Towards a new history of work
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Towards a new history of work
Tulika Books in association with Association of Indian Labour Historians and V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, 2014
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references
Summary: Papers presented at the 9th International Conference on Labour History, held at V.V. Giri National Labour Institute in March 2012
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This collection of essays is the outcome of a conference, organized by the Association of Indian Labour Historians in collaboration with the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, on the histories of work, from the long-term and comparative perspective. Why did the conference organizers and participants propose to look beyond 'labor history' to look at 'the history of work'? Perhaps because at this moment of history we are in the midst of a huge change which compels our attention to turn to the notion of 'work' as distinct from that of 'labor'. This change appears to us in the form of a technological transformation that affects not just our view of history, but our life itself. Every time we use the computer or the internet or the cyber networks we experience this transformation - which brings home to us the fragility of the conventional boundary between 'labor' and 'work'. The information technology revolution has created a new space for some workers as a result of the relocation and dispersal of work, often to the home of the workers.
In fact, this situates such information technology workers in a position analogous to that of the late medieval or early modern European artisans - an interesting recursive pattern in labor history. Moreover, in the less developed countries where capitalist relations do not exhaustively define all production relations, we have a large proportion of the economically active population without being in someone's employment, and thus it seems that the term 'worker' possibly accommodates them better than the term 'laborer'. Further, when we consider the long run of history, the same proposition holds for the workers of the pre-capitalist era in many countries - i.e. the artisans and others who remained self-employed even if they were tied to a dependency network. The term 'laborer' appears to be inappropriate, as some authors in the present volume have argued, to people of that class in the pre-modern period in India or elsewhere. There are many other issues which need rigorous re-thinking in the agenda of constructing a 'history of work'. In considering how the nature of 'work' is being transformed, the term 'work' needs to be defined because in common parlance it means many things.
If value addition to a marketed product or service is the criterion, a pro tem working definition accepted since Adam Smith, there are problems to sort out. For instance, there may be work which is socially useful but not marketed, e.g. the homemaker's or housewife's work, a vital question from the gender history point of view. These and many other questions surface in this volume.
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