Handbook Global History of Work

Published July 8, 2019 by De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

ISBN:
978-3-11-064662-7
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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 …

3 editions

A Masterful Academic Essay Collection

This book is an incredible collection of essays on different aspects of global labor history, historiography, and labor organization. The section that looks at labor changes over the centuries from a geographic perspective is especially great, although obviously given the scale of the task some areas are left out (e.g. Japan 😢). Each section also includes a suggested reading list, which in and of itself is invaluable. The essays do have a very socialist bent, which for me was tolerable but was occasionally annoying. A big oversight is that there is virtually no details on what the work people did actually entailed - instead, the book is focused on the macro organization and composition of labor. I would've been more forgiving on this point if the book had a different title. Regardless, this collection is so insightful on the topics it does cover that it demands to be read by …

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