Books about work.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Can anyone recommend any good ones?

I'm interested in work as a concept, and how it's changed over the course of human civilization. I'm also interested in how various different cultures worldwide view work. Any suggestions along these lines?

[Os Cangaceiros]

really? no one?

[Sixiang]

Capital talks quite a bit about different aspects of work throughout history.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Thanks, but that's not really what I'm looking for. I already own an edition of Capital, anyway. :closedeyes:

I'm looking more for books like Working, by Studs Terkel

[RED DAVE]

Try Braverman: Labor and Monopoly Capital (http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/labormonopolycapital.php).

RED DAVE

[blake 3:17]

Working At Inglis by David Sobel and Susan Meurer is a fantastic book about life at a factory in Toronto. They mostly made dishwashers and washing machines and appliances of that type. An amazing social history with lots of photos.

For an earlier period, Sweatshop Strife by Ruth Frager is great. It covers Jewish needle workers in the 20s in the area in which I live.


There are some good work memoirs. Rivethead by Ben Hamper is a good read. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickeled and Dimed, which is about her going undercover doing service sector jobs, is pretty good too.

It depends on your location and what you have access to but there is a slew of pamphlets and books by workers about their jobs or worksites. Most would be either self published or published by unions/socialists. There are a few Dewey Decimal numbers which refer to this type of literature, which is often mixed with managerial and corporate junk.

Half of Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier covers conditions of coal miners, which are brutal and upsetting. The second half is an odd plea for a Popular Front.

I'm not sure how accessible Labour/ Le Travail is online. I rarely buy it because I'm not an academic or labour specialist. It looks like a fair bit may be available free online: http://www.lltjournal.ca/index.php/llt/index It publishes a lot of really interesting stuff and other things way too specialized unless you've got a particular interest/affinity.

Edited to add: Labour/Le Travail is more open than I thought. It'd have helped if I'd actually read their front page... "Welcome to Labour/Le Travail’s new, open access e-journal, where all but the two most recent issues of Labour/Le Travail are available to all readers at no charge. If you are interested in accessing the most recent publications of L/LT, please subscribe here. (http://www.lltjournal.ca/miscfiles/llt_subscription_info.html)"

[Diello]

This isn't precisely what you describe in the first post, but Live Working or Die Fighting draws parallels between labour rights situations back in the day and labour rights situations now.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The Oxford Book of Work (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192825313?ie=UTF8&tag=prikeypre-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0192825313)

From Library Journal

Thomas (president, Corpus Christi Coll., Oxford; Religion and the Decline of Magic and Man and the Natural World) attempts to capture the many voices on labor in this anthology. Unfortunately, this gathering, weighted toward the voices of 18th- and 19th-century British male authors, is problematic. Given the preponderance of well-known works already indexed in other quotation sources, it is difficult to imagine much call for this resource. Aside from a scattering of poems and brief epigrams, most entries are longer excerpts that suffer from a lack of context, and the categories are inadequately focused and not supplemented by a subject or key word index. (There is an index of authors and sources quoted.) Additionally, the book's design makes it unwieldy; it is difficult to see where each entry begins and to locate its source. Recommended only for comprehensive reference collections in the literature of work and occupations.APaula Dempsey, DePaul Univ. Lib., Chicago


Review


"A phantasmagoric mixture of wit and witness."--Edward Rothstein, The New York Times

"An instant classic.... These hundreds of thoughtful passages...represent the total spectrum of the complicated feelings we have about our jobs.... There's genuine wisdom and thoughtfulness on all of these pages about nothing less than our roles and responsibilities as human beings living in societies."--Forbes

"An amazingly varied collection of poems, snippets of novels, newspaper articles, diaries, socialist denunciations and capitalist celebrations about the experience of working, from the farmers of ancient Greek times to modern office workers.... Thomas makes labor come to life by charting a stark, great historical conflict in the value given to working, a conflict between those who believe work is degrading and those who believe we fulfill ourselves through our jobs."--Richard Sennett, The Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Some of the most vivid and insightful writings about work"--Baltimore Sun

"An incredible chorus of voices...all single-mindedly devoted to telling what work has really been about over the centuries."--The Chicago Tribune

[MarxSchmarx]

In terms of getting a global perspective, I've read nothing but great reviews for Ngai Pun's Made in China: Woman factory workers in a global marketplace. It has been on my reading list for a long time.

[Amphictyonis]

The Jungle by Upton Sinclare or this-

http://books.google.com/books?id=YAxIC17Bso8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=working+poor&source=bl&ots=cETue2nbS9&sig=VmMfNaBoGN10u1yFjz7rmDK5K9g&hl=en&ei=RH4uTcPpI5P6swPB5K3HBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Os Cangaceiros]

In terms of getting a global perspective, I've read nothing but great reviews for Ngai Pun's Made in China: Woman factory workers in a global marketplace. It has been on my reading list for a long time.

Thanks.

What sparked an interest in this subject was reading an excerpt in a travel book about Morocco which claimed that foreign employers were often furious with their employees there, because Moroccan workers would often show up late to work and not see anything wrong with it, and would just be very casual on the jobsite in general. Then you have Japan, which has a legendary work ethic. I wouldn't mind reading something that compares different cultures worldwide in regards to their opinions on work, if something like that exists (which I'm sure it does).

[Quetzal]

Paul Lafargue - The Right to Be Lazy.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/index.htm

And;

http://www.anxietyculture.com/workhell.htm

[gorillafuck]

Paul Lafargue - The Right to Be Lazy.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/index.htm
"Let the cock warn you in vain that day is breaking."
Hahahaha.

But on a more serious note, that is a really good piece of writing. Thanks for posting that.

[The Idler]

How to be Idle | The Idler (http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fidler.co.uk%2Fbooks%2Fhow-to-be-idle%2F&ei=JKk0Tf7LLcWAhAeCl-H1Cw&usg=AFQjCNGZGQ8LlDLj7y2VKaKlcjXB_7Z2lA&sig2=evTpfdX1-LoFMuHtbr57kg)

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Thanks.

What sparked an interest in this subject was reading an excerpt in a travel book about Morocco which claimed that foreign employers were often furious with their employees there, because Moroccan workers would often show up late to work and not see anything wrong with it, and would just be very casual on the jobsite in general.

Oh,okay, read Le Sublime, which has an excellent intro (don't know if it's available in English). It's an anonymous rant by a French boss (circa 1870) about the kind of worker who doesn't bother turning up Mondays (which was quite common at the time), turns up Tuesday reeking of alcohol, and has a week's worth of work done by Thursday, knowing full well the boss would be a fool to fire him.

[Apoi_Viitor]

This hasn't been posted yet?

http://www.inspiracy.com/black/abolition/abolitionofwork.html

[¿Que?]

tl:dr the comments, anyway I know at school they're doing a sociology of work class. I'll try to get a copy of the syllabus if you want. It might be a lot of diversity, women's and gay/lesbian critiques tho. Not sure if that's what you want.

EDIT: I skimmed the comments and am intrigued by some of the suggestions. Particularly those that correspond with the spirit of my username!

[x359594]

Muscle and Blood by Rachel Scott. Published in 1975 I just learned that it's back in print. It's about on the job health and safety issue. Highly recommended.