Circulation of ‘Social Movement Unionism' Concept As a Case of Intellectual South-South and North-South Dialogue

The Euro-America centric and hegemonic development of social sciences has been widely debated in various disciplines, but not significantly in labor sociology. Hence, there is a need for studies developing recognition of the experiences of labor movements in the global South, their relevance in the global North, and their scholarly interpretations in both the global North and South. This includes a focus on how the concepts in social sciences, particularly in labor sociology circulate. This two-fold process takes account of both ‘learning from the periphery’ and a ‘mutual learning on a world scale’. The ‘social movement unionism’ (SMU) concept, which has been developed to describe labor movements in the global South in the 1980s and 1990s, and then later used as a model of union revitalization in both the North and South, sets a good example of such consideration. The paper reviews the labor movements in various countries i.e. South Africa, Brazil, Philippines, South Korea, the U.S.A., analyzes the scholarly use of the SMU concept, and attempts to apply the main arguments of the critiques of Eurocentrism to this case. Consequently, this paper argues that SMU can be regarded as an appropriate example of a non-hegemonic circulation of concepts in social sciences on a world scale, since it refers to an alternative trade unionism; represents cases of learning from the south; is based on local engagements and experiences; and develops through and acknowledges multiple cases.