International Perspectives on History of Work and Environment
This course will explore the history of work and environment during the modern era (nineteenth and twentieth centuries). We will start with readings from “classic” texts and authors that have set older and newer agendas for the fields of labor history (Marx, Fink, D. Montgomery) and environmental history (Marx, Worster, Cronon), centered, in contrasting ways, around the notion of “capitalist production.” For these as well as the newer works in both fields that comprise the bulk of our reading list, we will consider what authors may (or may not) have to say to one another about the sphere of production and its history. Key areas of discussion will also include: the historical implications of recent debates over nature of “modern” and “postmodern” capitalism; comparison of the work and environmental history of “developed” versus “developing” worlds; and the transnational and/or global dimensions of workplace and environmental change. Focus will fall in particular on the new ways that historians are figuring space and geography into labor and business history, and work into environmental history. While the reading list for much of the semester will be set in advance, readings and geographic coverage in many of the later sessions will hinge upon student preferences and needs.
Readings:
There are four books that everyone in the course will be required to read:
David Montgomery, Workers Control in America
William Cronon, Changes in the Land
Linda Nash, Inescapable Inequalities; A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge
Laura Raynolds, et al., Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas
In addition, everyone will be required to read one out of each of these two pairs of books:
(1) John McNeill, Something New Under the Sun or
Beverley Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870
(2) Nancy Jacobs, Environment, Power and Injustice or
Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities
While we will bring many other readings to the table, most will be selected and presented by individuals within the class.
