The Global History of Work: Critical Readings(Critical and Primary Sources)

The Global History of Work: Critical Readings provides an extensive reference collection which is essential for all students and scholars needing to gain a critical understanding of work and the history of work. Collating scholarly historical texts on the subject from the last 50 years and beyond from a wide range of sources, this four-volume set offers a key knowledge resource for the field. The set brings together around 60 essays and papers - from the field-shaping pieces published in the 1970s through to the landmark texts of the recent past and present - and thematically arranges in a way that highlights the crucial topics of discussion and debate in this area of study. The set obviously has a global scope and provides valuable insights into how the field was formed, how it has developed and how it will be studied in the years to come. Volume 1 explores core concepts to do with work and work history and examines definitions, perceptions and the ‘making of workers’. Volume 2 focuses on work sites, with an emphasis on locations, migrations and households. Volume 3 considers labour markets and includes material on unemployment, gender and ethnicity, sociability/social networks and recent trends. Volume 4 covers collective action and the importance of the politics of labour, unions and forms of resistance. Each volume includes a substantial contextualizing introduction surveying the development of the field. The Global History of Work: Critical Readings is a major scholarly reference work for all researchers interested in the history of work.

Table of Contents:
Volume 1: Work and Workers in Context General Introduction Introduction Part I: First Orientations Part II: Work and Workers Part III: Degrees of Freedom Part IV: The Making of Workers Volume 2: Work Sites General Introduction Introduction Part I: Locations Part II: Management and Discipline Part III: Families/Households Part IV: Migrations Volume 3: Labour Markets General Introduction Introduction Part I: Unemployment Part II: Gender and Ethnicity Part III: Sociability and Social Networks Part IV: Recent Trends Volume 4: Collective Action General Introduction Introduction Part I: Forms of Resistance Part II: Self-Organization Part III: Yellow Unions and Racketeering Part IV: The Politics of Labour and the Global Crisis of Traditional Workers’ Organizations Further Readings

About the Author :
Marcel van der Linden is Director of Research at the International Institute for Social History and holds a professorship at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is the author of Transnational Labour History (2003) and Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History (2008) and, with Karl Heinz Roth, Beyond Marx: Confronting Labour-History and the Concept of Labour with the Global Labour-Relations of the Twenty-First Century (2015).