The World Wide Web of Work

Global Labour History has rapidly gained ground as a field of study in the 21st century, attracting interest in the Global South and North alike. Scholars derive inspiration from the broad perspective and the effort to perceive connections between global trends over time in work and labour relations, incorporating slaves, indentured labourers and sharecroppers, housewives and domestic servants. Casting this sweeping analytical gaze, The World Wide Web of Work discusses the core concepts ‘capitalism’ and ‘workers’, and refines notions such as ‘coerced labour’, ‘household strategies’ and ‘labour markets’. It explores in new ways the connections between labourers in different parts of the world, arguing that both ‘globalisation’ and modern labour management originated in agriculture in the Global South and were only later introduced in Northern industrial settings. It reveals that 19th-century chattel slavery was frequently replaced by other forms of coerced labour, and it reconstructs the laborious 20th-century attempts of the International Labour Organisation to regulate labour standards supra-nationally. The book also pays attention to the relational inequality through which workers in wealthy countries benefit from the exploitation of those in poor countries. The final part addresses workers’ resistance and acquiescence: why collective actions often have unanticipated consequences; why and how workers sometimes organise massive flights from exploitation and oppression; and why ‘proletarian revolutions’ took place in pre-industrial or industrialising countries and never in fully developed capitalist societies

Mutualist Microfinance

Small mutual funds once flourished in nineteenth century Europe and North America. They still abound in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In recent years they have come back to European and North American cities with the immigrants from the global South. Some of the small mutual savings funds use the accumulated sums to provide financial assistance to members in distress and thus fulfil an insurance function. Others make loans regardless of their members' individual needs, in which case it is the savings or credit function that predominates. In this volume, five authors describe and analyse the results of their fieldwork among mutual fund members in Hyderabad, Yogyakarta, Ayelitsa (a township near Cape Town), among Surinamese in both Paramaribo (Suriname) and Amsterdam, as well as among Senegalese Peul who migrate from Thilonge to Dakar and on to Paris. The studies are based on field observations and personal interviews. The two editors, Abram de Swaan and Marcel van der Linden, provide a common comparative approach, and a shared historical and theoretical perspective. The essays explore the varieties and the logic of mutual funds, emphasizing the importance of peer pressures as a 'social constraint' to increase 'self constraint' on spending. Cooperation in a mutual fund, whether for insurance or saving purposes, can proffer the participants advantages which they cannot realize on their own