Women’s Labors in Industrial and Postindustrial America

Author(s):  
Eileen Boris ◽  
Lara Vapnek

Feminist struggles for better jobs and rights at work shaped women’s labor history, a project that proclaimed that the history of work and workers was incomplete without understanding the relationship between unpaid domestic labor and employment. Despite the uneven trajectory of women’s labor in a diverse nation, three major themes characterize the history of gender, work, and capitalist development. First, the persistent power of gender on the structure of work meant that employers and policymakers classified women’s labor as unskilled, supplemental, and an extension of women’s “natural” roles as wives and mothers. Second, women’s calls for dignity and improved wages and working conditions included ethnic associations, women’s clubs, and mixed-sex and women-only unions. Third, state policies offered some women protection but made few strides toward equity, which would require acknowledging women’s differential family responsibilities and establishing decent standards for all workers, including those employed in households and in agriculture.

Author(s):  
Kohei Saito

AbstractCharacteristic to the Anthropocene is global ecological crisis that humans have created without knowing any effective solution. Beyond the division of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, there thus emerged a series of serious attempts to figure out an adequate theoretical framework for comprehending the formation, development and future of the Anthropocene. Ecological Marxists also actively participate in this discussion to problematize the relationship between the Anthropocene and capitalism, which results in a new debate. While second-stage ecosocialists such as John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett are trying to connect the general issues of the Anthropocene to the concept of the ‘metabolic rift’, Jason W. Moore not only replaces the concept of the Anthropocene with the ‘Capitalocene’ and rejects the metabolic rift approach as falling into the ‘Cartesian division’, which cannot aptly theorize the nature of today’s crisis. Critically analyzing Moore’s ‘monist’ understanding of the history of capitalist development, this paper examines why Marx used apparently ‘dualist’ terminologies in his analysis. Moore claims that his post-Cartesian approach is the correct interpretation of Marx’s political economy, but a closer examination of Marx’s method reveals his non-Cartesian dualism, which functions as a basis for a radical critique of today’s ecological crisis. Furthermore, this paper argues that Marx’s theory of metabolism must be understood in relation to his intensive research on natural sciences and non-Western societies to envision possibilities of the revolutionary subjectivity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (132) ◽  
pp. 68-95
Author(s):  
Adrian De Leon

AbstractThis article traces a labor history of colonial photography and the visual production of race in the Philippine Cordilleras, as well as its diasporic performances abroad. It argues that the ethnological visuality of Spanish and American imperialisms in the mountains of Northern Luzon, which produced discourses of race and indigeneity for the purposes of colonial occupation and imperial politics, amounted to various labor relations between Cordillerans in front of the camera, Americans behind and around the camera, and global audiences in European and North American fair midways. What became known variously as the “industrious savage” or the “dog-eating Igorrote” at the turn of the twentieth century crystallized in part out of workers’ assertions to fair wages, good working conditions, and collective dignity. This essay seeks to provide new labor history frameworks through critical readings of photographs, their subjects, and their larger economies of production and circulation.


Author(s):  
Emrah Ozturk

Cities, in the process of modernization, make historical progress parallel to the dynamics of capitalist development. Capitalism uses urban structures to overcome crises and increase the fluidity of capital. Changes in the labor force, agricultural policies, migration, urbanization or being otherized in the city, new consumption habits give clues of how capitalism uses the urban space to reproduce itself. In this article, which economic and sociological reasons emerged in the recent history of urban transformation, is examined. It is also the subject of the documentary how the transformation that has occurred since the 2000s has been shaped in line with the needs of capital in the transition to the new capitalist model. In this context, the questions raised in the documentary and the relationship between political economy and urban transformation were tried to be understood.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Lucas G. Pinheiro

Since the 1950s, interpreters of John Locke have debated whether his ideas about political economy figured among the intellectual sources of capitalist development. While some have labeled Locke a mercantile or agrarian “capitalist thinker,” others have insisted that, although a mercantilist, he was in no sense a theorist of capitalism. By reconstructing the relationship between Locke's ideas and the capitalist society of his day, this article challenges the prevailing terms through which commentators have traditionally interpreted his political economy and its place in the history of capitalism. I interpret Locke's perspectives on capital accumulation, foreign trade, and labor discipline throughout the 1690s as a reflection of the historical rise of export-oriented cycles of commodity manufacturing in the English countryside known as “proto-industrialization.” Moreover, I claim that, because proto-industrialization was tied to the expansion of England's colonial economy, this neglected context of Locke's economic doctrine sheds new light on his vision of empire. Looking to his writings on Ireland, I argue that Locke pursued proto-industrial economic reform by combining a hierarchical, stadial theory of progress with an imperial policy aimed at “improving” the colonies through decreed patterns of production and exchange that favored metropolitan trade.


2014 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 89-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Bellucci ◽  
Massimo Zaccaria

AbstractMobility and wage labor are two key variables that help to explain some of the complexities of the labor history of colonial Eritrea. Focusing on the initial period of Italian colonization, between the 1880s and 1920s, this article analyzes the relationship between the two above-mentioned variables. Based on previously unexplored archival sources and documents, the authors conclude that wage labor did contribute to the mobility of workers throughout the region (and not vice versa). In the period under consideration, Eritrea did not become a settler colony, despite Italy's initial efforts to import a national labor force. Instead, through a mix of capital investments in construction and transport, and increasing military recruitment, the Italian regime contributed significantly to an increase in free wage labor in the region. Within a year of Italy's 1911 invasion of Libya, it needed to reinforce its colonial army. From 1912 onward, in return for wages, tens of thousands of Eritreans entered the Italian colonial army to fight on the Libyan front. This military employment left voids in the local labor market, which were filled by people from neighboring countries, particularly Ethiopians and Yemenis. A relationship thus developed and continued between mobility and wage labor.


Paleobiology ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 146-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Oliver

The Mesozoic-Cenozoic coral Order Scleractinia has been suggested to have originated or evolved (1) by direct descent from the Paleozoic Order Rugosa or (2) by the development of a skeleton in members of one of the anemone groups that probably have existed throughout Phanerozoic time. In spite of much work on the subject, advocates of the direct descent hypothesis have failed to find convincing evidence of this relationship. Critical points are:(1) Rugosan septal insertion is serial; Scleractinian insertion is cyclic; no intermediate stages have been demonstrated. Apparent intermediates are Scleractinia having bilateral cyclic insertion or teratological Rugosa.(2) There is convincing evidence that the skeletons of many Rugosa were calcitic and none are known to be or to have been aragonitic. In contrast, the skeletons of all living Scleractinia are aragonitic and there is evidence that fossil Scleractinia were aragonitic also. The mineralogic difference is almost certainly due to intrinsic biologic factors.(3) No early Triassic corals of either group are known. This fact is not compelling (by itself) but is important in connection with points 1 and 2, because, given direct descent, both changes took place during this only stage in the history of the two groups in which there are no known corals.


Crisis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meshan Lehmann ◽  
Matthew R. Hilimire ◽  
Lawrence H. Yang ◽  
Bruce G. Link ◽  
Jordan E. DeVylder

Abstract. Background: Self-esteem is a major contributor to risk for repeated suicide attempts. Prior research has shown that awareness of stigma is associated with reduced self-esteem among people with mental illness. No prior studies have examined the association between self-esteem and stereotype awareness among individuals with past suicide attempts. Aims: To understand the relationship between stereotype awareness and self-esteem among young adults who have and have not attempted suicide. Method: Computerized surveys were administered to college students (N = 637). Linear regression analyses were used to test associations between self-esteem and stereotype awareness, attempt history, and their interaction. Results: There was a significant stereotype awareness by attempt interaction (β = –.74, p = .006) in the regression analysis. The interaction was explained by a stronger negative association between stereotype awareness and self-esteem among individuals with past suicide attempts (β = –.50, p = .013) compared with those without attempts (β = –.09, p = .037). Conclusion: Stigma is associated with lower self-esteem within this high-functioning sample of young adults with histories of suicide attempts. Alleviating the impact of stigma at the individual (clinical) or community (public health) levels may improve self-esteem among this high-risk population, which could potentially influence subsequent suicide risk.


Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.


Author(s):  
Ted Geier

Covers the long history of the Smithfield animal market and legal reform in London. Shows the relationship of civic improvement tropes, including animal rights, to animal erasure in the form of new foodstuffs from distant meat production sites. The reduction of lives to commodities also informed public abasement of the butchers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-343
Author(s):  
Fabio Camilletti

It is generally assumed that The Vampyre was published against John Polidori's will. This article brings evidence to support that he played, in fact, an active role in the publication of his tale, perhaps as a response to Frankenstein. In particular, by making use of the tools of textual criticism, it demonstrates how the ‘Extract of a Letter from Geneva’ accompanying The Vampyre in The New Monthly Magazine and in volume editions could not be written without having access to Polidori's Diary. Furthermore, it hypothesizes that the composition of The Vampyre, traditionally located in Geneva in the course of summer 1816, can be postdated to 1818, opening up new possibilities for reading the tale in the context of the relationship between Polidori, Byron, and the Shelleys.


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