Work : The Last 1,000 Years

Author: Komlosy, Andrea

General & world history

Published on 30 April 2024 by Verso Books in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 272 pages
210 x 139 x 18 | 258g

Andrea Komlosy argues in this important intervention that, when we examine it closely, work changes its meanings according to different historical and regional contexts. Globalizing labour history from the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries, she sheds light on the complex coexistence of multiple forms of labour (paid/unpaid, free/ unfree, with various forms of legal regulation and social protection and so on) on the local and the world levels. Combining this global approach with a gender perspective opens our eyes to the varieties of work and labour and their combination in households and commodity chains across the planet-processes that enable capital accumulation not only by extracting surplus value from wage-labour, but also through other forms of value transfer, realized by tapping into households subsistence production, informal occupation and makeshift employment. As the debate about work and its supposed disappearance intensifies, Komlosys book provides a crucial shift in the angle of vision.