RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
CHRIS HOWELL
"Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."
Vilfredo Pareto"It is astonishing that even serious philosophers calmly identify freedom (which, if it is not understood mythologically, means a capacity for planning, and subordinating means to ends) with indeterminacy, merely because both are commonly counterposed to causal determinism."
Timpanaro
The unifying theme of my scholarship in the decade or so since leaving graduate school has been role of states in the regulation of social relations between employers and workers. In practice, this has meant a focus upon the industrial relations projects of governments, particularly in France and Britain. The questions my research tries to answer are: what role do states play in the construction and reconstruction of industrial relations institutions? what explains the timing and form of state intervention in the regulation of class relations? how does the form of state intervention influence the ideology, practice and organizational form of labor movements? Along the way, I have developed an interest in the relationship between Left political parties and trade unions, particularly in how changes in the social base and forms of class linkage of social democratic and socialist parties influence their industrial relations projects.
These pages provide links to details of my professional achievements, publications, and work-in-progress. A few conference papers, as yet unpublished, are also available, or will be soon. Please do not quote or copy any part of these papers without my direct permission. Any comments, or feedback are most welcome!