1.
Rydén, Göran
Making iron, producing space! How coerced work defined a Swedish early modern ironmaking region Journal Article
In: Labor History, vol. 64, iss. 6, 2023.
@article{nokey,
title = {Making iron, producing space! How coerced work defined a Swedish early modern ironmaking region},
author = {Göran Rydén},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-10-01},
urldate = {2023-10-01},
issuetitle = {Exploring labor coercion through im/mobility and the environment (18th-20th centuries)},
journal = {Labor History},
volume = {64},
issue = {6},
abstract = {Swedish ironmaking took place in mines, forests and rationally structured ironmaking communities (bruk), merging different forms of labour and coercion, wage labour, household labour and corvée labour often in the form of transport duties, as well as leases paid in kind. The aim is to analyse this diverse structure from an angle of motion, movement and mobility, and see how subordinated ironmaking artisanal and peasant households set the limits for the regions in which they were living while undertaking that work. It is essential to link this work to the owners’ ambition to control production, the workers and the tasks they were set to do. It meant to supervise production at the workshops, but more importantly, it meant to monitor the movement of raw material, grain and commodities, between these sites and markets outside the region. I use an extensive accounting material from one region to unravel patterns of work, and the owners’ ambitions to keep track of subordinated artisans and peasants. These patterns of work and supervision were, together with legal structures, a crucial element in the making of the spatial structuring of Swedish ironmaking.},
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Swedish ironmaking took place in mines, forests and rationally structured ironmaking communities (bruk), merging different forms of labour and coercion, wage labour, household labour and corvée labour often in the form of transport duties, as well as leases paid in kind. The aim is to analyse this diverse structure from an angle of motion, movement and mobility, and see how subordinated ironmaking artisanal and peasant households set the limits for the regions in which they were living while undertaking that work. It is essential to link this work to the owners’ ambition to control production, the workers and the tasks they were set to do. It meant to supervise production at the workshops, but more importantly, it meant to monitor the movement of raw material, grain and commodities, between these sites and markets outside the region. I use an extensive accounting material from one region to unravel patterns of work, and the owners’ ambitions to keep track of subordinated artisans and peasants. These patterns of work and supervision were, together with legal structures, a crucial element in the making of the spatial structuring of Swedish ironmaking.
2.
Uppenberg, Carolina
Contracted Coercion: Land, Labour and Gender in the Swedish Crofter Institution Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, 2023.
@article{nokey,
title = {Contracted Coercion: Land, Labour and Gender in the Swedish Crofter Institution},
author = {Carolina Uppenberg},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-04-30},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
abstract = {In the early modern rural setting, labour was organized with varying degrees of coercion depending on landowning, social standing, and gender. This article analyses the crofter institution, characterized by corvée labour (obligatory work as payment), from the perspective of gender and coercion. The purpose is to answer the question of how the crofter institution was created, shaped, enabled and questioned. The right to establish a croft made the position as head of household available for men but it also increased social stratification. While crofters were masters of their households in contract signing, their position was ambiguous when it came to the organization of labour. Regarding physical integrity, crofters could be forced by physical violence and were subject to rules not connected to work, such as subservience. I argue that this was made acceptable through marriage and allowing the position as head of household to landless men. Crofters held an intermediate position, caught between the market logic of leasehold of land and the coercive logic of labour extraction, and this continued to colour the crofter institution until its final dissolution in 1943.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In the early modern rural setting, labour was organized with varying degrees of coercion depending on landowning, social standing, and gender. This article analyses the crofter institution, characterized by corvée labour (obligatory work as payment), from the perspective of gender and coercion. The purpose is to answer the question of how the crofter institution was created, shaped, enabled and questioned. The right to establish a croft made the position as head of household available for men but it also increased social stratification. While crofters were masters of their households in contract signing, their position was ambiguous when it came to the organization of labour. Regarding physical integrity, crofters could be forced by physical violence and were subject to rules not connected to work, such as subservience. I argue that this was made acceptable through marriage and allowing the position as head of household to landless men. Crofters held an intermediate position, caught between the market logic of leasehold of land and the coercive logic of labour extraction, and this continued to colour the crofter institution until its final dissolution in 1943.
3.
Vilhelmsson, Vilhelm
Contested Households: Lodgers, Labour, and the Law in Rural Iceland in the Early 19th Century Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, pp. 572-592, 2023.
@article{nokey,
title = {Contested Households: Lodgers, Labour, and the Law in Rural Iceland in the Early 19th Century},
author = {Vilhelm Vilhelmsson},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-04-05},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
pages = {572-592},
abstract = {The historiography of labour in pre-industrial Iceland has commonly portrayed it first and foremost as life-cycle service in rural households and has suggested that, in a European context, the Icelandic system of compulsory service – or vistarband – was exceptionally harsh due to its broad scope and inflexibility. This approach has been built primarily on demographics and a normative analysis of legal sources. Less attention has been paid to the everyday practices of workers and their employers (or the state) as they manoeuvred within and around the labour legislation to establish working relationships to make ends meet. Similarly, ambiguities within the legislation and discrepancies between law and practice have rarely been explored, nor has people’s understanding of the principal concepts of the labour laws, concepts such as ‘household’, ‘farm’ and ‘servant’, been scrutinized. This article invokes such questions and provides a microhistorical analysis of two court cases which illustrate the nuances and ambiguities of putting such a broad-reaching set of regulations into practice in a pre-industrial rural setting.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
The historiography of labour in pre-industrial Iceland has commonly portrayed it first and foremost as life-cycle service in rural households and has suggested that, in a European context, the Icelandic system of compulsory service – or vistarband – was exceptionally harsh due to its broad scope and inflexibility. This approach has been built primarily on demographics and a normative analysis of legal sources. Less attention has been paid to the everyday practices of workers and their employers (or the state) as they manoeuvred within and around the labour legislation to establish working relationships to make ends meet. Similarly, ambiguities within the legislation and discrepancies between law and practice have rarely been explored, nor has people’s understanding of the principal concepts of the labour laws, concepts such as ‘household’, ‘farm’ and ‘servant’, been scrutinized. This article invokes such questions and provides a microhistorical analysis of two court cases which illustrate the nuances and ambiguities of putting such a broad-reaching set of regulations into practice in a pre-industrial rural setting.
4.
Sarti, Raffaella
Can Historians Speak? A Few Thoughts and Proposals on a Possible Global History of Domestic Service/Work Book Chapter
In: Sinha, Nitin; Varma, Nitin (Ed.): Servants Pasts. Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century. South Asia, vol. 1., 2019.
@inbook{nokey,
title = {Can Historians Speak? A Few Thoughts and Proposals on a Possible Global History of Domestic Service/Work},
author = {Raffaella Sarti},
editor = {Nitin Sinha and Nitin Varma},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-01-01},
booktitle = {Servants Pasts. Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century. South Asia, vol. 1.},
abstract = {The title of this contribution echoes the influential and controversial article by Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?” – an inspiring question. However, I will not discuss her argument. Rather, it will highlight a common problem that historians have to face, namely the vocabulary they use. Such a problem seems particularly important in the study of domestic service/work, and even more so if they want to develop a comparative perspective and/or contribute to a possible global history of domestic service/work. The chapter examines the problem and suggests some possible strategies to overcome it and move toward a global history of domestic service/work.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}
The title of this contribution echoes the influential and controversial article by Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?” – an inspiring question. However, I will not discuss her argument. Rather, it will highlight a common problem that historians have to face, namely the vocabulary they use. Such a problem seems particularly important in the study of domestic service/work, and even more so if they want to develop a comparative perspective and/or contribute to a possible global history of domestic service/work. The chapter examines the problem and suggests some possible strategies to overcome it and move toward a global history of domestic service/work.
5.
Sarti, Raffaella; Bellavitis, Anna; Martini, Manuela (Ed.)
What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present Collection
2018.
@collection{nokey,
title = {What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present},
editor = {Raffaella Sarti and Anna Bellavitis and Manuela Martini},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-01-01},
abstract = {Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn’t. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. “What Is Work?” offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.
},
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pubstate = {published},
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}
Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn’t. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. “What Is Work?” offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.
6.
Østhus, Hanne
Tvunget til tjeneste? Tjenesteplikten i Danmark-Norge på 1700-tallet og begynnelsen av 1800-tallet Journal Article
In: Arbetarhistoria, iss. 3-4, pp. 26-31, 2017.
@article{nokey,
title = {Tvunget til tjeneste? Tjenesteplikten i Danmark-Norge på 1700-tallet og begynnelsen av 1800-tallet},
author = {Hanne Østhus},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
journal = {Arbetarhistoria},
issue = {3-4},
pages = {26-31},
abstract = {In the article, I look at the legal obligation to work as household servants in Denmark-Norway during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Large parts of the population were subject to this legislation, but the enforcement of the law varied considerably.
},
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In the article, I look at the legal obligation to work as household servants in Denmark-Norway during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Large parts of the population were subject to this legislation, but the enforcement of the law varied considerably.
7.
Wunsch, Cornelia; Rachel, Magdalene F.
Slavery between Judah and Babylon: The Exilic Experience Book Chapter
In: Culbertson, Laura (Ed.): Slaves and Household in the Near East, pp. 113-134, 2011.
@inbook{nokey,
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author = {Cornelia Wunsch and Magdalene F. Rachel},
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year = {2011},
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booktitle = {Slaves and Household in the Near East},
pages = {113-134},
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2023
Rydén, Göran
Making iron, producing space! How coerced work defined a Swedish early modern ironmaking region Journal Article
In: Labor History, vol. 64, iss. 6, 2023.
Abstract | Tags: early modern history, household, migration and mobility, mining, scandinavia, sweden
@article{nokey,
title = {Making iron, producing space! How coerced work defined a Swedish early modern ironmaking region},
author = {Göran Rydén},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-10-01},
urldate = {2023-10-01},
issuetitle = {Exploring labor coercion through im/mobility and the environment (18th-20th centuries)},
journal = {Labor History},
volume = {64},
issue = {6},
abstract = {Swedish ironmaking took place in mines, forests and rationally structured ironmaking communities (bruk), merging different forms of labour and coercion, wage labour, household labour and corvée labour often in the form of transport duties, as well as leases paid in kind. The aim is to analyse this diverse structure from an angle of motion, movement and mobility, and see how subordinated ironmaking artisanal and peasant households set the limits for the regions in which they were living while undertaking that work. It is essential to link this work to the owners’ ambition to control production, the workers and the tasks they were set to do. It meant to supervise production at the workshops, but more importantly, it meant to monitor the movement of raw material, grain and commodities, between these sites and markets outside the region. I use an extensive accounting material from one region to unravel patterns of work, and the owners’ ambitions to keep track of subordinated artisans and peasants. These patterns of work and supervision were, together with legal structures, a crucial element in the making of the spatial structuring of Swedish ironmaking.},
keywords = {early modern history, household, migration and mobility, mining, scandinavia, sweden},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Swedish ironmaking took place in mines, forests and rationally structured ironmaking communities (bruk), merging different forms of labour and coercion, wage labour, household labour and corvée labour often in the form of transport duties, as well as leases paid in kind. The aim is to analyse this diverse structure from an angle of motion, movement and mobility, and see how subordinated ironmaking artisanal and peasant households set the limits for the regions in which they were living while undertaking that work. It is essential to link this work to the owners’ ambition to control production, the workers and the tasks they were set to do. It meant to supervise production at the workshops, but more importantly, it meant to monitor the movement of raw material, grain and commodities, between these sites and markets outside the region. I use an extensive accounting material from one region to unravel patterns of work, and the owners’ ambitions to keep track of subordinated artisans and peasants. These patterns of work and supervision were, together with legal structures, a crucial element in the making of the spatial structuring of Swedish ironmaking.
Uppenberg, Carolina
Contracted Coercion: Land, Labour and Gender in the Swedish Crofter Institution Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, 2023.
Abstract | Tags: 19th century, 20th century, agrarian labour and rural history, early modern history, europe, gender, household, scandinavia, service, sweden
@article{nokey,
title = {Contracted Coercion: Land, Labour and Gender in the Swedish Crofter Institution},
author = {Carolina Uppenberg},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-04-30},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
abstract = {In the early modern rural setting, labour was organized with varying degrees of coercion depending on landowning, social standing, and gender. This article analyses the crofter institution, characterized by corvée labour (obligatory work as payment), from the perspective of gender and coercion. The purpose is to answer the question of how the crofter institution was created, shaped, enabled and questioned. The right to establish a croft made the position as head of household available for men but it also increased social stratification. While crofters were masters of their households in contract signing, their position was ambiguous when it came to the organization of labour. Regarding physical integrity, crofters could be forced by physical violence and were subject to rules not connected to work, such as subservience. I argue that this was made acceptable through marriage and allowing the position as head of household to landless men. Crofters held an intermediate position, caught between the market logic of leasehold of land and the coercive logic of labour extraction, and this continued to colour the crofter institution until its final dissolution in 1943.},
keywords = {19th century, 20th century, agrarian labour and rural history, early modern history, europe, gender, household, scandinavia, service, sweden},
pubstate = {published},
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In the early modern rural setting, labour was organized with varying degrees of coercion depending on landowning, social standing, and gender. This article analyses the crofter institution, characterized by corvée labour (obligatory work as payment), from the perspective of gender and coercion. The purpose is to answer the question of how the crofter institution was created, shaped, enabled and questioned. The right to establish a croft made the position as head of household available for men but it also increased social stratification. While crofters were masters of their households in contract signing, their position was ambiguous when it came to the organization of labour. Regarding physical integrity, crofters could be forced by physical violence and were subject to rules not connected to work, such as subservience. I argue that this was made acceptable through marriage and allowing the position as head of household to landless men. Crofters held an intermediate position, caught between the market logic of leasehold of land and the coercive logic of labour extraction, and this continued to colour the crofter institution until its final dissolution in 1943.
Vilhelmsson, Vilhelm
Contested Households: Lodgers, Labour, and the Law in Rural Iceland in the Early 19th Century Journal Article
In: Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 48, iss. 5, pp. 572-592, 2023.
Abstract | Tags: 19th century, agrarian labour and rural history, europe, household, iceland, labour law, scandinavia, service
@article{nokey,
title = {Contested Households: Lodgers, Labour, and the Law in Rural Iceland in the Early 19th Century},
author = {Vilhelm Vilhelmsson},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-04-05},
journal = {Scandinavian Journal of History},
volume = {48},
issue = {5},
pages = {572-592},
abstract = {The historiography of labour in pre-industrial Iceland has commonly portrayed it first and foremost as life-cycle service in rural households and has suggested that, in a European context, the Icelandic system of compulsory service – or vistarband – was exceptionally harsh due to its broad scope and inflexibility. This approach has been built primarily on demographics and a normative analysis of legal sources. Less attention has been paid to the everyday practices of workers and their employers (or the state) as they manoeuvred within and around the labour legislation to establish working relationships to make ends meet. Similarly, ambiguities within the legislation and discrepancies between law and practice have rarely been explored, nor has people’s understanding of the principal concepts of the labour laws, concepts such as ‘household’, ‘farm’ and ‘servant’, been scrutinized. This article invokes such questions and provides a microhistorical analysis of two court cases which illustrate the nuances and ambiguities of putting such a broad-reaching set of regulations into practice in a pre-industrial rural setting.},
keywords = {19th century, agrarian labour and rural history, europe, household, iceland, labour law, scandinavia, service},
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The historiography of labour in pre-industrial Iceland has commonly portrayed it first and foremost as life-cycle service in rural households and has suggested that, in a European context, the Icelandic system of compulsory service – or vistarband – was exceptionally harsh due to its broad scope and inflexibility. This approach has been built primarily on demographics and a normative analysis of legal sources. Less attention has been paid to the everyday practices of workers and their employers (or the state) as they manoeuvred within and around the labour legislation to establish working relationships to make ends meet. Similarly, ambiguities within the legislation and discrepancies between law and practice have rarely been explored, nor has people’s understanding of the principal concepts of the labour laws, concepts such as ‘household’, ‘farm’ and ‘servant’, been scrutinized. This article invokes such questions and provides a microhistorical analysis of two court cases which illustrate the nuances and ambiguities of putting such a broad-reaching set of regulations into practice in a pre-industrial rural setting.
2019
Sarti, Raffaella
Can Historians Speak? A Few Thoughts and Proposals on a Possible Global History of Domestic Service/Work Book Chapter
In: Sinha, Nitin; Varma, Nitin (Ed.): Servants Pasts. Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century. South Asia, vol. 1., 2019.
Abstract | Tags: domestic service, early modern history, gender, historical semantics, household
@inbook{nokey,
title = {Can Historians Speak? A Few Thoughts and Proposals on a Possible Global History of Domestic Service/Work},
author = {Raffaella Sarti},
editor = {Nitin Sinha and Nitin Varma},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-01-01},
booktitle = {Servants Pasts. Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century. South Asia, vol. 1.},
abstract = {The title of this contribution echoes the influential and controversial article by Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?” – an inspiring question. However, I will not discuss her argument. Rather, it will highlight a common problem that historians have to face, namely the vocabulary they use. Such a problem seems particularly important in the study of domestic service/work, and even more so if they want to develop a comparative perspective and/or contribute to a possible global history of domestic service/work. The chapter examines the problem and suggests some possible strategies to overcome it and move toward a global history of domestic service/work.
},
keywords = {domestic service, early modern history, gender, historical semantics, household},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}
The title of this contribution echoes the influential and controversial article by Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?” – an inspiring question. However, I will not discuss her argument. Rather, it will highlight a common problem that historians have to face, namely the vocabulary they use. Such a problem seems particularly important in the study of domestic service/work, and even more so if they want to develop a comparative perspective and/or contribute to a possible global history of domestic service/work. The chapter examines the problem and suggests some possible strategies to overcome it and move toward a global history of domestic service/work.
2018
Sarti, Raffaella; Bellavitis, Anna; Martini, Manuela (Ed.)
What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present Collection
2018.
Abstract | Tags: gender, household, longue duree
@collection{nokey,
title = {What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present},
editor = {Raffaella Sarti and Anna Bellavitis and Manuela Martini},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-01-01},
abstract = {Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn’t. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. “What Is Work?” offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.
},
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Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn’t. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. “What Is Work?” offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.
2017
Østhus, Hanne
Tvunget til tjeneste? Tjenesteplikten i Danmark-Norge på 1700-tallet og begynnelsen av 1800-tallet Journal Article
In: Arbetarhistoria, iss. 3-4, pp. 26-31, 2017.
Abstract | Tags: denmark, early modern history, household, norway, service
@article{nokey,
title = {Tvunget til tjeneste? Tjenesteplikten i Danmark-Norge på 1700-tallet og begynnelsen av 1800-tallet},
author = {Hanne Østhus},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
journal = {Arbetarhistoria},
issue = {3-4},
pages = {26-31},
abstract = {In the article, I look at the legal obligation to work as household servants in Denmark-Norway during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Large parts of the population were subject to this legislation, but the enforcement of the law varied considerably.
},
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In the article, I look at the legal obligation to work as household servants in Denmark-Norway during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Large parts of the population were subject to this legislation, but the enforcement of the law varied considerably.
2011
Wunsch, Cornelia; Rachel, Magdalene F.
Slavery between Judah and Babylon: The Exilic Experience Book Chapter
In: Culbertson, Laura (Ed.): Slaves and Household in the Near East, pp. 113-134, 2011.
Tags: ancient history, babylonia, household, slavery
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