Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Labour History in the Semi-periphery
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2020 |
| Abstract | Small ownership remains an essential element in the understanding of the nineteenth century Greek society. Yet, this view overlooks the extent of large property and its social implications, and also underestimates class division. As a result, wage-labour analysis was neglected. However, the study of the commercial agriculture and seasonal migration of thousands of workers suggests a different image of the “quiet” rural world. This study draws upon archival research of notary and private sources to track the rarely visible labour force in the agricultural sector. On one hand, hired labour was often disguised behind sharecropping agreements; on the other, the fragile social relations between workers and landowners were barely mentioned in the press. The financial crisis at the end of the century heavily affected the large property reshaping the social map. Small ownership survived thanks to the immigrant remittances from abroad and substantially contributed to the nationalist ambitions of the Greek State. Henceforth, it would prevail over any alternative narrative about social structure. The shops’ Sunday closing in Lisbon in the final decades of the nineteenth century was a relevant issue regarding labour relations. On the one hand, it was related to a liberal stance about the freedom of work and trade by the shopkeepers. On the other hand, it was part of the demands for better working conditions by the clerks. But it was related also to the competitive economy of the retail trade, with the paternalistic view of the shopkeepers toward their employees and with a growing tension towards the regulation of economic activities by the municipal and central authorities. In this study we look at the discussions and controversies surrounding the Sunday closing issue in Lisbon, which had about twelve thousand shops, on average, between 1890 and 1910, and compare with what was happening in other European cities, such as London, Paris, Milan or Athens. The study is based on analysis of the documentation of Lisbon’s Shopkeepers Association, on legislation and newspapers. One of the conclusions is that the retailers in Lisbon, despite being quite liberal and sometimes even radical in their political stance, were very conservative regarding the management of human resources in the shops, and this had an impact on the way the Sunday rest was or wasn’t implemented in the city’s retail trade. The chapter focuses on the changes in policies for the craft sector in Italy between the fascist regime and the first republican governments (1925- 1960). Since the first legal measures in this particular field of labour, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the artisan was hard to be defined because of his bivalence, both entrepreneur and worker, and because of the ambiguity of the craft work itself. In 1926 the fascist regime founded the first national artisan organisation, the Fascist Federation of Artisans, and in the thirties some social policies were approved in the corporative project, with the only purpose of limiting the effects of the economic crisis and strengthening the consensus, rather than introducing and guaranteeing new labour and social rights or sustaining the sector. The crucial step occurred in the fifties, when the new artisan associations demanded different policies starting from the legal definition of artisan firm, but considering also health insurance and old age pensions. These claims interbred with the interest of new political parties - not only the main government one (Christian Democrats) - for the middle class, that was considered as an essential asset towards social integration. In the second half of the decade, the government passed some important laws, which defined the new labour policies and social protection for the craft sector. Although they did not constitute a coherent policy and left some problems unresolved, they can be considered as an attempt by some representatives of government parties and artisan associations to promote the contribution of the craft sector to post-war stability and the realisation of democratic principles. Industrial labour’s history is bound with that of employment and of entrepreneurs. This paper aims at identifying the local differences in industrial activities and production structures as well as explaining them eventually by their different cultural contexts and behaviors. Our approach follows a first way, quantitative, based on available statistical series of enterprises and of employment, mainly from the Second World War up to the recent period of crisis, and comparing them as far as possible with those of European Union countries in order to identify the specificities of Greece. The industrial labour world in Greece is characterized by a high rate of entrepreneurship, of non-salaried employment, of small-sized companies and auto entrepreneurs, of legal forms ensuring manager’s independence and of family “gendered” employment. In a second way, qualitative, we revisit the anthropological researches made in the Mediterranean Basin by Tillon and Bourdieu’s studies in Algeria, Campbell, Friedl and later by Tsoukalas, Avdela, Papastefanaki and many others in Greece, focusing on the deep determiners of economic behavior. They emphasize the central role of the family unit as the matrix of the industrial small company, shaping many industrial branches and especially building activity, as well as honour as the value which structures the relationship between enterprise and State and inspires entrepreneurship. The chapter discusses the co-existence and interplay between guild and non-guild labour in the central part of the Ottoman Balkans during the nineteenth century. In order to establish the main characteristics of labour within the guilds, it enquires into issues such as the regulation of craftsmen’s labour activities by the guilds and by the Ottoman state, the... |
| Related Links | https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/title/540812.pdf |
| DOI | 10.1515/9783110620528 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH |
| Publisher Date | 2020-11-23 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | History Crisis Labour Structures Workers Entrepreneurs Nineteenth Century Chapter |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Book |
