About Dr Bill Dunn
Dr Bill Dunn's research interests include the global political economy of labour, broadly conceived; value theory, the nature and spaces of work, labour as a social movement.
Dr Dunn's primary interests in the Global Political Economy of Labour involve three ongoing interrelated projects. Firstly, considering the economic role of work and developing value theory in the tradition of classical political economy. Work is understood as central to social and economic life and to the production of surpluses that can be usefully re-invested. Acknowledging discrepancies between value and price is then taken as the starting point rather than the end of investigations of complex and contested interactions.
Secondly, his research examines changes and continuities in the nature and geography of work. I see ideas of globalisation and of the ‘new economy’ as potentially misleading in suggesting a radical change and thus underestimating the importance of continuities in places and practices of labour. The long term project is therefore to provide a more adequate and nuanced mapping of the way globally integrated and locally specific production systems interact and change over time.
Thirdly, his research investigates labour as a social and political movement and the way this is shaped by ideological, institutional and material changes. This involves an empirical engagement with longstanding debates about the relationship between structure and agency, which have been neglected in some of the more influential writing on the transition from ‘old’ to ‘new’ social movements and in writing-off the potential of labour as a collective social agent.
This broad research agenda also informs more specific research on economic transformation within particular countries, on economic crises and the current crisis in particular.