The post Rent Strikes appeared first on UCL Press.

Moving beyond the celebratory or partisan perspectives of many classical and some feminist labour histories, Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond provides a careful historicization of women’s actions in a multiscalar perspective. Through a study of diverse contexts, the authors follow women aligned with a wide range of political persuasions, highlighting unexpected elements and continuities of women’s labour activism. Women’s activities are seen in the workplace, in the everyday, within and across social movements and organizations, and inside the state, all presented through a framing that spotlights long-term developments and bridges the divide between the literatures on state socialist and capitalist societies concerning gendered labour politics and activism. Combining a regional focus and transnational perspectives, the authors examine the sources of women’s labour activism in the region and the role of activists from the region within international women’s, labour and inter-state organizations. Moving women’s labour activism from the margins of labour, gender and European history to the centre of historical study, the volume makes an innovative contribution to the new global histories of labour and gender.

The post Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond appeared first on UCL Press.

The book makes historical narratives accessible for interdisciplinary audiences. Most chapters are preceded by illustrations by artists invited to visually conceptualise the book’s key messages and to emphasise the presence of the body and landscape in the realm of work. In turn, the chapter texts reflect back on the artworks, creating an intense intermedial dialogue that offers mutually relational ‘translations’ and narrations of labour coercion. Other contributions written by art scholars discuss how coercion in remunerated labour is constructed and reflected in artistic practice. The collection serves as an innovative and creative tool for teaching, and raises awareness that narrating history is always contingent on the medium chosen and its inherent constraints and possibilities.

The post Coercion and Wage Labour appeared first on UCL Press.

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.

The post The World Wide Web of Work appeared first on UCL Press.