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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2014
My essay “The Promise and Challenges of Global Labor History” in issue 82 (Fall 2012) received commentaries from five colleagues. In this reply I focus on seven central issues: the ambiguities of commodification; the contested notion of “capitalism”; the concept of class; household labor; the need for comparative approaches; the newness of Global Labor History; and its prospects in the coming years.
1. See also van der Linden, Marcel, Workers of the World. Essays toward a Global Labor History (Leiden, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapters 15 and 16.
2. I mean issue 3 (2013), with guest editor Christian de Vito. See http://www.workersoftheworldjournal.net (Accessed August 30, 2013).
3. Braudel, Fernand, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century. Vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce. Trans. Reynolds, Siân (London, 2002)Google Scholar, 231.
4. In this and the following paragraphs I am plagiarizing from my own book, Workers of the World (363–66).
5. Wolf, Eric R., “Incorporation and Identity in the Making of the Modern World,” in Pathways of Power. Building an Anthropology of the Modern World, ed. Wolf, Eric R. (Berkeley, CA, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 354.
6. Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “Class Consciousness and the Indian Working Class: Dilemmas of Marxist Historiography,” Journal of African and Asian Studies 22 (1988): 29Google Scholar.
7. Nair, Janaki, “Production Regimes, Cultural Processes. Industrial Labour in Mysore,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 30 (1993): 262CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8. Negt, Oskar and Kluge, Alexander, Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung. Zur Organisationsanalyse von bürgerlicher und proletarischer Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1972)Google Scholar, 107.
9. Lüdtke, Alf, Eigen-Sinn. Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus (Hamburg, 1993)Google Scholar, 140.
10. Bataille, Georges, “L'expérience intérieur,” in Oeuvres complètes, Vol. 5, ed. Bataille, Georges (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar, 11.
11. Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963), 9–10 Google Scholar.
12. Sewell, William H. Jr., “How Classes are Made: Critical Reflections on E.P. Thompson's Theory of Working-class Formation,” in E.P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives, ed. Kaye, Harvey J. and McLelland, Keith (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar, 57.
13. I expect that it won't be very long before more can be said about this question, as the database of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labor Relations is extended more and more. See https://collab.iisg.nl/web/labourrelations (Accessed August 30, 2013).
14. van der Linden, Workers of the World, Chapter 14.
15. Quataert, Jean H., “Combining Agrarian and Industrial Livelihood: Rural Households in the Saxon Oberlausitz in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 10 (1985): 158Google Scholar. Also see on this problematic my “Introduction” and “Conclusion” in Kok, Jan, ed., Rebellious Families. Household Strategies and Collective Action in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford and New York, 2002), 1–23 Google Scholar and 230–42.
16. See the chapter “Doing Comparative Labour History: Some Preliminaries,” in van der Linden, Marcel, Transnational Labour History: Explorations (Aldershot, 2003), 155–71Google Scholar.
17. See, for more extensive argumentation, van der Linden, Marcel, “Labour History: The Old, the New and the Global,” African Studies 66 (2007): 169–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
