On Work: Historical, Comparative and Theoretical Approaches

Most of the world's work is done by women and most of the world's work is done outside employment. The post-industrial developed world is now a society based primarily on service industries and the once agricultural societies of the third world are becoming increasingly industrialized. Work is becoming the key personal, social and political issue of the age. As the confusion about the meaning, nature and purpose of work grows so it has taken a central place in political and sociological study. This is a collection of articles which looks at all forms of work from a historical, comparative and theoretical perspective. The international collection of authors (some of whose essays have not been published before) include Michael Burawoy, David Stark, Nanneke Redclift, Lourdes Beneria, Maxine Berg, Enzo Mingione, and Jonathan Gershuny. Pahl provides a lengthy introduction and linking passages to provide an essential reader complementary to existing texts in a core area of social science.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Work in Context ; Part I Ways of Working in Former Times ; Editor's Introduction: Historical Aspects of Work, Employment, Unemployment and the Sexual Division of Labour 1. The Familiar Fate of the Famulae: Gender Divisions in the History of Wage Labour CHRIS MIDDLETON 2. Ways of Getting a Living in 18th Century England R. W. MALCOLMSON 3. Women's Work, Mechanization and the Early Phases of Industrialization in England MAXINE BERG 4. Protective Legislation, the Capitalist State and Working-Class Men: The Case of the 1842 Mines Regulation Act JANE HUMPHRIES 5. Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America 1815-1919 HERBERT G. GUTMAN 6. From Work to Employment and Unemployment: The English Experience KRISHAN KUMAR ; Part II Employers' Strategies and Workers' Strategies ; Editor's Introduction 7. Taylorism, Responsible Autonomy and Management Strategy STEPHEN WOOD and JOHN KELLY 8. Thirty Years of Making Out MICHAEL BURAWOY 9. Piece Rates, Hungarian Style MICHAEL BURAWOY 10. Managerial Strategies, New Technology and the Labour Process J. CHILD 11. The Decentralisation of Production - the Decline of the Mass-Collective Worker? FERGUS MURRAY 12. Labour Market Segmentation and Workers' Careers: the Case of the Italian Knitwear Industry GIOVANNI SOLINAS 13. Worker Behaviour in the Labour Market GABOR KARTESI and GYJORGY SZIRACZKI 14. Rethinking Internal Labour Markets: New Insights from a Comparative Perspective DAVID STARK ; Part III Most of the World's Work: Ideas, Concepts, Problems ; Editor's Introduction 15. Accumulation, Reproduction and Women's Role in Economic Development: Boserup Revisited LOURDES BENERIA and GITA SEN 16. Conceptualizing the Labour Force: The Underestimation of Women's Economic Activities LOURDES BENERIA 17. Domestic Labour and the Household MAUREEN M. MACKINSTOSH 18. Women as Food Producers and Suppliers in the Twentieth Century: the Case of Zambia SHIMWAAYI MUNTEMBA 19. Gender, Accumulation and the Labour Process NANNEKE REDCLIFT 20. Female Workers in the First and Third Worlds: the Greening of Women's Labour RUTH PEARSON . Part IV Forms of Work and Sources of Labour ; Editor's Introduction ; 21. No Exit for Wives: Sexual Divisions of Labour and the Cumulation of Household Demands in Canada MARTIN MEISSNER, ELIZABETH W HUMPHREYS, SCOTT M. MEIS and WILLIAM J. SCHEU 22. Who Cares? A Review of Empirical Evidence from Britain GILLIAN PARKER 23. Household Composition, Social Networks and Household Production in Germany WOLFGAN GLATZER and REGINA BERGER 24. Reciprocal Exchange of Labour in Hungary ENDRE SIK 25. Work and Informal Activities in Urban Southern Italy ENZO MINGIONE 26. Time, Technology and the Informal Economy JONATHAN GERSHUNY ; Part V Disaggregated Capitalism: New World Factories, New Technologies, New Strategies and New Contradictions ; Editor's Introduction Homeworking in Britain. CATHERINE HAK.