Towards a relational environmental labour studies

Abstract

This essay builds on the contributions to this special issue to advance a historical relational approach to labour studies, industrial relations, and Environmental Labour Studies (ELS) while differentiating it from the interactional approaches currently dominant. Central to this choice is that relational approaches provide more empirically compelling explanations of the choices of labour, capital, and state because they take into account that the choices of these social entities are embedded within their mutual and uneven constitution. From that starting point I reflect upon the five articles in this special issue on climate change and industrial relations and examine how I see them contributing to such a relational approach even though it is not their explicit strategy. I close by briefly restating my view that a historical relational approach is empirically more complete while alerting us to our axiological and epistemological preferences.