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Working together: new directions in global labour history*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Leo Lucassen
Leo Lucassen*
Affiliation:
International Institute for Social History, Cruquiusweg 31, 1019AT Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-mail: leo.lucassen@iisg.nl
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Abstract

The aim of this article is to show the added value of global history that puts labour and labour relations as independent variables in the centre and uses structured long-term data by collaborating closely with historians in various parts of the world. The first part focuses primarily on the global labour relations approach, within the broader debate on social inequality and migration. The second part illustrates the potential of labour as an independent variable by reflecting on recent innovative work pertaining to labour-intensive industrializations in East Asia and Europe. The third part employs the perspective of migration to show the interrelated nature of labour relations and labour. Using the insights from the global labour relations approach and by taking labour seriously, the article will help to address core questions in labour history in a more structural way: why has work been valued and compensated in very different ways over the past five centuries? And how have people individually or collectively influenced these conditions? To find answers, it is crucial to make use of standardized empirical data, structured global comparisons, and more intensive collaborations.

Keywords

big datalabourlabour relationsmigrationskillssocial inequality
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 66 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I thank Ulbe Bosma, Tamira Combrink, Ewout Frankema, Marjolein ’t Hart, Manon van der Heijden, Karin Hofmeester, Gijs Kessler, Jaap Kloosterman, Marcel van der Linden, Jan Lucassen, Patrick Manning, David Mayer, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Matthias van Rossum, Christian de Vito, Henk Wals, Jan Luiten van Zanden, Pim de Zwart, and the editors and anonymous readers of this Journal for their comments on an earlier version.

References

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16 Think, for example, of Russian engineers in the Soviet Union in secret (defence industry) cities. See Siegelbaum, L. and Moch, L. P., Broad is my native land: repertoires and regimes of migration in Russia’s twentieth century, Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2014, pp. 177–187Google Scholar.

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39 This includes material living conditions, quality of life, and sustainability. See also van Zanden et al., How was life?

40 North, Wallis, and Weingast, Violence and social orders. On urban citizenship, see Lucassen, L., ‘Population and migration’, in P. Clark, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 664–682Google Scholar. Skill should be understood broadly and is not confined to formal training, either through guilds or education, but includes informal on-the-job training. Although such skill formation is more difficult to measure, it is far from impossible: see Benson, J., Gospel, H., and Zhu, Y. eds., Workforce development and skill formation in Asia, London and New York: Routledge, 2013Google Scholar; van Lottum and van Zanden, ‘Labour productivity’. More specifically gendered analyses have made this point forcefully: see e.g. the highly interesting studies and observations in Sangster, J., ‘Making a fur coat: women, the labouring body, and working-class history’, International Review of Social History, 52, 2007, pp. 241–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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42 Kessler and Lucassen, ‘Labour relations’. On deep monetization, see Lucassen, J., ‘Deep monetization, commercialization and proletarianization: possible links, India 1200–1900’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ed., Towards a new history of work, New Delhi: Tulika, 2014, pp. 17–55Google Scholar.

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60 In their recent book on Russian migrations in the twentieth century (Broad is my native land), Lewis Siegelbaum and Leslie Moch use the notion of ‘regimes’ and ‘repertoires’ as an alternative to Gidden’s much more abstract ‘structure’ and ‘agency’.

61 As implied by Goldstone, ‘Why and where’.

62 P. de Zwart and J. Lucassen, ‘Poverty or prosperity in Bengal c.1700–1875? New evidence, methods and perspectives’, unpublished paper for ‘World Economic History’ conference, Kyoto, 5 August 2015. Allen, Robert C. and Roman Studer found only 120 pieces of data (‘Prices and wages in India, 1595–1930’, on the website of the Global Price and Income History Group, http://gpih.ucdavis.edu (consulted 10 November 2015))Google Scholar.

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64 This critique by early modern historians such as Jan de Vries (The industrious revolution) has now been widely accepted for Europe, but less so for other parts of the world. For pioneering work on Japan, see Hayami, A., The historical demography of pre-modern Japan, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2004Google Scholar. For weaving in south Indian hamlets, see Mizushima, T., ‘Transformation of south Indian local society in the late pre-colonial period’, Journal of Asian Network for GIS-based Historical Studies, 1, 2013, pp. 12–16Google Scholar.

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87 Austin and Sugihara, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.

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91 Lucassen, Migrant labour; various chapters in Lucassen and Lucassen, Globalising migration history.

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96 Including subcontracting by other migrants, as in the well-known ‘padrone system’ (McKeown, Melancholy order, pp. 113–18).

97 Lucassen, L. and Smit, A. X., ‘The repugnant other: soldiers, missionaries and aid workers as organizational migrants’, Journal of World History, 2015Google Scholar (forthcoming).

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101 Green, N. L., ‘The comparative method and poststructural structuralism: new perspectives for migration studies’, in J. Lucassen and L. Lucassen, eds., Migration, migration history, history: old paradigms and new perspectives, Bern: P. Lang, 1999, pp. 57–72Google Scholar.

102 Pomeranz, Great divergence, pp. 7–8. This approach also diverges from postcolonial theory, which was recently attacked by Chibber, Postcolonial theory (targeting Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe). Although Chibber’s book, which rejects the Indian subaltern school and reinstates a – Marxist – universalism, entails an important message, Austin, G., ‘Reciprocal comparison and African history: tackling conceptual Eurocentrism in the study of Africa’s economic past’, African Studies Review, 50, 2007, pp. 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is less polemical and more useful for global historians.

103 Manning, P., Navigating world history: historians create a global past, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 156CrossRefGoogle Scholar.