Batista, Anamarija;
Müller, Viola;
Peres, Corinna;
(2024)
Coercion and Wage Labour: Exploring work relations through history and art.
[Book].
Work Around the World.
UCL Press: London, UK.
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Abstract
Coercion and Wage Labour presents novel histories of people who experienced physical, social, political or cultural compulsion in the course of paid work. Broad in scope, the chapters examine diverse areas of work including textile production, war industries, civil service and domestic labour, in contexts from the Middle Ages to the present day. They demonstrate that wages have consistently shaped working people’s experiences, and failed to protect workers from coercion. Instead, wages emerge as versatile tools to bind, control, and exploit workers. Remuneration mirrors the distribution of power in labour relations, often separating employers physically and emotionally from their employees, and disguising coercion. 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.
Type: | Book |
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Title: | Coercion and Wage Labour: Exploring work relations through history and art |
ISBN: | 9781800085381 |
ISBN-13: | 9781800085381 |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800085381 |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800085381 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Attribution should include the following information: Batista, A., Müller, V. and Peres, C. (eds). 2024. Coercion and Wage Labour: Exploring work relations through history and art. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800085381 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |
Keywords: | inequalities, free labour, unfree labour, remuneration, modern slavery, medieval history, modern history, artistic narration |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183758 |
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