The article explores the intersection of history and politics in the works of French philosopher Jacques Rancière, by focusing on the collectively edited journal Les Révoltes logiques (1975–1985). It argues that the historiographic project of Les Révoltes logiques took up specific forms of counter-knowledge that were embedded in radical left-wing politics of their day. It further traces both the engagement with historiography and the role of history in Rancière's later work after the dissolution of the journal. Its conclusion looks at certain shared interests between some of Rancière's themes and some recent writing of social history.

This article takes a global-historical perspective on all slaveries and slave trades (and contraband trading of human bodies) in relation to today's state of capitalist accumulation. It follows the different “national” schools of slavery research in different imperial traditions, as well as the sections of historical thinking stimulated through slavery research. Although legal ownership over humans does not exist any more, more women and men are in conditions of slavery today than in any other period of history since 1200. Against this background, the article criticizes the concentration in historiography on “hegemonic” slaveries (antique, Islamic, and American plantation slaveries) and proposes a focus on smaller “slaveries” all over the world (first of all of women and children), and on the agency of slaves and slave women, rather than on “great” slavery in a tradition of “Roman Law”.

In 1881–1882, Marx undertook extensive historical studies, covering a large part of what was then known as “world history”. The four large notebooks with excerpts from the works of (mainly) two leading historian of his time, Schlosser and Botta, have remained largely unpublished. In this article, Marx’s last studies of the course of world history are contextualized: Marx’s previous historical studies and his ongoing, but unfinished work on the critique of political economy. The range and scope of his notes is astoundingly broad, going far beyond European history and actually covering many other parts of the world. Marx’s focus in these studies supports the interpretation offered in the article: that the author of “Capital” was fascinated by the long process of the making of the modern states and the European states system, one of the crucial prerequisites of the rise of modern capitalism in Europe.

This survey article seeks to contribute to the understanding of the concepts of precarious work and precarization in the history of industrial capitalism by addressing the debate in the social sciences and humanities over the past forty years. Based on a gendered global approach, this article aims to offer a critique of the Global North-centric perspective, which largely conceives precarious work as a new phenomenon lacking a longer historical tradition. The first part discusses the multiple origins, definitions, and conceptualizations of “precarious work” elaborated with regard to industrial as well as post-industrial capitalism, taking into account selected contemporary sources as well as studies conducted by historians and social scientists. In the second part, the influence of different approaches, such as the feminist and post-colonial ones, in globalizing and gendering the precarious work debate is examined in their historical contexts, exploring also the crucial nexus of precarious work and informal work. In the conclusion, the limitations of the available literature are discussed, along with suggestions for further directions in historicizing precarious work from a global perspective.

TRANSLATED ABSTRACTS FRENCH – GERMAN – SPANISH

Eloisa Betti. En historicisant le travail précaire: quarante ans de recherche dans les sciences sociales et humaines.

Cette enquête tente de contribuer à la compréhension des concepts de travail précaire et de précarisation dans l’histoire du capitalisme industriel, en examinant le débat dans les sciences sociales et humaines durant les quarante dernières années. Sur la base d’une approche globale de genre, l’article entend proposer une critique de la perspective globale nordique, qui conçoit en grande partie le travail précaire comme un nouveau phénomène dépourvu d’une assez longue tradition historique. La première partie examine les multiples origines, définitions et conceptualisations du “travail précaire” élaborées à propos du capitalisme industriel et post-industriel, en tenant compte de sources contemporaines sélectionnées et d’études conduites par des historiens et spécialistes des sciences sociales. Dans la seconde partie, l’influence de diverses approches, telles que les approches féministes et post-coloniales, mondialisant et générisant le débat sur le travail précaire, sont examinées dans leur contexte historique, tout en étudiant également le lien crucial du travail précaire et du travail informel. En conclusion, les limitations de la littérature disponible sont examinées et assorties de suggestions d’orientations ultérieures pour historiciser le travail précaire dans une perspective globale.

Traduction: Christine Plard

Since the 1990s, labor history has been presented as “in crisis”. This negative evaluation is an overstatement. It has nevertheless prodded historians, often productively, to rethink the basic orientations of working-class history. This survey article explores three recent pathways to a “new” labor history: the turn to transnational and global study; the “new” history of capitalism; and the study of slavery as unfree labor. These new approaches to labor history highlight an old dilemma: how the structured determinations of laboring life are balanced alongside dimensions of human agency in understanding the complex experience of the working-class past. It is argued that we need to consider both structure and agency in the researching and writing of labor history. If an older “new” labor history accented agency, new pathways to labor history too often seem constrained by “mind forg’d manacles” that limit understandings of workers’ past lives by emphasizing structure and determination.

Historical research on domestic servants has a long tradition. Research, however, has become more systematic from the 1960s onwards thanks to social historians, historians focusing on the family, historical demographers and (particularly from the 1970s) women's and gender historians. For a long time, scholars assumed that domestic service (especially by live-in workers) would decline, or even disappear, because of household modernization, social progress, and development of the welfare state. The (largely unexpected) “revival” of paid domestic and care work in the past three decades has prompted sociologists and other social scientists to focus on the theme, opening new opportunities for exchange between historians and social scientists. This article provides a review of the research on these issues at a global level, though with a focus on Europe and the (former) European colonies, over the past fifty years, illustrating the different approaches and their results.

This bibliographic essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of convict labour from a global and long-term perspective. First the conditions conducive to the emergence and transformation of convict labour are addressed by framing this coercive labour form within broader classifications of labour relations and by discussing its connection with the problem of governmentality. Subsequently, an overview of the literature is undertaken in the form of a journey across time, space, and different regimes of punishment. Finally, the limitations of the available literature are discussed, the possibility of a longer-term (pre-1500) and global history of convict labour is considered, and some theoretical and methodological approaches are suggested that could favour this task.

This article attempts to introduce readers to the impressive and influential historical and contemporary literature on South African labour. A literature with some earlier antecedents effectively applied classic sociological and historical themes to the specific conditions of South African political and economic development. Research on the phase of politicized and militant white worker action ties up with research into the international pre-World War I labour movement. The strength of this literature reflected the insurgent labour movement linked to political struggle against apartheid before 1990. After this review, the second half of the paper tries to consider and contextualize the challenging post-apartheid labour situation together with its political aspects. With the successful conclusion of the anti-apartheid struggle, students of the labour movement, as well as of South African society, have become more aware of the distance between establishing a liberal democracy and actually changing society itself in a direction leading towards less inequality and an improved life for those at the bottom of society, or even the broad mass of the population. As recent literature reveals, the development of post-apartheid South Africa has been a differential and problematic experience for labour.