
The modelling exercise highlights the significance of the global scale in the design and circulation of economic models. This raises the need for a thorough exploration of the global and how global actors and processes become effective. The researchers have proposed that there are models characterised by high levels of abstraction, which could be described as meta-models. These arise and move through webs of fragmented or discontinuous global spaces, such as industrial enterprises, mills and factories. Connections and flows across loci that articulate these webs are structured by what the project researchers describe as the diffuse mode of dissemination of development models. This mode has an ontological capacity, difficult to perceive because of its depth and its naturalizing power. It works in implicit rather than explicit ways. It is the result of a myriad of agencies and agents in the longue durée. This mode may be represented by the values of decision-makers and is contrasted with the concentrated mode that refers to individuals such as entrepreneurs, managers and technicians who transfer visions, technologies, models and know-how within specific localities and circumstances. The concentrated mode has an explicit and evident framing capacity. It is thus manifest in social relations and social reality and is amenable to ethnographic scrutiny. In this respect, discourses can be seen as the stuff of the diffuse mode while models are best understood as the stuff of the concentrated one.
What are the implications and effects of model change?
Economic models are also models of society (encompassing social relations, social categories, spatial and temporal forms). The relationship between production and social organization is explicit in industrial models dating as far back as the 19th century when industry was associated with urban planning, the foundation of schools and other services. A similar strategy is illustrated in the Brazilian state's investment in the development of Volta Redonda alongside the construction of the President Vargas plant, as will be shown in the sections below. Another important feature in all the cases studied in the project is the role of the state in relation to training and education, which also changes with privatization. Overall, the case studies suggest that the shift to some version of neoliberalism produces a disarticulation and a reassembling of social relations, of social and political spaces and of time frames.
Ethnographic research: the field sites
In Spain, the research teams based at the University of Barcelona carried out field research in two locations in northern Spain. Aceralia (ArcelorMittal) is located in Asturias, a region with a long history of mining, metalwork and steel production. Aceralia, originally a state-owned plant (ENSIDESA), was founded in 1950 as a central feature of Franco's national development plan. In 1994 ENSIDESA became a shareholding company (as Compañía Siderúrgica Integral) and in 1997 it was bought by Arbed, becoming part of the Arcelor conglomerate formed by Aceralia, Arbed and USINOR in 2001. In 2006, the Arcelor and Mittal merger was the final stage in a process of internationalization of the firm, reflecting dominant trends in the industry. Under ArcelorMittal the plant is a major player in the European steel industry (see http://www.arcelormittal.com/corp/?page=0&lngId=3&tb0= online). The second site is in Galicia, where the shipbuilding industry has dominated the regional economy. Like the steel industry in Asturias, shipbuilding in Galicia has had a strong influence on the regional productive landscape, civil society organizations and the development and transmission of skills in the area. Research in Galicia focused on MEGASA, a small family firm founded in 1953.
The Slovak team, based at Comenius University, also conducted field research in two very different enterprises in two regions where the production of steel is a key feature of the economy. The first location is U.S. Steel's plant in Koice (see http://www.ussteel.com/corp/company/profile/sk-about.asp online), a global producer with headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in the US, Canada and Central Europe. It has an annual raw steel-making capability of 29.3 million net tons. The company manufactures a wide range of value-added steel sheet and tubular products for the automotive, appliance, container, industrial, construction and oil and gas industries. The Koice plant was built in the 1960s under Socialist economic development plans in which industry and steel in particular played a central role. After 1989, the plant, now the East Slovakian Steelworks, was privatized and in 2000 was acquired by the US Steel Group (at the time a unit of the USS Corporation). The second field site is located in Podbrezová. The firm, eleziarne Podbrezová (see http://www.zelpo.sk/zelpo/homezp_uk.nsf online) was established in the 1840s in a mountainous area of Central Slovakia where the treatment of iron and other, non-ferrous, metals dates back to the 16th century. The plant has an historical relationship with state planning dating back to early modernization projects. In 1992, after the fall of the socialist state, it became a shareholder company, with majority ownership going to Slovakian shareholders (99%). The company now has connections with plants in the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Spain and sells to 50 countries across the globe, supplying the automotive industry, the energy sector, engineering and infrastructure projects.
During the first stage of the research, the team working in Argentina, based at IDES, identified two contrasting examples of the range of enterprises operating in the steel industry. The first was a 'recovered factory' in the city of Buenos Aires, which had been taken over and managed by the workers at the time of the collapse of the economy in 2001-2, when many enterprises closed down or were abandoned by owners unable to deal with both market and financial constraints. At the time of the research, the factory was operating at a very reduced scale and the team decided that a longer-term study of this case was unlikely to be productive. Instead, they concentrated on the case of a large steel plant in the north of the province of Buenos Aires. It started out as SOMISA (Sociedad Mixta Siderúrgica Argentina), founded in 1947 during the government of Juan Domingo Perón as part of the Plan Siderúrgico Nacional, a national programme for the development of the steel industry. The plant is located in the country's principal steel producing hub and remained a central element within the national economy while under state ownership since the 1960s. It was privatized in 1992 as part of the Peronist president Carlos Menem's neoliberal reform programme; it is currently part of the Techint group and is Ternium Siderar's largest plant in Argentina (see http://www.siderar.com/ online).
The changing character of work
Research carried out in the seven sites outlined above shows significant changes have taken place in the conditions of work and employment in the industry. These changes are associated with a fragmented labour market and hierarchical organizations of the work force. A key factor in this fragmentation is the widespread practice of subcontracting, a management strategy that provides flexibility for the enterprise but which has the effect of generating precarious forms of employment, divisions in the workforce and widespread insecurity.
Generations
With the exception of eleziarne Podbrezová , which has its roots in the industrial policy of the Habsburgs, the enterprises in the steel industry studied in this project were founded in the first half of the 20th century. Their relatively short history means that the researchers had access to the direct or social memory of the first generation of workers. In all instances the workers recruited to the steel industry tended to come from the rural areas. They were, therefore, untrained and inexperienced in industrial work. Nevertheless, the early stages of the industry required skills that could easily be transferred from rural labour, for example for the construction of the sites, premises and furnaces. Many of these construction workers became permanent members of the work force once the plants started production.
Technological change
Today, there is a marked difference in the credentials demanded by employers in the industry, with much greater emphasis placed on formal educational achievement. While in the first generations of steel workers there were limited requirements in place regarding educational achievement, this has changed in response to the changing needs of the industry. During the construction phase of the industry, there was a need for a wide range of skills, many of them, such as building or driving, unrecognized. Technical skills specifically associated with the industry could be learnt on the job.
Potential Impact:
The project is committed to developing impact pathways in the social sciences through empirically grounded engagement with questions of industry, work and skills. The consortium aimed to achieve this through the inclusion of stakeholders from the early stages of the research and through feedback meetings with stakeholders in the final stage of the project. The relationships established with a range of stakeholders and scholars generated important networks across firms, trade unions, educational institutions, government bodies and international cooperation bodies. The consortium is concerned with ensuring the continuity of these networks beyond the completion of the project itself, through the website and online presence as well as the continued participation of members of the consortium in relevant workshops, academic conferences and debates.
Stakeholders
The consortium held several meetings with Stakeholders who have an interest in the steel industry. In September 2010, Ramón Laso (Spain) and MP Ivan Stefanec (Slovakia) joined a project meeting in Pezinok organized by Comenius University, Bratislava as part of Work Package 8, to discuss the scope of the research and their experience in relation to the industry. All the research teams were represented at the meeting, with Argentina participating through video conference. During extensive discussions, both stakeholders shared their views with the meeting about the present and future of the industry, highlighting important general and country-specific issues that were subsequently considered in the elaboration of research protocols for the ethnographic work packages. Among the issues highlighted, for Laso, were the challenges posed to social agents by the global nature of the steel industry, especially in terms of competition, training and employment. His experience as a member of ArcelorMittal's European Committee provided the basis for a discussion about the need for a more effective dialogue between employers and workers' organizations internationally, as well as the need for supranational initiatives to protect the levels and the quality of employment in the steel industry. Mr. Ivan Stefanec offered a very different view, from the perspective of his experience as chairman of the European Affairs Committee of the National Council of the Slovak Republic. After extensive managerial experience as CEO of Coca-Cola Slovakia, he was elected to Parliament as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, which was in power between 2010 and 2012. Referring to the context of the steel industry's privatization in Slovakia, he explained the rationale of pro-market policies, including privatization.
Steering Committee
In April 2010, IDES coordinated a meeting (First Meeting on Social Studies of Steel Production in Argentina) that brought together experts from a range of disciplines including economics, history, anthropology and sociology. The meeting was inaugurated through a presentation of the project and the research carried out in Argentina (Perelman/Vargas). This was followed by a number of presentations, papers and interventions regarding a broad range of issues pertaining to the industry. On a broader level, there were presentation on the characteristics of economic models and their implications for employment in recent Argentine history. This important meeting provided a useful opportunity for the IDES team and the project coordinator to identify potential steering committee members.
Policy recommendations
1) Agencies and agents involved in the production and dissemination of models need to be aware of the impact of their models, and the changes they may induce in people's livelihoods and in processes of social reproduction, as these models are implemented in different global scenarios.
2) Development agencies and agents need to be sensitive to local realities, so that differentiated local agencies/agents are able to participate actively in the design and circulation of models on a global scale. This includes the need to be receptive to local knowledge systems and locally developed innovations, practices and models, taking into account both 'folk' and 'expert' models.
3) The project findings suggest that it is important for researchers, government bodies (local, national and supranational), trade unions and community/civil society actors to reflect on the implications of model shifts for local environments and to devise and promote alternatives that enhance education, employment and well-being.
4) Greater and more effective regulation is needed in order to protect the rights of workers and address the effects of the fragmentation of the labour force. This includes the need to address flexible labour practices that have gained ground as firms confront the pressures of global markets. The continuing pressures of global competition mean that these forms of employment are likely to remain a feature of industrial work. It is therefore crucial that casual workers are afforded representation and protection.
5) Subcontracting has been a notoriously difficult problem to tackle, both by governments and by trade unions, given the propensity for the subcontracting chain to 'disappear' into informal and often intractable forms of economic activity. However, recent de-regulation and restructuring processes have increasingly led to the incorporation of subcontracting within the formal structures and official strategies of firms. This is evident in the steel industry, where employees of subcontracting firms may find themselves working side by side and sharing the work environment with those employed directly by the mother-firm. This points to the urgency - and the feasibility - of ensuring parity across different categories of workers (company and subcontracted) in terms of pay, security, safety and respect. The case of the Acuerdos de Oviedo negotiated in Asturias, Spain in the early 1990s, provides a useful starting point to consider appropriate policy interventions and frameworks for corporate good practice. However, there are limits to the effectiveness of localized agreements and corporate practices; instead, it is important to work towards national and transnational mechanisms that promote and safeguard work conditions that are fairly remunerated, safe and adequately supported through training and education.
6) Subcontracting may provide a lifeline to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that rely on the contracts of large enterprises in the industry to survive and prosper. The proliferation of SMEs adds to the complexity and diversity of the economic environment and is thus an important asset within regional economies. However, policy, state and trade union intervention need to provide the means to foster and support the success of these smaller units while also promoting fair and safe conditions of work for their employees.
7) While the diversification of skills and opportunities has emerged as an important issue from the perspective of current and future workers, it is also the case that the capacity for diversification would add to the competitive advantage and long-term success of SMEs within and beyond the subcontracting chain. Policy should address this potential through inclusive education and training platforms that promote innovation and dissemination of appropriate technologies and broadly based areas of knowledge and broad skill sets. Such platforms should be mixed (including a range of organizations and actors), transparent and inclusive of SMEs across the entire process of producing and disseminating knowledge, technological innovation and good practice.
8) The industry needs a skilled workforce to prosper in a very dynamic market. It is imperative that enduring and appropriate investments in education and training are in place. Effective intervention requires close collaboration between industry, educators and other stakeholders to ensure productive linkups across education and training, skills and work.
9) While apprenticeships are considered to be highly desirable both by prospective workers and by employers, it is crucial that these be properly regulated to prevent their use as vehicles for the employment of cheap labour; instead, apprenticeships should be regulated mechanisms to ensure the acquisition of skills and experience and accession to full employment.
10) Given the growing importance of flexible task allocation, problem solving and multiskilling, it is important that practical and vocational training take place in relation to broadly defined educational goals, embedding specialized technical training within broad curricula, and promoting new forms of entrepreneurship linked to local communities and regional economies and the
11) The importance of ensuring that a broadly based education underpins professional training at all levels is evident in the need identified in many research sites to counter damaging and prejudicial notions of 'the other' at work and in the community. These notions may attach to differences of ethnicity, origin, gender, sexuality or age and foment discord and fragmentation in the workplace and the community. Education understood in its broadest sense, encompassing formal educational environments and informal educational opportunities in the community (such as local cultural events, provides the most effective means to engage in a critical re-evaluation of stereotypes and prejudice.
12) It is crucial that legislation regarding work and labour conditions takes on board the complex relationships between the spaces and characteristics of work and the organization of livelihoods at the level of households and communities. This is relevant also to the issue of generational change and the problems faced by young people in many of the research sites to establish an independent household. The holistic approach of the early 20th century whereby the state and/or the enterprise invested in housing and services alongside their investment in production is a useful starting point when evaluating the spatial, social and material connections between industry, society and locality.
13) In some research sites, the consortium identified tendencies towards change in the gendered division of labour in the household, though these did not necessarily imply a more egalitarian distribution of tasks and responsibilities. In anticipation that this trend may increase with more women entering the labour force, there is a growing need for services to promote gender parity with regard to education, training and work. This inevitably also entails investments in support of household reproduction, especially in relation to high quality and affordable childcare.
14) The steel industry has been identified historically with male workers and with attributes largely associated with masculinity. This situation is slowly shifting as a result of changes in society and in the industry, notably the transformation of work through the introduction of new technologies. Legal frameworks, local policies and the practices of firms and trade unions must ensure gender parity at work and facilitate parity in the home. This requires a multilayered approach such as gender parity at the point of education, training and recruitment, equal pay and promotion opportunities, equality in relation to parental leave, and the regulation of shift-work.
Future research
The work carried out during the course of the project in relation to devising methodological and analytic tools highlights the enormous potential and importance of inter-disciplinary work. The project outcomes confirm the relevance of the consortium's investment in comparative analysis. The conclusions of the research also indicate that this perspective can be usefully developed by extending the comparison to include other case studies or to compare different industries and different fields of production. The modelling process engaged in throughout the duration of the project offered many opportunities to probe the generative possibilities of social research. This suggests that the development of these conversations across disciplines is fruitful and deserves wide support and, furthermore, that training in modelling techniques would enable qualitative social scientists to engage in different kinds of discussion about their findings, and make their research findings available to wider publics and policy makers.
Ethical research/researching ethically
From its inception, the project aimed to devise ethically sound research practice. At the first meeting of the consortium held in Bologna in October 2009, the project coordinator (Goldsmiths) and the scientific coordinator (Barcelona) tabled for discussion examples of ethical guidelines for research produced by professional anthropological associations. Members of the consortium were invited to bring to the discussion ethical guidelines produced by their disciplines and/or country and regional associations. These resources contributed to the design of the research protocols produced in advance of each research work package and distributed to all consortium members for discussion and comment. Consequently, ethical issues were incorporated into the planning and the implementation of the research. The ethical framework first discussed in the Bologna kick-off meeting was revisited in depth in a methodology workshop held in Barcelona in January 2011. The workshop provided an important opportunity for the members of the consortium to exchange their views about the implications of protocols relating to the generation of data and their dissemination, for example regarding the anonymity of informants, seeking informed consent, etc. The discussion also entailed a review of the practice of the consortium in line with the Consortium Agreement and enabled the meeting to refine the protocols to be followed in relation to the effective use of data across the consortium.
List of Websites:
http://www.medeasteelproject.org
MEDEA is an interdisciplinary research project developed under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme. The main objective of MEDEA is to produce an empirically informed theoretical approach that will take account of current research and make substantive policy recommendations.
The project offers a historically sensitive and multi-scalar approach to development paths and the effects of these on livelihoods. It does so through tracing the contours and effects of development models and the global flows through which they are transmitted in four empirical cases (Argentina, Brazil, Slovakia and Spain), and the manipulation of research data through qualitative modelling. Combining a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the project explores the dynamic effects of models and their context-bound implementations, as well as local and global responses to these effects. Taking into account local trajectories and complexities, the project engages in an ongoing process of comparison that takes into account the potential tensions between hegemonic models and practices and the highly specific social and historical conditions of their implementation.
The project is based on the premise that the analysis of theoretical development models and global policies must be situated within the complexities of historically unfolding conditions and relationships on the ground. The consortium has been particularly concerned with the concrete outcomes of historical processes, of global flows and the implementation of economic models within specific locations. As different models and policies succeed one another and as different sectors of the economy gain or lose prominence within the overall economic structure (nationally, regionally and globally), other industries, forms and relations of production and distribution emerge, shaped and reshaped in complex networks of mutual dependencies. Thus, the livelihoods and strategies of relevant actors and stakeholders in the steel industry are at the centre of the analysis. By focusing on the steel industry, which has played a significant role in national and regional development in Europe (for example via the European Coal and Steel Community treaty - ECSC) and beyond, the project tracks the relationship between employment, skills and economic models.
The consortium identifies the issue of skills and education as a central theme that provides important insights regarding the interface between policy, entrepreneurial strategies and local contexts and populations. There is an entanglement of skills, knowledge, education, and economic models, which has implications for the ability of individuals and groups to respond to changing circumstances. For individuals and households, this entanglement is reflected in their relative ability to find employment and secure stable livelihoods; for the industry, it is relevant to its capacity to respond to global challenges. In particular, this relates to the extent to which different skills and forms of knowledge are valued and may or may not be transferable across different productive sectors. Therefore, the effects of economic models must be understood in relation to the complexities of both local and global economic processes.
Project Context and Objectives:
The MEDEA project has aimed to make a substantial contribution to theoretical and applied approaches to development through a comparative, ethnographic investigation of the effects of and responses to models of economic development. In particular, it has focused on institutional and personal trajectories, with special reference to the transmission of key resources, such as knowledge and skills.
Key objectives:
1. The identification of key national and transnational trends and development initiatives and their effects. These are explored through the comparison of four case studies, considering the emergence and transformations of institutional patterns, development approaches and policies.
Research in four country cases identified overall trends in the steel industry in relation to changing development models over a period of sixty years. This work was carried out under work packages 4 (Trajectories I: National profiles) and 7 (Interviews: State, Unions and Stakeholders, Civil Society), and summarized in deliverable 7 (Country Report 1). The national profiles provided the basis for in-depth ethnographic research in seven sites associated with the steel industry.
2. A theoretical engagement with models and transnational flows. This informs the development of a framework for the analysis of global processes and the understanding of the relationships between local and global forces.
Because models emerge, circulate and function at global as well as local levels, the empirical research in the four countries is contextualized within the analysis of global flows of development models. Work package 5 produced a theoretical report (Deliverable 5) that stressed the power dimensions that affect the design, circulation and implementation of development models at different scales.
3. The comparative analysis of institutional and social mechanisms for the transmission of resources, particularly skills and knowledge.
4. The compilation of data sets on firms, households and work experiences to enable future research and testing of the project findings. The data sets include film and visual records.
The ethnographic research generated a range of qualitative data on work, households and livelihoods (work package 10: Ethnography of Livelihoods). Particular attention was paid to issues of change, which was approached through the study of generations (work package 9, Trajectories III: Generations). The analysis of data (work packages 11 and 12) generated through this research provides the basis for deliverables 8 and 9 (Databases Work and Households), and a detailed report (Deliverable 10: Country Reports II). This also provided the structure for work package 13, Film and Visual Record.
5. The identification of critical variables and the design of appropriate qualitative and quantitative models expressed through a range of simulations and reports.
The comparative analysis was facilitated through an interdisciplinary dialogue that identified critical variables for the preparation of models (work package 6: Models) to evaluate these variables and explore a range of hypotheses relating to economic models and concrete economic processes. On the basis of the findings of work packages 4, 7, 9 and 10, the modelling exercise focused on simulations of state-led import substitution industrialization models and market led models (Appendix 1, 2) to explore the relative significance of local and global variables (Deliverable 12).
6. A critical engagement with the relevant literature from the perspective of the empirical research and the modelling exercises, in order to contribute empirically and conceptually to current debates regarding national, regional and global economic models, trends and their effects.
The project's Conference (work package 14: International Conference, deliverable 13) brought together international experts from a range of disciplines to discuss central empirical and theoretical issues arising from the research. The conference papers have been compiled in two edited volumes ('Work and Livelihoods History, Ethnography and Models in Times of Crisis' and 'Envisioning the Future Models and Ethnography in Times of Change'). This work develops the project's engagement with the scientific community, stakeholders and the wider public. As such, it ties in with the project's dissemination strategy, which has also paid attention to visual data under work package 13. The research teams generated and compiled visual documentation pertaining to each research site. A selection of these visual materials has been organised geographically, according to each country, and made available through the project website (see http://www.medeasteelproject.org online, Deliverable 11)
Context of the project
The project was designed to address central concerns:
- In the first place, the consortium wished to address a long-standing concern within the social sciences with the apparent dislocations that arose between the intended effects of economic models and their real effects. Related to this, the aim was to contribute, through an ambitious empirical study, to current debates about neoliberalism in its various interpretations and applications and the hegemonic position of the notion of the market in current popular and scholarly debates. It was important to untangle the conceptual and ideological from the real relations that obtain in concrete situations, such as work, unemployment, livelihoods and household and community relations. The project was designed so as to avoid the 'flattening out' of social reality by the dominance of the market and the economy in current debates, while maintaining a keen interest in the concrete realities and potential futures of industrial work.
- A related concern has to do with the tensions arising between global and local processes, in particular global models that tend to universalize the character of the economy and its relation to society. This project focuses on global models of economic development while paying careful attention to local implementations and local effects. A central aspect of this focus on the local is the recovery of emphasis on the views and understandings of local actors.
- By focusing on the steel industry the consortium wished to explore the apparent decline of industry in favour of newer, 'cognitive' economies. The project, which focused on skills and knowledge, dislodges the simple opposition between manual and intellectual, mechanical and cognitive. Instead, it explores the ways in which different skills are valued and/or implemented, how they evolve to encompass or replace other skills, and how they may be differentially valued by different social agents.
- Finally, the consortium was committed to contribute to developing new impact pathways in the social sciences. This commitment was built into the design and implementation of the project, for example by the inclusion of stakeholders at an early stage of the research and by the project dissemination strategy (please refer to Impact section)
The trajectory of the steel industry offered many opportunities to explore these issues. The industry held a strategic position within import substitution development models, which resulted in important investments in the sector by states across the globe. The nationalization of steel at this stage aimed at rationalizing and promoting the industry's central role in support of infrastructural projects and the wider industrial base. It also had strategic importance as a major employer and, often, as the site of well-organized trade unions. Global and institutional pressures contributed to the privatization of the industry, which in many instances had already undergone restructuring and change. These measures were followed by closures, mergers and the concentration and globalization of the industry.
These momentous events took place in a relatively short period of time and it was feasible and important for the project to capture the experiences of different generations of workers in the industry throughout this process of radical change. Furthermore, although technological innovations have changed the organization and experience of work and permitted the industry to develop new products, the industry still faces many challenges in adapting to fluctuating markets. The consortium wished to understand the research subjects' interpretations and responses to these situations, how the past and the future informed their views of the world. Finally, the industry exemplifies, both historically and ethnographically, the complexity of relationships and actors operating at different scales and with different capacities to exert power and influence. These include workers and their organizations, their families and communities, local and global enterprises and investors, and national and supranational entities. The research posed many challenges, which were addressed through an interdisciplinary, historical and multi-scalar approach, combining theoretical and archival research, modelling and ethnography.
With these challenges in mind, the consortium from the outset included the University of Bologna, which was responsible for exploring the data through modelling, and the University of Brasilia, which focused on a theoretical exploration of the global dimensions of development models and their implementation. The ethnographic research teams were based at the University of Barcelona, Comenius University, Goldsmiths, IDES and Brasilia. The case studies were selected on the basis of their comparative value. All four countries in the study underwent economic reforms under military and/or authoritarian regimes, and all experienced the effects of pro-market policies. Indeed, all four cases have, at different points in their economic history, been examples of the successful application of economic models. Two European countries and two emerging economies in Latin America were selected in order to take into account the differential impact of supranational entities and the effects of the global market.
It was important that the selected European countries should be members of the European Union. Slovakia was interesting because, while Central Slovakia has a long tradition of metal work, the steel industry in Eastern Slovakia gained prominence under state socialism. The Velvet Revolution ushered in radical social and economic changes towards a market economy that transformed the lives of workers and their families. Slovakia joined the EU in 2004 and the Eurozone in 2009. The EU market and German industry play a crucial role in the Slovakian economy and the steel industry in particular. Spain experienced extensive economic development under Franco's regime and a renewed orientation towards the global economy from the 1980s. EU accession, which took place in 1986, entailed a number of economic reforms that radically reshaped the industry.
In contrast, Brazil and Argentina provide interesting examples of different responses to global crises and opportunities. Under Peronism and Varguism, both Brazil and Argentina experienced large-scale state investments in industry and both countries were subject to military regimes, followed by democratic governments that, to different degrees, furthered pro-market policies.
Project Results:
Country trajectories history and comparison
Industry and steel in the early 20th century
The historical and comparative analysis of the four countries that constitute the empirical basis for the project's analysis and recommendations proposed a useful periodization. While the study of each case reveals the political and economic contingencies affecting one specific national context, all four reports show similar patterns of development over time. Furthermore, although the periodization was based primarily on statistical data and secondary sources relating to general economic trends in each instance, it also highlights significant stages in the evolution of the steel industry in these countries. For example, the steel industry's early development in all four countries was heavily determined by state-led investment and economic policy, associated with efforts to create a national programme of industrialization.
In Spain, industrialization underwent a period of marked growth between 1831 and 1861. Until 1939, private firms and foreign capital funded the steelmaking industry, which comprised traditional small-scale, family owned producers or ferrerías. The gradual development of modern blast furnaces produced for sectors ranging from armaments, tools and luxury goods, to shipping, railways and manufacture of machinery, as technological development and economic policy focused on the steelmaking industry as an integral axis of economic development. During the interwar period (1919-1935), Spanish industry diversified and both the state and the banks (despite the relative undeveloped status of the banking sector) gave increasing support to basic industrial sectors. The creation of the Instituto Nacional de la Industria (INI) and, in turn, its creation of a public integrated plant, the Empresa Nacional Siderúrgica Sociedad Anónima (ENSIDESA), reshaped the steelmaking industry as the country's economic policy adapted to the nationalist and autarkist ideals of the Franco regime.
From its iron-making past in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the industry focused on basic production and the extraction of raw materials, the emergence of Slovakia's steel industry was also associated with the development of a national economy. In fact, analysts highlight that the first process of industrialization was accomplished in 1840, when legislation supported the establishment of industrial enterprises. Industrial development intensified in 1867, when the elites reached an agreement to turn the Habsburg Monarchy into the dual state of Austria-Hungary. Iron production before World War II was aimed at demand generated by the agricultural sector and, to a lesser extent, transport and the domestic market. After the economic crisis of 1900, which prompted the collapse of older enterprises, steel production declined significantly and, although it was expected that the 1918 new Czechoslovak state would encourage industrialization, old divisions between the more industrialized Czech territory and the agrarian Slovak territory endured. This is reflected in the fact that Slovakia was responsible for only 8% of the total Czechoslovak industrial production. The new state aimed to regenerate and promote industry through new economic plans, but the Second World War interrupted their implementation.
From 1879 to 1930, Argentina had an agro-export economy, which encouraged investments in infrastructural development, immigration strategies and the institutionalisation of primary education. The First World War and the Great Depression had an impact on trade and the interruption of importations of key commodities. The combined conditions of the European conflict and the economic crisis prompted a significant shift in economic strategy towards the development of a national industry. In the 1940s, protectionist measures underpinned an industrialisation policy along the lines of Import Substitution Industrialization under what was known in Latin America as desarrollismo or developmentalism. In this context the steel industry developed through private and state investments, such as the Fábrica Militar de Aceros (1935) and Altos Hornos Zapla (1943) and through the creation of a National Plan for the Steel Industry (1947) and of integrated steel plants such as the Sociedad Mixta Siderúrgica Argentina (SOMISA).
The evolution of Brazil's steel industry is entangled with the history of the country's industrialisation. In 1925 a branch of the Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira became the first integrated plant in South America. Founded by the association formed between the Luxemburg group Arbed and local businessmen from the province of Minas Gerais, the plant expanded production: in 1946 it produced 70% of Brazil's total production of 342.000 tons of steel, up from the 4.500 tons produced in the 1920s. During Getúlio Vargas' government in the 1940's the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) began its activities, and effectively supported the implementation of national policies that aimed to promote the Brazilian industrial complex and support the country's autonomy from foreign economic influence.
National industry and world markets: post WWII
In the post World War II period, the economic boom created many incentives for the steel industry. In this period, the state took a central role in promoting the industry. In this second period there are broad similarities across the four cases, though the differences between our examples are also highly significant. In Spain, the evolution of the steel industry was shaped by the policies pursued by the Franco regime. Franco's economic policies are analysed in terms of three periods (1941-1949, 1950-1959, 1960-64): the first period was characterised by the effects of the wars, with economic policy based on autarky. The aim of promoting industry was addressed by the creation of a national institute for industry (INI - Instituto Nacional de la Industria) in 1941. In the second period, the creation of the ENSIDESA integrated steel plant challenged traditional oligopolies, but also evinced the weaknesses of the INI: an obsolete production apparatus, excessive tariffs, and a management that was not oriented towards profitability. With a focus on the national market, private companies were forced to modernise following foreign models. During the 1960s and until 1974, ENSIDESA was the most important company in the country, despite the merger of private companies in Asturias (UNINSA) and despite its own operating weaknesses and management mistakes. Public funding was awarded to private companies to attract matching foreign investments. At the end of the 1970s, after the death of Franco and following the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, Spain carried out the First Industrial Reconversion in 1982 and joined the European Free Trade Association. Spain joined the European Economic Community in 1986 amidst high rates of inflation, unemployment and high public debt. There were also growing rates of tertiarization of the production structure and an expansion of the public sector (healthcare, education and pensions) during the socialist government.
In Slovakia, the effects of World War II prompted important reforms to economic policy, where the Czechoslovak state abandoned economic liberalism and paved the way for a two-year plan that included the industrialization programme put forward by the communist government of 1946. In the midst of the Cold War, Slovakia entered the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), which led the way to Slovakia's industrialization from 1950. In spite of the marked political and organization differences between COMECON and Western economies, Slovakia's socialist industrialization was also based on heavy state investments in industry and energy, especially oil, machinery, metallurgy and the chemical industry. Membership of COMECON included the introduction of Soviet planning and management methods. The nationalization of industrial enterprises and the collectivization of agriculture were fundamental elements of the economic model.
In Argentina, the investments of the state in the post-war period resulted in an expansion of the industrial base. In particular, the establishment of SOMISA resulted in an increase of 400% in the production of raw steel between 1960-1965, which meant an increase in the capacity to meet internal demand from 14% to 50%. The pro-industry ISI strategy was dismantled following the military coup of 1976, redirecting the economy towards a greater reliance on imports. The volume of imports increased from an overall value of $65 million in 1976 to $1900 million in 1980. This trend had a negative impact on national industry and on employment, which declined in the period. The military regime's policy of deindustrialization was linked to a politics of repression, especially directed towards the labour movement.
Brazilian industrialization from the 1950's onwards was aided by foreign direct investment, sometimes in the form of joint ventures such as in the case of Nippon Usiminas (Japan/Brazil 1956). Between the early and late 1960s the industry developed an institutional framework for the representation of the steel industry's demands, first through the Instituto Brasileiro de Siderúrgia in 1963 and later through the Plano Nacional Siderúrgico in 1968. During the 1970's there was an increase in productive capacity after the implementation of the second Plano de Desenvolvimento Económico and the creation of Siderbrás as a holding company in charge of state investment in steel, which effectively safeguarded state control over steel production.
The effects of neoliberalism(s) the 1990s and beyond
Important changes, directed towards moving away from state-induced and state-supported industrialization, began as early as the 1970s. But it was during the 1990s that wholesale shifts in the dominant economic model are evident in the policies and trends affecting the four countries studied in this project. During this decade various processes of privatisation take place that mark important trends and have parallel effects in all four countries, although the historical and political specificities of each establish a unique rhythm and shape in each case.
In Spain the decade was characterised by privatisation, cutbacks in government spending and social reforms aimed at reducing eligibility for government subsidies and support. In the late 1990s high rates of unemployment were coupled with steady increases in foreign investment abroad, as well as the presence of Spanish multinational companies in the world market: Spanish competitiveness in the global arena increased but still remained lower than other emerging economies. In the steelmaking industry, concentration, privatization and internationalization were envisaged as solutions to the difficult economic conditions, and Spanish companies sought 'strategic alliances' with foreign companies, significantly reshaping management strategies and crucially diminishing the number of companies involved in steel production. This process had devastating consequences for the labour-force, diminishing the number of workers and generating conflicts in the restructuring processes.
In Slovakia, changes in economic models are clearly tied to radical political change: the collapse of socialism in 1989 and the 'velvet divorce' of Czechoslovakia in 1993, resulting in the independence of Slovakia. One of the first tasks facing the new nation-state was the transformation of the economic structure through the transfer of enterprises to private ownership. The launch of a federal program of economic reforms in 1991 had a negative impact on the living conditions of the Slovak population, especially because the Slovak economy was based on heavy industry, which was particularly singled out for restructuring and reform. Consequently, by the mid-1990s, only 17,3% of Slovak products was considered competitive. The managerial elites became supporters of the Meciar government's critique of the 'shock therapy' economic neo-liberalism that had been pursued by Czechoslovakia after the collapse of COMECON and the subsequent loss of markets for Slovak production, in favour of a gradualist approach whereby industries and assets were transferred to Slovak capitals, in what might be described as 'clientship privatization'. In this context, steel production and metallurgy, which had remained the pillars of the post-socialist economy, showed a marked decline after 1996. There was significant economic growth in this period but despite this, the rate of unemployment decreased only moderately, which can be explained by higher productivity rates and the diversification of the third sector. Meciar was criticized for the isolationism that was seen to derive from his particular approach to privatization and after his defeat in 1998 a new coalition government implemented economic policies inspired by economic liberalism and neo-institutionalism. Consequently, unemployment reached a record high in 1999. Nevertheless, the liberalization of the economy, the privatization drive and the neoliberal policies adopted by Slovakia strengthened the country's bid for EU membership. The solution proposed to deal with the situation focused on foreign investment as the principal agent of economic development. Indeed, the importance of foreign investment was accentuated with Slovakia's entry into the European Union.
During the 1990s Argentina experienced an intensive programme of structural reforms, including trade liberalization, a wide-ranging drive towards the privatization of state assets, the de-regulation of the financial system and of labour relations. A central feature of Menem's Peronist government strategy was the Plan de Convertibilidad that pegged the Argentine currency to the US Dollar on a one-to-one basis. The state-owned, strategically important SOMISA was privatized in 1992, when 79,97% of shares passed to private owners, with Techint the majority buyer; negotiations between government, trade unions and the firm resulted in a 20% share for the workers via the trade unions. More broadly, the Convertibility Plan had important consequences for private and public debt and the real value of money. This affected local producers and dramatically increased the rate of unemployment, poverty and instability in the labour market. Crucially, the overvaluation of local currency and the opening of the economy to external markets created unfavourable competitive conditions for local commodities. The measures that were carried out during the period in question led to an unprecedented national crisis in 2001-2002. This crisis had a profound political and economic impact and prompted a shift in the direction of government towards a production-based economic model. This new economic direction had a positive effect on the steel industry, which underwent a period of expansion from 2002 to 2008.
The privatization of the Brazilian steel industry began in 1988, with privatization of the smaller units in the sector. Privatization of the larger enterprises followed, with the Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (CSN) privatized in 1993. This followed a longer process of transformation of production and administration to prepare the ground for privatization, in other words, to make the enterprise a desirable acquisition for private investors. It is significant that when the plant was privatized, so were all CSN's assets, including the company hospital, the technical school, outlying buildings and housing. Here, as elsewhere, privatization was accompanied by reductions in the workforce. Privatization also had implications for management, notably the separation that arose between management and ownership and the potential instabilities arising from the differences in scale between Brazilian enterprises and their European and Japanese partners. Another feature that made for potential instabilities was the internationalization of the industry, as it became an attractive destination for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).
History and comparison: issues arising
Although this report refers to the evolution of the steel industry, the project emphasizes the point that far from implying a smooth and progressive process of change, this evolution encompasses disjuncture and rupture, including the impact of crises, both political and economic.
The historical trends of national economies and their relation to the steel industry can be understood in terms of a broadly drawn periodization, as described above. It is also clear that although there are general trends in the evolution of the industry, there are important specificities to be taken into account in each case. There are, furthermore, local and regional particularities in the models implemented in each case; these differences can be explained, at least in part, through the historical trajectories of the four countries examined in the research, their place in the global economy and the characteristics of government and the articulation of class and politics that obtain in each instance. In terms of changing models, the project notes a shift from models where industry plays an important role, towards models that are articulated in relation to financial markets (for example the Plano Real in Brazil in 1994 and the Plan de Convertibilidad in Argentina in 1991).
Comparison of the four cases indicates that there are significant parallel processes across the cases relating to the implementation of models on a macro-level. Broadly, two models can be identified, following one another over a period of 70 years or so, that share broad similarities across the four cases. The principal characteristic of the first model is the commitment to industrial growth as a key feature of economic development; furthermore, state actors articulate this commitment through planned economies and/or alliances with local and international enterprises. This model entails heavy investment by the state in infrastructure such as transport and communication and urban development, as well as its involvement in the construction of plants and the advancement of technology. The steel industry played an important role in the model and could in fact be characterized as the linchpin of the strategy of economic development, supplying other national industries and providing jobs. This pro-industry model was replaced from the 1970s onwards by a market-oriented model, where the state's role was greatly restricted, in the expectation that the fluctuating demands of global markets would determine the shape of local economic performance.
What is a model?
The project's point of departure and its central question relate to economic models: how they emerge, how they circulate and how they are implemented. Crucially, the project is concerned with what models do or, in other words, their effects on local communities, lives and livelihoods. To achieve this the researchers needed to distinguish between different kinds of models that operate on very different scales and within different webs of power and influence. Indeed, the research is concerned with the different capacities of models to exercise hegemony. Thus, a range of policies that coalesced around a market-led model and that in 1989 came to be described as the Washington Consensus, became widely influential, notably through the structural adjustment programmes promoted by the International Monetary Fund. At the same time, the case histories show different degrees of adherence to the model and at particular conjunctures - notably in response to crises - governments may adapt or even overturn the basic principles of the model. At yet another level, a wide range of local actors articulate their understanding of the economic, political and social forces that affect their lives and livelihoods. Their interpretative models interact with contextual conditions to inform the strategies that individuals and groups devise to understand the past, confront the present and plan for the future.
These very different kinds of models - 'owned' by diverse actors - demand different methodological and theoretical instruments to provide a sufficiently complex account of them. Furthermore, the analysis of complex processes involving a range of actors and a range of fields of power, from global institutions through to governments, enterprises, trade unions, workers and the unemployed, requires analytical models capable of tracing connections and relationships between these actors and models and/or generating the questions that will lead to a fuller understanding of models and their effects.
In the first instance, models are ideas that are effectively articulated within more or less coherent bodies of knowledge, as well as techniques, technologies and the social relations through which or within which they are devised and actualized. Thus, the study of models involves the study of ideas in practice. Models can be understood as artefacts or devices that engage with concrete circumstances and relationships in specific contexts, in what have been described as performative entanglements. They might also be thought of as instruments of domination of particular interest groups who exert economic, political and/or cultural power.
As mentioned, models are circulated and implemented at different scales and different levels of concreteness and specificity. The project suggests a distinction between broad systems of ideas that circulate widely across different political and economic regions and more specific and tightly articulated models that, through particular practices and forms of implementation, have localized effects. Thus, the idea of industry-led, state-sponsored economic development finds a more focused expression in particular contexts under models such as Import Substitution Industrialization in Brazil and Argentina, Autarchy in Spain and state socialism in Slovakia. From this it follows that models are generated through multiple relationships in different sites, at different scales and with different temporalities. It also follows that models emerge in a relation of dynamic interactions between actors and ideas. Two questions arise in relation to this: how do models emerge and exercise influence? And what role does the distribution of power have in this emergence and circulation of models? The consortium proposes that in order to address these questions it is imperative to take into account the implications of the global context and the ways it intersects with regional and national economic configurations. This is exemplified by the privatization of the steel industry as the outcome of policy interventions that dislodged the state-sponsored model in the drive towards a market-led model. The privatization process that occurred in the steel industry from the second half of the 1980s exhibits some common features across a selected sample of countries studied in the project, albeit with different magnitudes of investment and production in the different examples.
In order to take these questions further, the project implemented a range of modelling techniques, exploring the potential of integrating qualitative data generated through fieldwork and computer modelling and simulation. The interpretation of observed empirical patterns can be impeded by a gap arising between abstract theorising and the variety of diverse empirical histories. The consortium adopted a research design that harmonises the need for rigour in abstract modelling with the need to assign empirical content to theories. For this purpose, the project integrates formal modelling, typically an instrument in the field of economics, with ethnography.
The consortium observes that the paths outlined, suggest the process of privatization in these countries followed comparable trends, of increased state intervention in the period from 1945 that peaks in the mid-seventies. In addition, researchers note that in the three countries:
- There are temporary periods of increase in the role of private production in the period 1969-1971 and in the second half of the seventies.
- There follows a period of relative stability in the role of private production in the first half of the eighties.
- There is a clearly marked process of privatisation at the end of the eighties, often anticipated by a transitory increase in the role of the state.
The observed similarities in the patterns of privatization in these three cases suggest the importance of exploring the dynamics of change affecting economic models at a global level. Rather than concentrate on local political pressures, there is a need to take into account global dynamics and the mechanisms that connect global models to country-specific political decision-making. The exploration of the data suggests the following hypotheses:
1. Economic models advocating the privatisation of state-owned firms develop at the global level.
2. Globally developed economic models generate pressures through the activity of global or international political entities (such as the International Monetary Fund, International Finance Corporation, Multinational Investment Guarantees Agency and the European Community for Coal and Steel).
3. Pressures by global and international political entities are mediated by national political elites who articulate nationally legitimised privatisation programmes.
4. Nationally legitimised privatisation programmes may be adjusted further, following political pressures by interest groups that operate at the local level (for example, regional administrations, sectorial organisation and trade unions).
How do models emerge and how are they disseminated?
The modelling exercise highlights the significance of the global scale in the design and circulation of economic models. This raises the need for a thorough exploration of the global and how global actors and processes become effective. The researchers have proposed that there are models characterised by high levels of abstraction, which could be described as meta-models. These arise and move through webs of fragmented or discontinuous global spaces, such as industrial enterprises, mills and factories. Connections and flows across loci that articulate these webs are structured by what the project researchers describe as the diffuse mode of dissemination of development models. This mode has an ontological capacity, difficult to perceive because of its depth and its naturalizing power. It works in implicit rather than explicit ways. It is the result of a myriad of agencies and agents in the longue durée. This mode may be represented by the values of decision-makers and is contrasted with the concentrated mode that refers to individuals such as entrepreneurs, managers and technicians who transfer visions, technologies, models and know-how within specific localities and circumstances. The concentrated mode has an explicit and evident framing capacity. It is thus manifest in social relations and social reality and is amenable to ethnographic scrutiny. In this respect, discourses can be seen as the stuff of the diffuse mode while models are best understood as the stuff of the concentrated one.
What are the implications and effects of model change?
Economic models are also models of society (encompassing social relations, social categories, spatial and temporal forms). The relationship between production and social organization is explicit in industrial models dating as far back as the 19th century when industry was associated with urban planning, the foundation of schools and other services. A similar strategy is illustrated in the Brazilian state's investment in the development of Volta Redonda alongside the construction of the President Vargas plant, as will be shown in the sections below. Another important feature in all the cases studied in the project is the role of the state in relation to training and education, which also changes with privatization. Overall, the case studies suggest that the shift to some version of neoliberalism produces a disarticulation and a reassembling of social relations, of social and political spaces and of time frames.
Ethnographic research: the field sites
In Spain, the research teams based at the University of Barcelona carried out field research in two locations in northern Spain. Aceralia (ArcelorMittal) is located in Asturias, a region with a long history of mining, metalwork and steel production. Aceralia, originally a state-owned plant (ENSIDESA), was founded in 1950 as a central feature of Franco's national development plan. In 1994 ENSIDESA became a shareholding company (as Compañía Siderúrgica Integral) and in 1997 it was bought by Arbed, becoming part of the Arcelor conglomerate formed by Aceralia, Arbed and USINOR in 2001. In 2006, the Arcelor and Mittal merger was the final stage in a process of internationalization of the firm, reflecting dominant trends in the industry. Under ArcelorMittal the plant is a major player in the European steel industry (see http://www.arcelormittal.com/corp/?page=0&lngId=3&tb0= online). The second site is in Galicia, where the shipbuilding industry has dominated the regional economy. Like the steel industry in Asturias, shipbuilding in Galicia has had a strong influence on the regional productive landscape, civil society organizations and the development and transmission of skills in the area. Research in Galicia focused on MEGASA, a small family firm founded in 1953.
The Slovak team, based at Comenius University, also conducted field research in two very different enterprises in two regions where the production of steel is a key feature of the economy. The first location is U.S. Steel's plant in Koice (see http://www.ussteel.com/corp/company/profile/sk-about.asp online), a global producer with headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in the US, Canada and Central Europe. It has an annual raw steel-making capability of 29.3 million net tons. The company manufactures a wide range of value-added steel sheet and tubular products for the automotive, appliance, container, industrial, construction and oil and gas industries. The Koice plant was built in the 1960s under Socialist economic development plans in which industry and steel in particular played a central role. After 1989, the plant, now the East Slovakian Steelworks, was privatized and in 2000 was acquired by the US Steel Group (at the time a unit of the USS Corporation). The second field site is located in Podbrezová. The firm, eleziarne Podbrezová (see http://www.zelpo.sk/zelpo/homezp_uk.nsf online) was established in the 1840s in a mountainous area of Central Slovakia where the treatment of iron and other, non-ferrous, metals dates back to the 16th century. The plant has an historical relationship with state planning dating back to early modernization projects. In 1992, after the fall of the socialist state, it became a shareholder company, with majority ownership going to Slovakian shareholders (99%). The company now has connections with plants in the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Spain and sells to 50 countries across the globe, supplying the automotive industry, the energy sector, engineering and infrastructure projects.
During the first stage of the research, the team working in Argentina, based at IDES, identified two contrasting examples of the range of enterprises operating in the steel industry. The first was a 'recovered factory' in the city of Buenos Aires, which had been taken over and managed by the workers at the time of the collapse of the economy in 2001-2, when many enterprises closed down or were abandoned by owners unable to deal with both market and financial constraints. At the time of the research, the factory was operating at a very reduced scale and the team decided that a longer-term study of this case was unlikely to be productive. Instead, they concentrated on the case of a large steel plant in the north of the province of Buenos Aires. It started out as SOMISA (Sociedad Mixta Siderúrgica Argentina), founded in 1947 during the government of Juan Domingo Perón as part of the Plan Siderúrgico Nacional, a national programme for the development of the steel industry. The plant is located in the country's principal steel producing hub and remained a central element within the national economy while under state ownership since the 1960s. It was privatized in 1992 as part of the Peronist president Carlos Menem's neoliberal reform programme; it is currently part of the Techint group and is Ternium Siderar's largest plant in Argentina (see http://www.siderar.com/ online).
The changing character of work
Research carried out in the seven sites outlined above shows significant changes have taken place in the conditions of work and employment in the industry. These changes are associated with a fragmented labour market and hierarchical organizations of the work force. A key factor in this fragmentation is the widespread practice of subcontracting, a management strategy that provides flexibility for the enterprise but which has the effect of generating precarious forms of employment, divisions in the workforce and widespread insecurity.
Generations
With the exception of eleziarne Podbrezová , which has its roots in the industrial policy of the Habsburgs, the enterprises in the steel industry studied in this project were founded in the first half of the 20th century. Their relatively short history means that the researchers had access to the direct or social memory of the first generation of workers. In all instances the workers recruited to the steel industry tended to come from the rural areas. They were, therefore, untrained and inexperienced in industrial work. Nevertheless, the early stages of the industry required skills that could easily be transferred from rural labour, for example for the construction of the sites, premises and furnaces. Many of these construction workers became permanent members of the work force once the plants started production.
Technological change
Today, there is a marked difference in the credentials demanded by employers in the industry, with much greater emphasis placed on formal educational achievement. While in the first generations of steel workers there were limited requirements in place regarding educational achievement, this has changed in response to the changing needs of the industry. During the construction phase of the industry, there was a need for a wide range of skills, many of them, such as building or driving, unrecognized. Technical skills specifically associated with the industry could be learnt on the job.
Potential Impact:
The project is committed to developing impact pathways in the social sciences through empirically grounded engagement with questions of industry, work and skills. The consortium aimed to achieve this through the inclusion of stakeholders from the early stages of the research and through feedback meetings with stakeholders in the final stage of the project. The relationships established with a range of stakeholders and scholars generated important networks across firms, trade unions, educational institutions, government bodies and international cooperation bodies. The consortium is concerned with ensuring the continuity of these networks beyond the completion of the project itself, through the website and online presence as well as the continued participation of members of the consortium in relevant workshops, academic conferences and debates.
Stakeholders
The consortium held several meetings with Stakeholders who have an interest in the steel industry. In September 2010, Ramón Laso (Spain) and MP Ivan Stefanec (Slovakia) joined a project meeting in Pezinok organized by Comenius University, Bratislava as part of Work Package 8, to discuss the scope of the research and their experience in relation to the industry. All the research teams were represented at the meeting, with Argentina participating through video conference. During extensive discussions, both stakeholders shared their views with the meeting about the present and future of the industry, highlighting important general and country-specific issues that were subsequently considered in the elaboration of research protocols for the ethnographic work packages. Among the issues highlighted, for Laso, were the challenges posed to social agents by the global nature of the steel industry, especially in terms of competition, training and employment. His experience as a member of ArcelorMittal's European Committee provided the basis for a discussion about the need for a more effective dialogue between employers and workers' organizations internationally, as well as the need for supranational initiatives to protect the levels and the quality of employment in the steel industry. Mr. Ivan Stefanec offered a very different view, from the perspective of his experience as chairman of the European Affairs Committee of the National Council of the Slovak Republic. After extensive managerial experience as CEO of Coca-Cola Slovakia, he was elected to Parliament as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, which was in power between 2010 and 2012. Referring to the context of the steel industry's privatization in Slovakia, he explained the rationale of pro-market policies, including privatization.
Steering Committee
In April 2010, IDES coordinated a meeting (First Meeting on Social Studies of Steel Production in Argentina) that brought together experts from a range of disciplines including economics, history, anthropology and sociology. The meeting was inaugurated through a presentation of the project and the research carried out in Argentina (Perelman/Vargas). This was followed by a number of presentations, papers and interventions regarding a broad range of issues pertaining to the industry. On a broader level, there were presentation on the characteristics of economic models and their implications for employment in recent Argentine history. This important meeting provided a useful opportunity for the IDES team and the project coordinator to identify potential steering committee members.
Policy recommendations
1) Agencies and agents involved in the production and dissemination of models need to be aware of the impact of their models, and the changes they may induce in people's livelihoods and in processes of social reproduction, as these models are implemented in different global scenarios.
2) Development agencies and agents need to be sensitive to local realities, so that differentiated local agencies/agents are able to participate actively in the design and circulation of models on a global scale. This includes the need to be receptive to local knowledge systems and locally developed innovations, practices and models, taking into account both 'folk' and 'expert' models.
3) The project findings suggest that it is important for researchers, government bodies (local, national and supranational), trade unions and community/civil society actors to reflect on the implications of model shifts for local environments and to devise and promote alternatives that enhance education, employment and well-being.
4) Greater and more effective regulation is needed in order to protect the rights of workers and address the effects of the fragmentation of the labour force. This includes the need to address flexible labour practices that have gained ground as firms confront the pressures of global markets. The continuing pressures of global competition mean that these forms of employment are likely to remain a feature of industrial work. It is therefore crucial that casual workers are afforded representation and protection.
5) Subcontracting has been a notoriously difficult problem to tackle, both by governments and by trade unions, given the propensity for the subcontracting chain to 'disappear' into informal and often intractable forms of economic activity. However, recent de-regulation and restructuring processes have increasingly led to the incorporation of subcontracting within the formal structures and official strategies of firms. This is evident in the steel industry, where employees of subcontracting firms may find themselves working side by side and sharing the work environment with those employed directly by the mother-firm. This points to the urgency - and the feasibility - of ensuring parity across different categories of workers (company and subcontracted) in terms of pay, security, safety and respect. The case of the Acuerdos de Oviedo negotiated in Asturias, Spain in the early 1990s, provides a useful starting point to consider appropriate policy interventions and frameworks for corporate good practice. However, there are limits to the effectiveness of localized agreements and corporate practices; instead, it is important to work towards national and transnational mechanisms that promote and safeguard work conditions that are fairly remunerated, safe and adequately supported through training and education.
6) Subcontracting may provide a lifeline to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that rely on the contracts of large enterprises in the industry to survive and prosper. The proliferation of SMEs adds to the complexity and diversity of the economic environment and is thus an important asset within regional economies. However, policy, state and trade union intervention need to provide the means to foster and support the success of these smaller units while also promoting fair and safe conditions of work for their employees.
7) While the diversification of skills and opportunities has emerged as an important issue from the perspective of current and future workers, it is also the case that the capacity for diversification would add to the competitive advantage and long-term success of SMEs within and beyond the subcontracting chain. Policy should address this potential through inclusive education and training platforms that promote innovation and dissemination of appropriate technologies and broadly based areas of knowledge and broad skill sets. Such platforms should be mixed (including a range of organizations and actors), transparent and inclusive of SMEs across the entire process of producing and disseminating knowledge, technological innovation and good practice.
8) The industry needs a skilled workforce to prosper in a very dynamic market. It is imperative that enduring and appropriate investments in education and training are in place. Effective intervention requires close collaboration between industry, educators and other stakeholders to ensure productive linkups across education and training, skills and work.
9) While apprenticeships are considered to be highly desirable both by prospective workers and by employers, it is crucial that these be properly regulated to prevent their use as vehicles for the employment of cheap labour; instead, apprenticeships should be regulated mechanisms to ensure the acquisition of skills and experience and accession to full employment.
10) Given the growing importance of flexible task allocation, problem solving and multiskilling, it is important that practical and vocational training take place in relation to broadly defined educational goals, embedding specialized technical training within broad curricula, and promoting new forms of entrepreneurship linked to local communities and regional economies and the
11) The importance of ensuring that a broadly based education underpins professional training at all levels is evident in the need identified in many research sites to counter damaging and prejudicial notions of 'the other' at work and in the community. These notions may attach to differences of ethnicity, origin, gender, sexuality or age and foment discord and fragmentation in the workplace and the community. Education understood in its broadest sense, encompassing formal educational environments and informal educational opportunities in the community (such as local cultural events, provides the most effective means to engage in a critical re-evaluation of stereotypes and prejudice.
12) It is crucial that legislation regarding work and labour conditions takes on board the complex relationships between the spaces and characteristics of work and the organization of livelihoods at the level of households and communities. This is relevant also to the issue of generational change and the problems faced by young people in many of the research sites to establish an independent household. The holistic approach of the early 20th century whereby the state and/or the enterprise invested in housing and services alongside their investment in production is a useful starting point when evaluating the spatial, social and material connections between industry, society and locality.
13) In some research sites, the consortium identified tendencies towards change in the gendered division of labour in the household, though these did not necessarily imply a more egalitarian distribution of tasks and responsibilities. In anticipation that this trend may increase with more women entering the labour force, there is a growing need for services to promote gender parity with regard to education, training and work. This inevitably also entails investments in support of household reproduction, especially in relation to high quality and affordable childcare.
14) The steel industry has been identified historically with male workers and with attributes largely associated with masculinity. This situation is slowly shifting as a result of changes in society and in the industry, notably the transformation of work through the introduction of new technologies. Legal frameworks, local policies and the practices of firms and trade unions must ensure gender parity at work and facilitate parity in the home. This requires a multilayered approach such as gender parity at the point of education, training and recruitment, equal pay and promotion opportunities, equality in relation to parental leave, and the regulation of shift-work.
Future research
The work carried out during the course of the project in relation to devising methodological and analytic tools highlights the enormous potential and importance of inter-disciplinary work. The project outcomes confirm the relevance of the consortium's investment in comparative analysis. The conclusions of the research also indicate that this perspective can be usefully developed by extending the comparison to include other case studies or to compare different industries and different fields of production. The modelling process engaged in throughout the duration of the project offered many opportunities to probe the generative possibilities of social research. This suggests that the development of these conversations across disciplines is fruitful and deserves wide support and, furthermore, that training in modelling techniques would enable qualitative social scientists to engage in different kinds of discussion about their findings, and make their research findings available to wider publics and policy makers.
Ethical research/researching ethically
From its inception, the project aimed to devise ethically sound research practice. At the first meeting of the consortium held in Bologna in October 2009, the project coordinator (Goldsmiths) and the scientific coordinator (Barcelona) tabled for discussion examples of ethical guidelines for research produced by professional anthropological associations. Members of the consortium were invited to bring to the discussion ethical guidelines produced by their disciplines and/or country and regional associations. These resources contributed to the design of the research protocols produced in advance of each research work package and distributed to all consortium members for discussion and comment. Consequently, ethical issues were incorporated into the planning and the implementation of the research. The ethical framework first discussed in the Bologna kick-off meeting was revisited in depth in a methodology workshop held in Barcelona in January 2011. The workshop provided an important opportunity for the members of the consortium to exchange their views about the implications of protocols relating to the generation of data and their dissemination, for example regarding the anonymity of informants, seeking informed consent, etc. The discussion also entailed a review of the practice of the consortium in line with the Consortium Agreement and enabled the meeting to refine the protocols to be followed in relation to the effective use of data across the consortium.
List of Websites:
http://www.medeasteelproject.org