IRRU Seminar – October 2015
Stefano Gasparri (University of Warwick)
stefano.gasparri@wbs.ac.uk
Studying work in theory and practice:
Insights for a globalizing academia from the IR trajectory in Italy
Long abstract
Ideas travel easily in an increasingly globalized academia, but what happens at their landing
remains often unclear: are they accepted, manipulated, refuted? Addressing this issue is particularly
critical for the field of IR, not only because of its uncertain destiny (ILR 2015), but especially for
its ‘ethnocentric’ traits (Hyman 2004). This paper investigates the relevance of the context in the
IR theoretical development on the basis of its pluralist, unitarist and radical traditional frames of
reference (Fox 1974), whose dialectic is still timely (Budd 2007; Ackers 2014; Edwards 2014;
Ackers and Johnstone 2015). Few studies tackle the topic outside the Anglo-Saxon IR hotspots
(Kaufman 2004; Frege 2007; Hyman 2007) and Italy remains an under-researched case despite
three analytical advantages: IR has a quite long presence to detect a trajectory, a relatively modest
size to allow a comprehensive assessment, a set of scholars whose contributions are internationally
appreciated.
In the historical reconstruction of the field, I identify three main phases.
I)
The early years in the 60s and 70s. Key-figures are the labour law scholar Giugni and
the sociologist Pizzorno. The former adapted Dunlop’s ‘system of industrial
relations’ to the Italian context (Giugni 1960); the latter popularized concepts as
'political exchange' and 'cycles of protests' (Pizzorno 1978). Poles apart, radical
approaches took off, thanks to neo-marxist analysis of ‘workerists’ and ‘autonomists’
(Tronti 1966; Negri 1979).
II) The age of maturity in the 80s and 90s. Research investigated cooperative industrial
relations at the decentralized level, either via ‘micro-corporatism’ (Regini 1995) or
‘territorial pacts’ (Regalia 2003). In this phase, IR in Italy became a source of
inspiration worldwide (Piore and Sabel 1984; Tarrow 1989; Locke 1995; Franzosi
1995), while leaving aside home scholars focused on social movements (Della Porta,
Melucci, Arrighi).
III) The crisis and metamorphosis since 2000. Different perspectives on labour
revitalization than social partnership were deemed as unfit to the Italian context
(Regalia 2012), despite a creeping liberalization of the labour market and a recurrent
anti-union government agenda eroded the space for social partners’ involvement
(Molina 2014; Culpepper and Regan 2014). At the same time, a new research centre
- Adapt - took over the field thanks to abundant financial resources, triggering the
most controversial debates and redefining the boundaries of the field: on a higher
level, by rooting it into the Catholic social doctrine (Tiraboschi 2014); more
practically, by entrenching it within the HRM approach (Salta 2014). With IR drifting
towards unitarism, it does not surprise that leading Italian IR thinkers – Meardi,
Baccaro, Pulignano – are all abroad.
Overall, these findings clarify that an internationalized academia does not prevent its own
national trajectories from diverging. IR in Italy has embraced a firm-oriented perspective: “market
without pluralism” (Cella 2013) is the rule, both in practice as well as in theory. On the contrary,
prominent Anglo-Saxon schools have devoted remarkable attention to labour-oriented themes
(Turner, Katz and Hurd 2001; Frege and Kelly 2004; Simms, Holgate and Heery 2013). This result
confirms the ethnocentrism of IR (Hyman 2004), problematizing the possible impact of recent
analytical advancements (Whalen et al. 2008; Darlington 2009; Piore 2011; Kochan 2012; Jackson
et al. 2013; Vidal and Hauptmeier 2014). However, this paper also demonstrates that IR can easily
reconcile ethnocentrism with internationalism through the adoption of the universal compass
provided by the ‘frames of reference’. By doing so, the theoretical thickness of the field emerges,
and the consequent implications are possibly deep: to thrive in an increasingly globalized academia,
shall IR overcome its under-theorisation nature?
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