Volume 1: Work and Workers in Context
General Introduction
Introduction
Part I: First Orientations
Part II: Work and Workers
Part III: Degrees of Freedom
Part IV: The Making of Workers
Volume 2: Work Sites
General Introduction
Introduction
Part I: Locations
Part II: Management and Discipline
Part III: Families/Households
Part IV: Migrations
Volume 3: Labour Markets
General Introduction
Introduction
Part I: Unemployment
Part II: Gender and Ethnicity
Part III: Sociability and Social Networks
Part IV: Recent Trends
Volume 4: Collective Action
General Introduction
Introduction
Part I: Forms of Resistance
Part II: Self-Organization
Part III: Yellow Unions and Racketeering
Part IV: The Politics of Labour and the Global Crisis of Traditional Workers' Organizations
Further Readings

Marcel van der Linden is Director of Research at the International Institute for Social History and holds a professorship at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is the author of Transnational Labour History (2003) and Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History (2008) and, with Karl Heinz Roth, Beyond Marx: Confronting Labour-History and the Concept of Labour with the Global Labour-Relations of the Twenty-First Century (2015).

The Global History of Work: Critical Readings provides an extensive reference collection which is essential for all students and scholars needing to gain a critical understanding of work and the history of work.

Collating scholarly historical texts on the subject from the last 50 years and beyond from a wide range of sources, this four-volume set offers a key knowledge resource for the field. The set brings together around 60 essays and papers - from the field-shaping pieces published in the 1970s through to the landmark texts of the recent past and present - and thematically arranges in a way that highlights the crucial topics of discussion and debate in this area of study. The set obviously has a global scope and provides valuable insights into how the field was formed, how it has developed and how it will be studied in the years to come.

Volume 1 explores core concepts to do with work and work history and examines definitions, perceptions and the 'making of workers'.

Volume 2 focuses on work sites, with an emphasis on locations, migrations and households.

Volume 3 considers labour markets and includes material on unemployment, gender and ethnicity, sociability/social networks and recent trends.

Volume 4 covers collective action and the importance of the politics of labour, unions and forms of resistance.

Each volume includes a substantial contextualizing introduction surveying the development of the field. The Global History of Work: Critical Readings is a major scholarly reference work for all researchers interested in the history of work.