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Coffee from East Africa, wine from California, chocolate from the Ivory Coast - all those every day products are based on labour, often produced under appalling conditions, but always involving the combination of various work processes we are often not aware of.
What is the day-to-day reality for workers in various parts of the world, and how was it in the past? How do they work today, and how did they work in the past? These and many other questions comprise the field of the global history of work - a young discipline that is introduced with this handbook.
In 8 thematic chapters, this book discusses these aspects of work in a global and long term perspective, paying attention to several kinds of work. Convict labour, slave and wage labour, labour migration, and workers of the textile industry, but also workers' organisation, strikes, and motivations for work are part of this first handbook of global labour history, written by the most renowned scholars of the profession.
List of contents
Contents
1. Introduction
Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden
2. Regional perspectives
2.1. China
Christine Moll Murata
2.2. South Asia
Rana P. Behal
2.3. Sub-saharan Africa
Bill Freund
2.4. Latin America and the Caribbean
Rossana Barragan and David Mayer
2.5. Canada and the United States
Bryan D. Palmer
2.6. Eastern Europe and Russia
Susan Zimmerman
2.7. Western Europe
Andrea Komlosy
2.8. Iran (Persia)
Touraj Atabaki
2.9. The Ottoman Middle East and Modern Turkey
Gavin Brockett and Özgür Balkiliç
3. Kinds of work
3.1. Agriculture
Erik Vanhaute
3.2. Mining
Ad Knotter
3.3. Textile Industry
Prasannan Parthasarathi
3.4. Trade, transport and services
Peter Cole and Jennifer Hart
3.5. Administration
Therese Garstenauer
4. Types of labour relations
4.1. Introductory remarks
Karin Hofmeester
4.2. Subsistence and household labour
Eileen Boris
4.3. Convict labour
Christian de Vito
4.4. Indentured labour
Rosemarijn Hoefte
4.5. Slavery
Patrick Manning
4.6. Wage labour
Jan Lucassen
5. Attitudes towards work
Karin Hofmeester
6. Labour migration
Marlou Schrover
7. Work incentives and forms of supervision
Marcel van der Linden
8. Organization and resistance
8.1. Mutualism
Marcel van der Linden
8.2. Desertion
Matthias van Rossum
8.3. Strikes, lockouts and informal resistance
Sjaak van der Velden
8.4. Trade unions
Marcel van der Linden
Acknowledgments
Notes on contributors
Index
Report
"Insgesamt erweist sich die Lektüre der Beiträge als äußerst anregend, denn ihr ausgesprochener Mehrwert liegt in der konsequenten Betonung des Potenzials einer zukünftigen Globalgeschichte der Arbeit. Das Handbuch ist damit eine äußerst hilfreiche Handreichung zum aktuellen Forschungsstand sowohl für die Arbeiten aus dem Bereich der Global- als auch aus dem der Labour- History."
Nina Kleinöder in: VSWG 106.3 (2019), 385-386
