The Value of Work since the 18th Century

Custom, Conflict, Measurement and Theory

Massimo Asta, Pedro Ramos Pinto, Massimo Asta, Pedro Ramos Pinto

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781350332072
• eBook ISBN: 9781350332096
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: History

Beginning in the 18th century, a turning point in labour history as work encountered an industrialising modernity, this book explores how different forms of work have been valued up to the present day. Focusing on the cultural, intellectual, social and political implications of wages, the chapters in this collection historicise the labour market, conceiving it as complex system of social relations which evolve through time and differ according to space. They show how the level of wages and other forms of remuneration reflect not only marginal productivity and scarcity but also the nature of work relations and wider political, social and economic circumstances. With examples ranging across several centuries and different parts of the globe, it shows how wages are influenced by the specific organization and processes of work, conflict and power, social status and hierarchies between workers, custom and identity, family structure and professional ethics, ideology, politics and policy. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches The Value of Work since the 18th Century also addresses two interlinked questions; how did theoretical interpretations and techniques of wage measurement emerge and evolve, and to what extent does this matter in understanding the social and political history of work?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Exploring the Political Economy of Wages
• Part One Custom and Conflict
• 1 Conceptualizing the Earnings of Wool Spinners in England before Industrialization
• 2 Wage Practices at a Red Bread Factory (Ghent, 1880–1914)
• 3 Papers and Wages: Identity Documents and Work in Habsburg Austria During the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
• 4 Custom, Wages, and Hobsbawm’s ‘Rules of the Game’: New Perspectives on Eighteenth-Century Wages
• 5 Regulating Wage, Realizing Rights: Domestic Workers in India
• 6 Enumerating Fairness: Wages and Labour Contractors in Pre-1949 China
• 7 Everywhere but in the Strike Statistics? Wage Systems and Work Stoppages in Sweden, 1863–1927
• Part Two Measurement and Theory
• 8 From Poverty Lines to Equal Pay for Equal Work: Commensuration Struggles in Apartheid South Africa
• 9 Wages Measurement in the Belgian Congo and French Sub-Saharan Africa from 1919 to Independence: a Challenge?
• 10 Down with the Caro-vita! A Social and Intellectual History of the Cost-of-Living Statistics in Italy, 1910s–1930s
• 11 Adam Smith on Wages and Labour: Social Norms and Institutions as Necessary Limits to Competition
• 12 Devaluing Labour and Radical Theories of Worker Discrimination in North America in the Late Twentieth Century
• 13 Rethinking the Concept of the Living Wage: Ontological Presuppositions of Emancipatory Action
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright