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Contested Domains

Debates in International Labour Studies

Robin Cohen author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:1st Dec '23

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Contested Domains cover

Originally published in 1991, this volume discusses the urban working class, international migrants and the so-called lumpenproletariat. The book exhibits the fruitful interaction that has taken place between sociological theory, new views of the changing world economy and the empirical realities of working class experience and struggles. The dual theme of the book is the control which the state and employers seek to impose and maintain over labouring people, and the resistance put up by workers to these often new and unacceptable disciplines. With case studies – both historical and contemporary – drawn from North America, Britain and various parts of Africa, the author develops an interlocking theory of habituation and resistance. Against the background of profound changes in the global economy, Robin Cohen explores ways in which labouring people respond to the structural and managerial constrains on the development of their class consciousness and self-organisation.
This will be of interest to urban and industrial sociologists, as well as those concerned with comparative social theory and the relationship between developing world and industrialised societies.

Review of the original edition of Contested Domains:

‘Warwick is today what the LSE was in the thirties: the main English-speaking centre of applied labour movement academic activity…Robin Cohen’s wonderfully stimulating collection of essays is a fine example of the Warwick tradition.’ Dennis MacshaneThe Tribune, April 1982

'Thoroughly demanding as is the best of British scholarship...Refreshingly original, it is also soundly grounded in the classics. It merits a close reading form all intrigued by the evolving international division of labour, especially those who hear, as does Cohen, in the often 'hesitant and uncertain' voice of working people an 'intimation of an alternative future.''Arthur B. Shostak, Labour Studies Journal, 20 (4) 1996.

'South Africa also gives clear proof of Cohen's arguments that the working class in the Third World is capable of going well beyond 'economistic' struggles. Alan Gilbert,Workers' Liberty, 16, 2011.

ISBN: 9781032651415

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 770g

200 pages