Work, precarity and militant unionism in an industrial Area in the mid-hills of Nepal.

SYNCRETISM (Religion); ETHNOLOGY; EMPLOYMENT; ACTIVISM; VIOLENCE

This article examines the ways militant (Maoist) unionism has affected labour relations in industries within an industrial area in the mid-hills of Nepal. Much of the ethnography of industrial factories around the globe, I argue, has stressed workers' growing precarity and the deteriorating conditions of employment. This article, however, outlines a case of a different trajectory, where militant unionists managed to successfully challenge precarious labour conditions in larger factories within the industrial area. Yet, as I also show, such successful union interventions in the relationship between capital and labour remain limited to large factories, and over the past years union activism has been in decline. I give various reasons for the decline in labour activism including the changing political context, the continuous antagonistic relationship between Nepal's two major unions which is historically rooted in violence, and the shift from radical militant unionism to a more bureaucratic and standardized form of unionism at the central level. In doing so, the article opens a new dialogue between the ethnography of work, labour history, and the social study of radical political groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]