The World Wide Web of Work
A history in the making
Marcel van der Linden
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.
Praise for The World Wide Web of Work
‘One of the foremost champions of global labour history, Marcel van der Linden, provides his readers here with a masterful analysis of key concepts that are necessary for understanding the manifold connections between different forms of labour in diverse parts of the world, which van der Linden also surveys with his usual clarity and precision.’ Stefan Berger, Professor for Social History and director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr-University Bochum
‘A near astonishing geographical and temporal breadth in The World Wide Web of Work takes labour history far beyond the factory worker who is generally its main subject.’ Avi Chomsky, Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts
'In this book Marcel van der Linden brings key elements needed to understand the history of work as it has been experienced over the last 200 years. In its concise distillation of the essence, significant geographic and temporal scope, and the author’s demonstrated mastery of the field the book is a singular achievement.'
Diane Kirkby, Professor of Law and Humanities at the University of Technology Sydney, and Editor of Labour History, the journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History
‘The World Wide Web of Work is essential reading for labour historians and an amazing accomplishment, taking us through time and space, and carefully charting out the field of global labour history – its challenges, concepts, connections and conflicts.’ Linda Clarke, Professor of European Industrial Relations, Westminster Business School
'The book is wholeheartedly recommended. It joins the publications of many others at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and elsewhere, who like to see things from ‘below’ and in truly global and historically informed perspectives. It also offers meaningful methodological guidance and insights on how to accomplish cutting-edge labour relations research from the perspective of the Global South and informed by history. What this book does well is that it poses many questions and areas for further research, and provides concepts, inspirations, guidelines and, of course, a historically informed context for a researcher to explore further.'
BJIR: An International Journal of Employment Relations
Marcel van der Linden is Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, where he served for fourteen years as research director.
List of tables and figures
Provenance of the texts Acknowledgments
Foreword
Sven Beckert
Introduction
CHALLENGES
1 Tree bark mysteries, or the invisible workers
2 Caribbean radicals, a new Italian saint, and a feminist challenge
3 Six insights from Gujarat
CONCEPTS
4 Capitalism
5 Workers
6 Coerced labour
7 Household strategies
8 Labour markets
CONNECTIONS
9 Global cash-crop transfers, ecology and labour
10 Slavery and convict labour: training-grounds for modern labour management
11 The abolition of the slave trade and slavery: intended and unintended consequences
12 The International Labour Organization: an appraisal
13 How some workers benefit from the exploitation of other workers
CONFLICTS
14 Walking fish: how conservative behavior generates and processes radical change
15 Mass exits: who, why, how?
16 Workers and revolutions: a historical paradox
17 1968: the enigma of simultaneity
18 Epilogue: Global labour history and the crisis of workers’ movements
References
Index
'The book is wholeheartedly recommended. It joins the publications of many others at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and elsewhere, who like to see things from ‘below’ and in truly global and historically informed perspectives. It also offers meaningful methodological guidance and insights on how to accomplish cutting-edge labour relations research from the perspective of the Global South and informed by history. What this book does well is that it poses many questions and areas for further research, and provides concepts, inspirations, guidelines and, of course, a historically informed context for a researcher to explore further.'
BJIR: An International Journal of Employment Relations
The World Wide Web of Work is essential reading for labour historians and an amazing accomplishment, taking us through time and space, and carefully charting out the field of global labour history – its challenges, concepts, connections and conflicts. Inspired by the work of Marx, Engels and labour historians across the world, Marcel van der Linden presents a rich and fascinating picture of coerced and waged labour in its various forms, working under often precarious conditions, and discusses what this means for our understanding of capitalism.'
Linda Clarke, University of Westminster
'One of the foremost champions of global labour history, Marcel van der Linden, provides his readers here with a masterful analysis of key concepts that are necessary for understanding the manifold connections between different forms of labour in diverse parts of the world, which van der Linden also surveys with his usual clarity and precision. Furthermore he is not hiding from his readers that there are many challenges awaiting the global labour historians and he discusses them with the experience of someone who has grappled with these pitfalls for many decades. Finally, to his credit, van der Linden is one of those labour historians who has never lost sight that the worlds of labour incorporate the worlds of organized labour and therefore the pages in this book also have much to say about labour conflicts and labour organisations seeking to improve the experience of workers. Overall, The World Wide Web of Work *is a treasure trove for anyone interested in global labour history.' *Stefan Berger, Professor for Social History and director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr-University Bochum
'A near astonishing geographical and temporal breadth in* The World Wide Web of Work* takes labour history far beyond the factory worker who is generally its main subject. A chapter on coerced labour, for example, features side-by-side images of armed slaving raids in Mozambique in the 1860s and Korean mineworkers conscripted to work in a Japanese mine during World War II in a deep discussion about the many forms labour coercion has taken. What emerges is a kaleidoscopic view of the shifting worlds of work under capitalism over time and space. Each chapter sheds new light on key issues in labour history and invites readers to see labour systems as more complex, more interrelated, and more constantly evolving in an interconnected global system. The author pays consistent attention to structures (at multiple geographical levels) and agency, and to the empirical and theoretical. The richness of the empirical data is matched by a sensitive and productive approach to explanatory and theoretical proposals; there is no grand theory here, only suggestions about potential implications and further questions. Marcel van der Linden is very much a historian’s historian. While engaging seriously with sociologists, economists, and others who emphasize theory, he insists on historical specificity and multi-causality, even while probing patterns and connections that show the larger picture.'
Avi Chomsky, Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts
'In this book Marcel van der Linden brings key elements needed to understand the history of work as it has been experienced over the last 200 years. Maximising the use of alliteration, the four W’s of the title are then organised into the 4 C’s of Challenges, Concepts, Connections, Conflict, that constitute the analytical approach and method. The range is impressively broad, covering urban and rural, waged and unwaged, free, enslaved, indentured labour in its many manifestations and several locations, in households, labour markets, revolutionary movements and organisations. The book engages with theories, asks the big yet simple questions of history (who, why, how) and positions the pursuit of global labour history as rejuvenating and open to development. This is offered as a perspective for thinking critically about the cyclical process of capitalism, a contribution to knowledge that is reached through probing questions and driven by the need for new approaches. In its concise distillation of the essence, significant geographic and temporal scope, and the author’s demonstrated mastery of the field the book is a singular achievement.'
Diane Kirkby, Professor of Law and Humanities at the University of Technology Sydney, and Editor of Labour History, the journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
Format: Open Access PDF
412 Pages
Copyright: © 2023
ISBN: 9781800084551
Publication: May 09, 2023
Series: Work Around the World 1
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