Capturing this churn [in both work itself and our ideas about it] is the difficult task that historian Andrea Komlosy attempts in her new book <i>Work: The Last 1,000 Years</i>..Komlosy attempts the monumental task of writing a large-scale global history of labor adequate to the growing instability in how we define and participate in work.

- Gabriel Winant, The Nation

A fascinating book

- Laurie Taylor, <i>Thinking Allowed</i>, BBC RADIO 4,

As Andrea Komlosy argues in <i>Work: The Last 1,000 Years</i>, our conception of what constitutes work has changed markedly over time. The professor of social history at the University of Vienna writes that our commonly accepted definitions are too narrow, too European, too male and too modern

- John Thornhill, Financial Times

Se alle

This is a book teeming with insights, from the contempt for manual labour in ancient Greece to the historical tendency for all kinds of subsistence tasks to be "housewife-ized" into unpaid domestic labour.

- Barbara Kiser, Nature

Komlosy's analysis is a helpful reminder that our familiar understanding of work is narrow and historically exceptional. The hierarchy we have established in the industrialized West, placing permanent, full-time, legally contracted wage work at the top of a pyramid of social good, is deeply flawed-denigrating not only those millions who work outside its confines, but also devaluing and neglecting the kinds of nonwork activities that enrich and give meaning to human lives. By showing that "work" may exist without wages, a boss or a workplace outside the home, Komlosy's analysis allows us to think more broadly about what we value, and whether we want to continue to separate work and life.

- Joanna Scutts, In These Times

Andrea Komlosy has written an important book on the global history of work during the past 800 years. Looking at particular moments (1250, 1500, 1700, 1800, 1900, 2010), she charts how understandings of work and work practices have shifted-from household focused subsistence labor to the widespread commodification of labor in various forms. Her two most important contributions are that she thinks about labor on a global scale, thus overcoming a deep Eurocentric bias in much of the labor history as it exists, and that she brings feminist conversations on labor into an analysis of virtually all aspects of labor history. Her book is unique, I am not aware of any other such volume.

- Sven Beckert, author of <i>Empire of Cotton</i>,

Komlosy's book is deeply researched, lucid and persuasive.

- Joe Moran, Times Literary Supplement

Written in well-defined thematic sections that give the reader a thorough understanding of how labour as well as labour profiles have changed over the ages.

Down To Earth

The theoretical and historical scope of the book is impressive.

Insight Turkey

In <i>Work</i>, Komlosy, an economic and social history professor at the University of Vienna in Austria, provides a sweeping overview of how ideas and definitions about work have evolved over the last 1,000 years, calling out the very limited conception of work offered by traditional labor studies and Marxist perspectives.Komlosy's book is ambitious in its brevity: she condenses a millennium of global history into just 225 pages, justifying her far-reaching geographic and historical scope as necessary for avoiding the Eurocentric and patriarchal biases in traditional conceptions of work.

- Lauren Kaori Gurley, Indypendent

Andrea Komlosy argues in this important intervention that, when we examine it closely, work changes its meanings according to different historical and regional contexts. Globalizing labour history from the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries, she sheds light on the complex coexistence of multiple forms of labour (paid/unpaid, free/ unfree, with various forms of legal regulation and social protection and so on) on the local and the world levels. Combining this global approach with a gender perspective opens our eyes to the varieties of work and labour and their combination in households and commodity chains across the planet-processes that enable capital accumulation not only by extracting surplus value from wage-labour, but also through other forms of value transfer, realized by tapping into households' subsistence production, informal occupation and makeshift employment. As the debate about work and its supposed disappearance intensifies, Komlosy's book provides a crucial shift in the angle of vision.
Les mer
Tracing the complexity and contradictory nature of work throughout history
Introduction1 Terms and Concepts2 Work Discourses3 Work and Language4 Categories of Analysis5 Divisions of Labour: The Simultaneity and Combination of (Different) Labour Relations6 Historical Cross-Sections7 Combining Labour Relations in the Longue DuréeAppendix: A Lexical Comparison Across European LanguagesNotesIndex
Les mer
Capturing this churn [in both work itself and our ideas about it] is the difficult task that historian Andrea Komlosy attempts in her new book Work: The Last 1,000 Years..Komlosy attempts the monumental task of writing a large-scale global history of labor adequate to the growing instability in how we define and participate in work.
Les mer
Tracing the complexity and contradictory nature of work throughout history
Major exploration of the history of work.,Reviews across the national press.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781786634139
Publisert
2024-04-30
Utgiver
Vendor
Verso Books
Vekt
258 gr
Høyde
210 mm
Bredde
140 mm
Dybde
18 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
272

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Andrea Komlosy is professor at the Department for Social and Economic History at the University of Vienna, Austria, where she is coordinator of the Global History and Global Studies programs. She has published on labor, migration, borders and uneven development on a regional, a European and a global scale. In 2014/15 she was a Schumpeter Fellow at the Whetherhead Center for International Relations at Harvard University.