The global impact of Asian production of the wage goods consumed in North America and Europe is only now being recognized, and is far from being understood. Asian women, most only recently urbanized and in the waged work force, are at the center of a process of intensive labor for minimal wages that has upended the entire global economy. First published in 1997, this prescient study is the best available summary of this crucial process as it took hold at the very end of the twentieth centu...

John W. Budd's The Thought of Work provides a much needed and highly eloquent statement of the meanings and orientations to work across time and nations. It is essential reading for students of work from senior scholars to beginning undergraduates.— Randy Hodson, Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences The Ohio State University and past editor ― American Sociological ReviewBy drawing explicit attention to diverse, implici...

Paid work is absolutely central to the culture and politics of capitalist societies, yet today's work-centred world is becoming increasingly hostile to the human need for autonomy, spontaneity and community. The grim reality of a society in which some are overworked, whilst others are condemned to intermittent work and unemployment, is progressively more difficult to tolerate.In this thought-provoking book, David Frayne questions the central place of work in mainstream political vi...

Beginning soon after the implementation of the policies of the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1961, when the drive to collectivize and industrialize undermined the livelihoods of the vast majority of peasant workers, China's Great Famine was the worst famine in human history. In addition to claiming more than 45 million lives, it also led to the destruction of agriculture, industry, trade, and every aspect of human life, leaving large parts of the Chinese countryside scarred forever by human-c...

C.L.R. James was a leading figure in the independence movement in the West Indies, and the black and working-class movements in both Britain and the United States. As a major contributor to Marxist and revolutionary theory, his project was to discover, document, and elaborate the aspects of working-class activity that constitute the revolution in today’s world. In this volume, Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White, provides an extensive introduction to James’ life an...

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.Major political and economic shifts have succeeded one another over the past twenty-five years. The rise to prominence of ecological issues, social changes generated by neoliberal globalization, and - most recently - one of the worst world economic crises ever, compels us to reflect urgently on the need for alternatives to the capitalist syst...

Geoffrey Bell's Hesitant Comrades is the first published history of the policies, actions and attitudes of the British working class towards the Irish national revolution of 1916-21.Drawing principally on primary sources, Bell brings to light for the first time important incidents in British/Irish history, including how the leaders of British trade unions were complicit in Belfast loyalist sectarianism; the troubled nature of the Labour Party's relations with its Irish community; a...

Cuba has loomed large in American memory and history. Throughout the last half-century, the island and its larger-than-life revolutionary leader have been key players in the Cold War and mythologized by Americans and American politicians. In 2016, relations thawed, and the country opened its doors to American. The Rolling Stones played in Havana. President Obama arrived too in March. He was the first President to visit the nation almost 100 years—since Coolidge in 1928. And then Fidel Cast...

Over the last fifteen years, the deregulation of Britain's labour market has led to economic growth, employment opportunities, and a more diverse workforce: the 'fat years'. However, now as Britain faces its lean years with job cuts, rising unemployment, income insecurity, and related social strains, how can and should the government and key labour market policy makers ensure the labour market provides job opportunities and reasonable levels of social justice?The fundamental changes that h...

This is the story of an attempted coup d'etat more than twenty years ago on the Seychelles, an idyllic but obscure group of islands in the Indian Ocean. At the time, the attempt made headlines across the world, partly because it involved names still famous or notorious from the mercenary involvement in the Congo in the 1960s, partly because it involved the hijacking of an Air India jetliner, partly because South Africa, the international pariah, was involved, and partly because the inciden...

The society and economy of Vietnam is still characterised by a rapid transformation process. There is high economic and political pressure. coming not only from internal developments but also from foreign countries.This groundbreaking book takes stock of the rapid processes of change in the labour market and the industrial relations of Vietnam. The contributions of Vietnamese and international experts cover the institutional arrangements of the labour market and of the system of in...

The concept of predistribution is increasingly setting the agenda in progressive politics. But what does it mean? The predistributive agenda is concerned with how states can alter the underlying distribution of market outcomes so they no longer rely solely on post hoc redistribution to achieve economic efficiency and social justice. It therefore offers an effective means of tackling economic and social inequality alongside traditional welfare policies, emphasising employability, human capi...