The European Experience as a Model: On the Transfer of European Trade Union Theories and Strategies to South Africa and Turkey (subproject)

The main issue in this case is: where in social theory and analysis is Europe regarded as a model? To what extent might European developments be taken as examples for other local contexts? This research project is concerned with the model character that European trade unions as institutions of modern industrial societies have assumed for countries in the global South. Since the emergence of trade unions outside of Europe, a transfer of trade union theories and strategies and a preoccupation with the historical experience of European labour movements have taken place. At the same time, however, the question has always been posed concerning the transferability of these aspects to the quite differently structured economic and social systems in which the organised labour force as well as entrepreneurship have assumed a different role.

Within the project’s framework, an involvement with trade union theory also proves useful, since in this case an organic connection between theory and praxis exists. The demand for social scientific knowledge as a basis for action was recognized as a favourable precondition for dealing critically with imported approaches and for elaborating independent concepts and theories. Therefore, it is not only the academic trends that should be followed but just as much the internal debates within the trade unions. As case studies, two countries have been chosen, the developments of whose trade unions show intensive confrontation with Europe and with which Dr. Ercüment Çelik has already dealt intensively in the course of his earlier research and education: South Africa and Turkey.

The case studies will focus on different historical periods of development of these two countries and their trade union movements in order to examine the transfer of and reaction to dominant trade union models, the circulation of different perspectives as well as the formation of alternative theories and strategies. The first level of analysis is concerned on the one hand, with the arrival of the European model with the colonial conquest (as in the case of South Africa), and on the other hand, with the reaction of the countries of “Reactive Modernization” (coined by Göran Therborn) that were challenged and threatened by colonial domination (such as Turkey).

The second level of analysis deals with the different roads to industrialization and particular political situations that have influenced the rise and decline of the trade union movements in these two countries.

The third level of analysis is concerned with the latest developments in the era of global restructuring, in which an integration of these two countries to the global markets and networks plays a crucial role in both the circulation of different models and the formation of alternative perspectives and strategies.

This procedure should also render possible a comparison between the two countries, which are often seen in the category of the semi-periphery.

Qualitative interviews with both social scientists - particularly labour scholars and trade unionists in South Africa and Turkey - will be conducted in order to examine the transfer of European trade union theories and strategies to South Africa and Turkey.