The Exploitation of Family Morality

Abstract

By contrast with the colonato system, when labour was hired and worked in family units, today’s casual wage workers sell their labour on an individual basis. Nonetheless, these men and women continue to reproduce themselves as workers within families. Their attitudes to work continue to be mediated by their socially defined and contrasting family responsibilities. Until now I have focused attention on the labourers’ experiences at work and on their class politics. However, changing productive relations have also challenged family morality and gender relationships. The workers’ class consciousness was seen to have been informed by their perceptions of the political process that made them into casual labourers. Similarly, because the workers’ social identities are shaped also by gender relations, when changing productive relations challenged these, their gender consciousness created new contradicitons between women and men within the family.

‘Coffee growing demands not the contribution of casual labour but, indeed, that of ‘well constituted’ families, of at least three hoes.’ Boletím do Departamento do Trabalho Agrícola, XL (72) (São Paulo, 1932) p.11

‘The selection of rural workers and of helpers is the task of the administration. A well-colonised plantation, with well-constituted families, strong people, well disposed to work, who know the job, will do well … The worker must have his family with him on the plantation. The single worker is restless, a nomad, he does not put down roots, he has no incentive. Rural life more than life in town imposes organisation in families.’ RSRB (October 1938) p.27