Waters Sarah
School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom.
TripleC. 2017 Mar 30;15(1):191-213. doi: 10.31269/triplec.v15i1.801.
Workplace suicides are sharply on the rise and reflect a generalised deterioration in working conditions across the globalised economy. Despite their growing prevalence, workplace suicides are subject to specific modes of repression that tend to keep them hidden from public view. Suicides and their social recognition threaten the vested interests of corporate and political elites by giving material embodiment to relations of production in the form of extreme human suffering. This article focuses on 'suicide waves' at two distant corporations in the information and communications sector: in France, the telecoms provider, France Télécom (rebranded Orange in 2013) and in China, electronics supplier, Foxconn. Drawing on Stanley Cohen's notion of 'states of denial', the article examines the tactics used by business and political elites in an effort to keep the suicides concealed. These include discourses that denied the suicides, individualised their causes and repressive tactics intended to control information and impede investigations. Recognising workplace suicides and the forms of repression that seek to occlude them is crucial if we are to confront the profound human costs of a new international division of digital labour on lived experiences of work.
职场自杀事件急剧增加，反映出全球化经济中工作条件的普遍恶化。尽管职场自杀事件日益普遍，但它们受到特定的压制方式，往往使其不被公众所见。自杀及其社会认知通过以极端人类苦难的形式使生产关系具现化，威胁到企业和政治精英的既得利益。本文聚焦于信息和通信领域两家相距遥远的公司的“自杀潮”：法国的电信供应商法国电信（2013年更名为Orange）和中国的电子产品供应商富士康。借鉴斯坦利·科恩的“否认状态”概念，本文考察了企业和政治精英为隐瞒自杀事件而采取的策略。这些策略包括否认自杀事件、将其原因个体化的话语，以及旨在控制信息和阻碍调查的压制策略。如果我们要面对新的数字劳动国际分工对工作体验造成的巨大人力成本，认识职场自杀事件以及试图掩盖它们的压制形式至关重要。
