The organization of white-collars in Istanbul: intimacy, labor and politics

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the recent mobilization of white-collars in Istanbul after the 2008 economic crisis, by placing it within the context of the institutionalization of a precarious labor regime for lower level managerial workers. Following the organization of white-collars around Plaza Eylem Platformu (Plaza Action Platform), I analyze the production of knowledge about corporations by and among lower level managers; together with the managerial tools and mechanisms, which attempt to count, accumulate and/or manage affective economy of laboring in corporations. By depicting the managerial control mechanisms in corporations and their interventions in the affective states of workers, I argue that the managerial mechanisms (Human Resources Management apparatus in particular) displacing the control in corporations onto the social relations at work, attempt to capture affective investments of workers in their labor through penetrating the intimate relation they establish with their work. Finally, I analyze the formation of white-collars’ political subjectivity in the meetings and workshops of the platform which are taken to be a new channel in the affective economy of laboring where workers publicize the hidden working conditions, share their intimate relations to laboring mediated by the human resources techniques and construct a new ‘intimate’ space among workers against the management.