This Platform for Dialogue, organized by CALAS in association with the Indian Branch of the Max Weber Foundation (MWF Delhi), seeks to understand work processes and capital-labor relations embedded in informational regimes, bringing together research from and about the “Global North” and the “Global South". In this way, it highlight the dimensions of knowledge in the study of labor, focusing specifically on the knowledges and practices of workers and laboring populations, as opposed to the knowledge about labor generated by capital and the State.
To claim that there is a “knowing how to work” implies recognizing that workers not only possess the knowledge necessary to carry out the tasks assigned to them by employers, managers, or planners of labor regimes, but also hold knowledge to navigate the conditions and adversities they face. This enables them—at times—to participate in acts of resistance and disruption. Disruptive knowledge, in turn, can foster rebellion, as suggested by approaches inspired by Subaltern Studies. Yet, conversely, it may in the Scottian sense be the form of knowing that actually makes the conditions of laboring both bearable and possible, by disrupting the failures of management and planning that mark the disciplining of labor. Paradoxically, the latter disruption constitutes the nucleus for acts of subversion that challenge disciplinary regimes, but frequently serve to stabilize actually existing conditions of discipline and hierarchy.
The simposium adresses, amongst others, the following questions:
- What role does disruptive knowledge play in shaping the world of work?
- How is "knowing how to work" connected to workplace resistance strategies?
- How do situations of coercion, precariousness, and informality reshape workers' practices?
The event will take place April 14 to 16, 2026, at the Campus Miguelete, National University San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Access and participation is free and unrestricted.

