Handbook Global History of Work

12 December 2017 - 16:01

The Handbook Global History of Work provides an overview of research findings of the daily routines of workers in different parts of the world and how they have changed over time. It also seeks to be the basis of further research.

What are the daily routines of workers in different parts of the world, and how have they changed over time? What do contemporary work processes look like, and what were they like in the past? These, and many other questions are the subject of the global history of work - a relatively new discipline, which is presented in the Handbook Global History of Work, which not only provides an overview of research findings, but which also seeks to be the basis of further research.

De Gruyter just released this 600-page work, edited by Marcel van der Linden and Karin Hofmeester. It provides insight to various aspects of work in a global and long-term context. Topics include penal and slave labour as well as wage work, economic migration, labour organizations, strikes and worker motivation. This first handbook of the global history of work contains contributions from the most respected researchers in the field.

Coffee from East Africa, wine from California and chocolate from Côte d'Ivoire…
Products that many of us consume regularly are based on labour processes - often under inhuman conditions - but always based on a combination of various work processes that are often unfamiliar. The book begins with an outline of regional developments from almost all geographic areas of the world. Individual industrial sectors are examined as well as the many different forms of work that exist, including several models of the very varied forms of labour relations across the globe. How workers react to political and socioeconomic upheaval is covered as well as the attitude to work and to workers and forms of organized industrial action and strikes by different types of workers.

More info about (buying) the book:

Handbook Global History of Work | Photo by De Gruyter Publishers