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Labour

Module description

Labour and its organisation are central to the economy and to society. The way we work is also crucial to identity, gender difference, social mobility and freedom. This module investigates the nature of labour from the medieval period to the late twentieth century in Britain and elsewhere. It provides a framework to compare and contrast the role of labour in economic development, in the presence/lack of personal freedom, in social mobility (wealth, class, status) and migration, in ideas about ‘race’ and ethnicity, and in gender roles. It examines many forms labour including slavery, indenture, serfdom, service, and wage labour.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This ‘Concepts’ module requires you to engage with historical ideas and theories relating to labour and the history of work that are applicable across time and space.  You will be encouraged to think beyond the detail of your Special Subjects and Dissertations, using a range of illustrative case studies to examine broader ideas.  You will have to consider how ideas and concepts about labour and work vary, develop, or manifest consistently in different time periods and places, and why they are constructed as they are. What can this tell us about past peoples and societies, and what are the implications for the world in which we now live?

All History ‘Concepts’ modules are partly project-based, requiring you to take the initiative.  In the first half of term, a team of tutors will introduce themes, concepts, and ideas, setting you up for the rest of the module.  The second half of term is student-led: you will work in groups to develop your understanding of labour and work and lead a seminar to teach fellow students more about labour and work through a series of case-studies. 

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Analyse and explain key developments in the histories of labour across different historical time-periods and geographical regions
• 2. Evaluate carefully and critically the approaches that historians and scholars working in other disciplines have taken to the concept of labour
• 3. Define suitable research topics for independent study/student-led seminars on the history of labour

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Analyse the key developments in complex and unfamiliar political, social, cultural or intellectual environments
• 5. Evaluate different and complex types of historical source and historiography.
• 6. Present work in the format expected of historians, including footnoting and bibliographical references.
• 7. Identify and deploy correct terminology in a comprehensible and sophisticated manner
• 8. Evaluate critically different approaches to history in a contested area

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 9. Work both in a team and independently in order to prepare and lead a seminar
• 10. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment.

Syllabus plan

While content may vary from year to year, it is anticipated that the module may cover some or all of the following: medieval slavery and serfdom, the development of wage labour, labour laws, productive and reproductive labour, the gender division of labour, women’s work, servants, slavery in the New World – development and abolition, racial capitalism, wage labour and poverty, job quality, emotional labour, work and social mobility.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

The re-assessment consists of a 3000-word Written Assignment, as in the original assessment, but replaces leading a student-led seminar with recordings and supporting materials that correspond to one student’s contribution to such a seminar. The introduction should outline the student’s understanding of the topic; the longer recording should explain how the seminar would be structured and organised, as well as detailing the material to be used. This will enable the marker to gain a sense of what the student’s understanding of their concept and its specific application in the seminar, what the student intended to do in the seminar, and the rationale for this activity, as well as enabling them to assess the student’s oral seminar-leading skills.

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Bush, M. L. ed., Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage (London: Longman, 1996).
• Hochschild, A., The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling (1983)
• Jenkins, D., and Leroy, J (eds.), Histories of Racial Capitalism (New York: Columbia U. P., 2021).
• Komlosy, A., Work: The Last 1000 Years (London: Verso, 2018)
• Newman, S. P., A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
• Patterson, O., Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1992).
• Rio, A., Slavery after Rome 500-1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
• Steinfeld, R. J., The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
• Suryani, A., Indentured Servitude: Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021).
• Whittle, J., ed., Servants in Rural Europe 1400-1900 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017).
• Whittle, J., ‘A critique of approaches to “domestic work”: women, work and the preindustrial economy’, Past and Present 243 (2019), pp. 35-70.
• Worth, E., and Paterson, L., ‘“How is she going to manage with the children?”: organizational labour, working and mothering in Britain, c.1960-1990’, Past and Present, 246 (2020), pp.318-43.

Key words search

Labour, Work, Slavery, Gender, Class