Pub Date : 2023-07-02DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2230905
P. Reick
ABSTRACT Historians have long studied how statistical offices and parliamentary bodies made use of surveys to explore the lives of workers, and, in so doing, how they produced new social categories and strategies for political intervention in the process. Less attention has been paid to the role that surveys played in the history of the early labour movement. Drawing on extensive discussions in socialist and trade-union periodicals, this article explores how the labour movement in the German Empire perceived, responded to, and used social surveys. The article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses labour’s critical response to the growing number of surveys on working-class life by middle-class reformers, social researchers, and the state. The second part studies what appeared to be the only logical consequence of their critique, namely the independent gathering and analysis of data. The third part finally analyses why, despite the large number of independent surveys launched by party functionaries and local trade unions, participation among ordinary workers remained strikingly low. In the conclusion, the article shows that this might have stemmed not only from disinterest and inertia but also from how the labour leadership conceived of and presented the benefits of social surveys.
{"title":"“A phobia of numbers?” the labour movement and social surveys in the German Empire","authors":"P. Reick","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2230905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2230905","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Historians have long studied how statistical offices and parliamentary bodies made use of surveys to explore the lives of workers, and, in so doing, how they produced new social categories and strategies for political intervention in the process. Less attention has been paid to the role that surveys played in the history of the early labour movement. Drawing on extensive discussions in socialist and trade-union periodicals, this article explores how the labour movement in the German Empire perceived, responded to, and used social surveys. The article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses labour’s critical response to the growing number of surveys on working-class life by middle-class reformers, social researchers, and the state. The second part studies what appeared to be the only logical consequence of their critique, namely the independent gathering and analysis of data. The third part finally analyses why, despite the large number of independent surveys launched by party functionaries and local trade unions, participation among ordinary workers remained strikingly low. In the conclusion, the article shows that this might have stemmed not only from disinterest and inertia but also from how the labour leadership conceived of and presented the benefits of social surveys.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"575 - 592"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45087972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-29DOI: 10.1080/0023656x.2023.2227573
G. Osterud
ABSTRACT The history of the gender division of labor in the Swedish dairy industry differs from its course elsewhere in Western Europe and in North America. When milk processing was centralized and mechanized, skilled dairy work remained in the hands of women. When the industry consolidated during the interwar period, however, the occupation underwent a rapid process of masculinization at the same time that the work was deskilled and demanded less bodily toil. How did dairymaids respond to this shift? This article analyzes the autobiographies of the last generation of Swedish dairymaids who entered the occupation when it was regarded as womanly. In their education and careers, they developed a strong occupational identity and retained their sense of the dignity, value, and womanliness of their skilled labor. Ultimately, however, they were unable to defend their collective position when the employers transformed the gender division of labor while restructuring the entire industry.
{"title":"The last generation of dairymaids: gender, skill, and occupational identity in Sweden","authors":"G. Osterud","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2227573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2227573","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The history of the gender division of labor in the Swedish dairy industry differs from its course elsewhere in Western Europe and in North America. When milk processing was centralized and mechanized, skilled dairy work remained in the hands of women. When the industry consolidated during the interwar period, however, the occupation underwent a rapid process of masculinization at the same time that the work was deskilled and demanded less bodily toil. How did dairymaids respond to this shift? This article analyzes the autobiographies of the last generation of Swedish dairymaids who entered the occupation when it was regarded as womanly. In their education and careers, they developed a strong occupational identity and retained their sense of the dignity, value, and womanliness of their skilled labor. Ultimately, however, they were unable to defend their collective position when the employers transformed the gender division of labor while restructuring the entire industry.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"612 - 630"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42244455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2227600
Rory Archer, Sara Bernard, Y. Papadopoulos
ABSTRACT This introduction to the special issue The Cold War of Labor Migrants: Opportunities, struggles and adaptations across the Iron Curtain and beyond seeks to bring forward the conversation between the history of the Cold War and migration studies. It is the result of a workshop convened by the Working Group ‘Labor Migration History’, of the European Labor History Network. It maps out the academic debate on international labor migration and it critically engages with its western-centric approach. It introduces the seven contributions which, from different geographic and thematic perspectives, reassess the importance of non-Western experiences in shaping the entanglement between international labor migration and the Cold War. Two lines of inquiry feature prominently in this special issue. The first is a reassessment of the relevance of the regulation of international migration as a political terrain on which the Cold War divide was both constructed and deconstructed by different institutional actors, which, at various levels, were empowered by the existence of Cold War rivalry. The second, is the agency of migrants and aims to explore the fluidity, opportunism and creativity in the ways that migrants themselves experienced state control because of the particular Cold War socio-economic and political context.
{"title":"Introduction: the Cold War of labour migrants: opportunities, struggles and adaptations across the Iron Curtain and beyond","authors":"Rory Archer, Sara Bernard, Y. Papadopoulos","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2227600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2227600","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This introduction to the special issue The Cold War of Labor Migrants: Opportunities, struggles and adaptations across the Iron Curtain and beyond seeks to bring forward the conversation between the history of the Cold War and migration studies. It is the result of a workshop convened by the Working Group ‘Labor Migration History’, of the European Labor History Network. It maps out the academic debate on international labor migration and it critically engages with its western-centric approach. It introduces the seven contributions which, from different geographic and thematic perspectives, reassess the importance of non-Western experiences in shaping the entanglement between international labor migration and the Cold War. Two lines of inquiry feature prominently in this special issue. The first is a reassessment of the relevance of the regulation of international migration as a political terrain on which the Cold War divide was both constructed and deconstructed by different institutional actors, which, at various levels, were empowered by the existence of Cold War rivalry. The second, is the agency of migrants and aims to explore the fluidity, opportunism and creativity in the ways that migrants themselves experienced state control because of the particular Cold War socio-economic and political context.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"321 - 329"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48960215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-22DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2223518
Valgerdur Palmadottir, Evelina Johansson-Wilén, Eva Schmitz
ABSTRACT In recent years feminist movements have increasingly employed the form and rhetoric of strikes in framing their protests. The rise of the women’s strike movement has been seen as an indicator of an invigorated wave of feminist activism that focuses, to a greater extent, on structural economic injustices. The aim of this article is to provide a historical aspect to the growing research on strikes as a multifaceted form of protest. The article analyses articulations of collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in two different kinds of ‘women’s strikes’ that took place in the Nordic region during the mid-1970s; the ASAB cleaners’ strikes in Sweden during 1974–1975 and the Icelandic Women’s Day Off that took place on October 24, 1975. The article explores how the relationship between gender and class was conceptualized by participants, organizers, and bystanders. We employ these cases to study how solidarity and sisterhood across differences among women might have appeared in practice while at the same time reflecting internal tensions and varying interests. Moreover, the article reflects on the specific form of the strikes and the potential impact their respective form might have had on the political articulations that came out of them.
{"title":"Collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in the ASAB cleaning women’s strike in Sweden and the Women’s Day Off in Iceland","authors":"Valgerdur Palmadottir, Evelina Johansson-Wilén, Eva Schmitz","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2223518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2223518","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In recent years feminist movements have increasingly employed the form and rhetoric of strikes in framing their protests. The rise of the women’s strike movement has been seen as an indicator of an invigorated wave of feminist activism that focuses, to a greater extent, on structural economic injustices. The aim of this article is to provide a historical aspect to the growing research on strikes as a multifaceted form of protest. The article analyses articulations of collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in two different kinds of ‘women’s strikes’ that took place in the Nordic region during the mid-1970s; the ASAB cleaners’ strikes in Sweden during 1974–1975 and the Icelandic Women’s Day Off that took place on October 24, 1975. The article explores how the relationship between gender and class was conceptualized by participants, organizers, and bystanders. We employ these cases to study how solidarity and sisterhood across differences among women might have appeared in practice while at the same time reflecting internal tensions and varying interests. Moreover, the article reflects on the specific form of the strikes and the potential impact their respective form might have had on the political articulations that came out of them.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"478 - 495"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45303205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-21DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2225428
Haonan Yang
ABSTRACT The United States is an unavoidable setting for Chinese academics researching China’s employment anti-discrimination laws. In the U.S. the LGBT employee population has experienced significant employment discrimination and persistent obstacles in pursuing equal employment opportunity rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has broadened the definition of sex discrimination in three recent consolidated cases based on the opinion that discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity is essentially sex discrimination, granting LGBT employees equal employment opportunity rights under groundbreaking case law. This is in line with the rationale of the employment anti-discrimination laws, which forbid employers from discriminating against employees based on their immutable and uncontrollable characteristics, and offers extraterritorial experience to improve employment anti-discrimination laws in other countries, such as China.
{"title":"Dilemma of employment discrimination against American LGBT employees and its judicial response from the perspective of China","authors":"Haonan Yang","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2225428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2225428","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The United States is an unavoidable setting for Chinese academics researching China’s employment anti-discrimination laws. In the U.S. the LGBT employee population has experienced significant employment discrimination and persistent obstacles in pursuing equal employment opportunity rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has broadened the definition of sex discrimination in three recent consolidated cases based on the opinion that discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity is essentially sex discrimination, granting LGBT employees equal employment opportunity rights under groundbreaking case law. This is in line with the rationale of the employment anti-discrimination laws, which forbid employers from discriminating against employees based on their immutable and uncontrollable characteristics, and offers extraterritorial experience to improve employment anti-discrimination laws in other countries, such as China.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"514 - 527"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47543539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-20DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2225418
Maarten Manse
ABSTRACT This article discusses the different uses of mandatory labour services, or corvée labour, in nineteenth and twentieth century Indonesia. While slave labour, coerced cultivation and other forms of involuntary colonial labour have been elaborately studied, these much more pervasive and diverse types of mandatory services have not yet received the attention they deserve. The article argues that in Indonesia corvée labour became foundational to the exercise of modern colonial governance and the organization of the colonial state and its fiscal capacity, so foundational, in fact, that it impeded much of the aspirations of colonial civil servants to replace coerced services with monetary taxes. Studying corvée, it shows, elucidates otherwise hidden strategies and practices of the organization of colonial statecraft and governance. As such, corvée labour played a pivotal role in how colonialism unfolded and was experienced.
{"title":"Coerced labour and colonial governance in nineteenth and twentieth century Indonesia","authors":"Maarten Manse","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2225418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2225418","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses the different uses of mandatory labour services, or corvée labour, in nineteenth and twentieth century Indonesia. While slave labour, coerced cultivation and other forms of involuntary colonial labour have been elaborately studied, these much more pervasive and diverse types of mandatory services have not yet received the attention they deserve. The article argues that in Indonesia corvée labour became foundational to the exercise of modern colonial governance and the organization of the colonial state and its fiscal capacity, so foundational, in fact, that it impeded much of the aspirations of colonial civil servants to replace coerced services with monetary taxes. Studying corvée, it shows, elucidates otherwise hidden strategies and practices of the organization of colonial statecraft and governance. As such, corvée labour played a pivotal role in how colonialism unfolded and was experienced.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"496 - 513"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48621459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-02DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2219981
Q. Zou
ABSTRACT Due to the underdeveloped nature of organized labor, it is possible to view the ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ components of labor legislation in China as separate and severable. This article aims to challenge such thinking by arguing that collective labor law and collective bargaining practices in China have profoundly shaped the law of employment contracts and individual employment relations. To this end, analyzing the laws surrounding individual employment contracts should not proceed without considering collective labor law. This article investigates, in the first three decades following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the significance of collective rights to the underdevelopment of legal rules of employment rights and the emergence of the socialist social contract. This article also examines, after the economic reform of 1978, the various ways collective bargaining contributed to the transformation from the socialist social contract to the standard contract of employment and from an underdeveloped to a comprehensive framework of employment legislation. Finally, in the post-economic-reform decades, the analysis suggests that collective bargaining encourages the empowerment of trade unions with legislative and administrative efforts and facilitates the incorporation of terms and conditions improvement into individual employment contracts.
{"title":"The evolution of individual and collective rights in the Chinese workplace","authors":"Q. Zou","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2219981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2219981","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Due to the underdeveloped nature of organized labor, it is possible to view the ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ components of labor legislation in China as separate and severable. This article aims to challenge such thinking by arguing that collective labor law and collective bargaining practices in China have profoundly shaped the law of employment contracts and individual employment relations. To this end, analyzing the laws surrounding individual employment contracts should not proceed without considering collective labor law. This article investigates, in the first three decades following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the significance of collective rights to the underdevelopment of legal rules of employment rights and the emergence of the socialist social contract. This article also examines, after the economic reform of 1978, the various ways collective bargaining contributed to the transformation from the socialist social contract to the standard contract of employment and from an underdeveloped to a comprehensive framework of employment legislation. Finally, in the post-economic-reform decades, the analysis suggests that collective bargaining encourages the empowerment of trade unions with legislative and administrative efforts and facilitates the incorporation of terms and conditions improvement into individual employment contracts.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"461 - 477"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42289913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-08DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2208044
Ondřej Klípa
ABSTRACT This article deals with Polish construction companies in Czechoslovakia during the last two decades of state socialism. Although Czechoslovakia became the largest importer of Polish construction services in the world, this aspect of the relations between the two countries remains almost entirely unknown. I am seeking the answers to two questions. First, why did Czechoslovak leaders grant the Poles such a large share of crucial investments in the modernization of the country, even though the services were not cheap? Second, how did the local population integrate encounters with foreign builders into their working-class culture and their ethnic stereotype of the Poles? I argue that Polish construction companies, operating under de facto market conditions, achieved significantly better and faster results than their Czechoslovak counterparts. In the second part of the article, I explain the paradox of why the Czech population held the Polish builders in high esteem while simultaneously rejecting them as role models. I argue that the Poles were discredited because they seriously violated the Czechs’ deep-held sense of egalitarian values. Yet in their interactions both Czechs and Poles defended their working-class values and maintained a perceived moral superiority over each other and the communist regime.
{"title":"‘They were like soldiers.’ The case of the Polish builders in Czechoslovakia and their perception by Czechs (1967-1990)","authors":"Ondřej Klípa","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2208044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2208044","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article deals with Polish construction companies in Czechoslovakia during the last two decades of state socialism. Although Czechoslovakia became the largest importer of Polish construction services in the world, this aspect of the relations between the two countries remains almost entirely unknown. I am seeking the answers to two questions. First, why did Czechoslovak leaders grant the Poles such a large share of crucial investments in the modernization of the country, even though the services were not cheap? Second, how did the local population integrate encounters with foreign builders into their working-class culture and their ethnic stereotype of the Poles? I argue that Polish construction companies, operating under de facto market conditions, achieved significantly better and faster results than their Czechoslovak counterparts. In the second part of the article, I explain the paradox of why the Czech population held the Polish builders in high esteem while simultaneously rejecting them as role models. I argue that the Poles were discredited because they seriously violated the Czechs’ deep-held sense of egalitarian values. Yet in their interactions both Czechs and Poles defended their working-class values and maintained a perceived moral superiority over each other and the communist regime.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"387 - 405"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46468904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2223549
J. Heinemann, Christine de Matos, Fia Sundevall, A. Ahlbäck
ABSTRACT While in recent decades there have been growing bodies of literature on gender and war, on war and military labor, and on various forms and degrees of labor coercion, rarely have these areas – gender, coercion and war labor – been analyzed together as intersecting and interdependent themes. The special issue on Gender, War and Coerced Labor aims to fill this gap, and this introduction to the issue will not only present the five papers but also establish the three intersecting themes uniting these papers. Together the introduction and the papers contribute toward larger debates about the place of coercion, of degrees of exploitation, and of free/unfree continuums in a variety of gendered war work.
{"title":"Unpacking coercion in gendered war labor","authors":"J. Heinemann, Christine de Matos, Fia Sundevall, A. Ahlbäck","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2223549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2223549","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While in recent decades there have been growing bodies of literature on gender and war, on war and military labor, and on various forms and degrees of labor coercion, rarely have these areas – gender, coercion and war labor – been analyzed together as intersecting and interdependent themes. The special issue on Gender, War and Coerced Labor aims to fill this gap, and this introduction to the issue will not only present the five papers but also establish the three intersecting themes uniting these papers. Together the introduction and the papers contribute toward larger debates about the place of coercion, of degrees of exploitation, and of free/unfree continuums in a variety of gendered war work.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"225 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45887234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-07DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2187765
Alexis Henshaw
ABSTRACT Labor history and international relations (IR) each offer insights regarding the extent to which women contribute to non-state armed groups and the value of their labor. Yet questions remain about how agency in joining armed movements – and, conversely, the forced participation of women – are operationalized and even fetishized by observers. Positivist empirical work in IR has operationalized agency and coercion as a dichotomy in gendered wartime labor, implying that where women’s labor is coerced it may have a lesser impact on the conduct of conflict or conflict outcomes. This paper challenges the existence of an agency-coercion binary, drawing on the case of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Analyzing archival sources in a manner informed by both feminist international relations and labor history scholarship, I show the complex interplay of agency and coercion in women’s lived experience within a non-state armed group. I further reflect on how a temporal understanding of labor relations, examining coercion and choice at the moments of entry, work, and exit, contributes to a more complete understanding of the gender dynamics of wartime labor.
{"title":"De-centering dichotomies in wartime labor: trajectories of gender, coercion, and agency in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (1964-2016)","authors":"Alexis Henshaw","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2187765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2187765","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Labor history and international relations (IR) each offer insights regarding the extent to which women contribute to non-state armed groups and the value of their labor. Yet questions remain about how agency in joining armed movements – and, conversely, the forced participation of women – are operationalized and even fetishized by observers. Positivist empirical work in IR has operationalized agency and coercion as a dichotomy in gendered wartime labor, implying that where women’s labor is coerced it may have a lesser impact on the conduct of conflict or conflict outcomes. This paper challenges the existence of an agency-coercion binary, drawing on the case of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Analyzing archival sources in a manner informed by both feminist international relations and labor history scholarship, I show the complex interplay of agency and coercion in women’s lived experience within a non-state armed group. I further reflect on how a temporal understanding of labor relations, examining coercion and choice at the moments of entry, work, and exit, contributes to a more complete understanding of the gender dynamics of wartime labor.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":"64 1","pages":"269 - 286"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48566754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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