van der Linden, Marcel;
(2023)
The World Wide Web of Work.
[Book].
UCL Press: London, UK.
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Abstract
Global Labour History has rapidly gained ground as a field of study in the 21st century, attracting interest in the Global South and North alike. Scholars derive inspiration from the broad perspective and the effort to perceive connections between global trends over time in work and labour relations, incorporating slaves, indentured labourers and sharecroppers, housewives and domestic servants. Casting this sweeping analytical gaze, The World Wide Web of Work discusses the core concepts ‘capitalism’ and ‘workers’, and refines notions such as ‘coerced labour’, ‘household strategies’ and ‘labour markets’. It explores in new ways the connections between labourers in different parts of the world, arguing that both ‘globalisation’ and modern labour management originated in agriculture in the Global South and were only later introduced in Northern industrial settings. It reveals that 19th-century chattel slavery was frequently replaced by other forms of coerced labour, and it reconstructs the laborious 20th-century attempts of the International Labour Organisation to regulate labour standards supra-nationally. The book also pays attention to the relational inequality through which workers in wealthy countries benefit from the exploitation of those in poor countries. The final part addresses workers’ resistance and acquiescence: why collective actions often have unanticipated consequences; why and how workers sometimes organise massive flights from exploitation and oppression; and why ‘proletarian revolutions’ took place in pre-industrial or industrialising countries and never in fully developed capitalist societies.
| Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Title: | The World Wide Web of Work |
| ISBN: | 9781800084551 |
| ISBN-13: | 9781800084551 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800084551 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084551 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Attribution should include the following information: Van der Linden, M. 2023. The World Wide Web of Work: A history in the making. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084551 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |
| Keywords: | Global Labour History, IISH, working class, slavery, indentured labour, comparative studies, migration, cash crops, prison labour, International Labour Organization, revolution, women, work, ecology, feminism, slavery, revolutions, crisis of labour movements |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10169174 |
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