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In the eighteenth century, French women were active in a wide range of employments-from printmaking to running whole-sale businesses-although social and legal structures frequently limited their capacity to work independently. The contributors to Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France reveal how women at all levels of society negotiated these structures with determination and ingenuity in order to provide for themselves and their families. Recent historiography on women and work in eighteenth-century France has focused on the model of the "family economy," in which women's work existed as part of the communal effort to keep the family afloat, usually in support of the patriarch's occupation. The ten essays in this volume offer case studies that complicate the conventional model: wives of ship captains managed family businesses in their husbands' extended absences; high-end prostitutes managed their own households; female weavers, tailors, and merchants increasingly appeared on eighteenth-century tax rolls and guild membership lists; and female members of the nobility possessed and wielded the same legal power as their male counterparts. Examining female workers within and outside of the context of family, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France challenges current scholarly assumptions about gender and labor. This stimulating and important collection of essays broadens our understanding of the diversity, vitality, and crucial importance of women's work in the eighteenth-century economy.
This clearly written and deeply informed book explores the nature and meaning of work in early modern France. Distinguished historian James R. Farr considers the relationship between material life—specifically the work activities of both men and women—and the culture in which these activities were embedded. This culture, he argues, helped shape the nature of work, invested it with meaning, and fashioned the identities of people across the social spectrum. Farr vividly traces the daily lives of peasants, common laborers, domestic servants, prostitutes, street vendors, craftsmen and -women, merchants, men of the law, medical practitioners, and government officials. Work was recognized and valued as a means to earn a living, but it held a greater significance as a cultural marker of honor, identity, and status. Constants and continuities in work activities and their cultural aspects shared space with changes that were so profound and sweeping that France would be forever transformed. The author focuses on three salient, interconnected, and at times conflicting developments: the extension and integration of the market economy, the growth of the state's functions and governing apparatus, and the intensification of social hierarchy. Presenting a unified and compelling argument about the role of labor in society, Farr addresses a complex set of questions and succeeds masterfully at answering them. With its stylish writing and clear themes, this book will find a broad audience among students and scholars of early modern Europe, French history, economics, gender studies, anthropology, and labor studies.
In France, low wages have historically inspired tremendous political controversy. The social and political issues at stake center on integrating the working class into society and maintaining the stability of the republican regime. A variety of federal policies—including high minimum wages and strong employee protection—serve to ensure that the low-wage workforce stays relatively small. Low-Wage Work in France examines both the benefits and drawbacks of this politically inspired system of worker protection. France's high minimum wage, which is indexed not only to inflation but also to the average increase in employee wages, plays a critical role in limiting the development of low-paid work. Social welfare benefits and a mandatory thirty-five hour work week also make life easier for low-wage workers. Strong employee protection is a central characteristic of the French model, but high levels of protection for employees may also be one of the causes of France's chronically high rate of unemployment. The threat of long-term unemployment may, in turn, contribute to a persistent sense of insecurity among French workers. Low-Wage Work in France provides a lucid analysis of how a highly regulated labor market shapes the experiences of workers—for better and for worse. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Case Studies of Job Quality in Advanced Economies
In France's Third Republic, secularism was, for its adherents, a new faith, a civic religion founded on a rabid belief in progress and the Enlightenment conviction that men (and women) could remake their world. And yet with all of its pragmatic smoothing over of the supernatural edges of Catholicism, the Third Republic engendered its own fantastical ways of seeing by embracing observation, corporeal dynamism, and imaginative introspection. How these republican ideals and the new national education system of the 1870s and 80s - the structure meant to impart these ideals - shaped belle époque popular culture is the focus of this book. The author reassesses the meaning of secularization and offers a cultural history of this period by way of an interrogation of several fraught episodes which, although seemingly disconnected, shared an attachment to the potent moral and aesthetic directives of French republicanism: a village's battle to secularize its schools, a scandalous novel, a vaudeville hit featuring a nude celebrity, and a craze for female boxing. Beginning with the writer and performer Colette (1873-1954) as a point of entry, this re-evaluation of belle époque popular culture probes the startling connections between republican values of labor and physical health on the one hand, and the cultural innovations of the decades preceding World War I on the other.
The Civil War in France is a pamphlet written by Karl Marx. It presents a convincing declaration of the General Council of the International, pertaining to the character and importance of the struggle of the Communards in the Paris Commune at the time.
In The Work of Art, Anthea Callen analyzes the self-portraits, portraits of fellow artists, photographs, prints, and studio images of prominent nineteenth-century French Impressionist painters, exploring the emergence of modern artistic identity and its relation to the idea of creative work. Landscape painting in general, she argues, and the “plein air” oil sketch in particular were the key drivers of change in artistic practice in the nineteenth century—leading to the Impressionist revolution. Putting the work of artists from Courbet and Cézanne to Pissaro under a microscope, Callen examines modes of self-representation and painting methods, paying particular attention to the painters’ touch and mark-making. Using innovative methods of analysis, she provides new and intriguing ways of understanding material practice within its historical moment and the cultural meanings it generates. Richly illustrated with 180 color and black-and-white images, The Work of Art offers fresh insights into the development of avant-garde French painting and the concept of the modern artist.
Eighteen scholars from both sides of the Atlantic look at the question of work across three centuries of French history. Representing both younger and older generations, they move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to consider human labor as it was actually performed and to determine what it has meant to specific groups and individuals at particular historical moments. This book proposes some fundamental revisions in the history of work which will have important implications for our understanding of social, political, economic, and cultural developments not only in France but throughout Europe.
Drawing on case studies from France, Germany, and China, this book argues that the dynamic interactions between time and autonomy have fundamentally reshaped the evolution of work. Jens Thoemmes details how time autonomy transitioned from early efforts to reduce working hours to today’s complex debates about managing work time. Initially focused on reclaiming time from employers during the nineteenth century, time autonomy has broadened to encompass how work integrates into overall social time. Beginning in the late 1960s, new tools like flexitime, time-savings accounts, and telecommuting began aligning employee aspirations with production demands, marking a shift towards more flexible work arrangements. Placing work environments from France, Germany, and China in comparative perspective, this book explores the way time autonomy varies in different workplaces and socioeconomic contexts as well as the conditions, opportunities, and risks involved.
About 27.5 million Americans—nearly 24 percent of the labor force—earn less than $8.70 an hour, not enough to keep a family of four out of poverty, even working full-time year-round. Job ladders for these workers have been dismantled, limiting their ability to get ahead in today's labor market. Low-Wage America is the most extensive study to date of how the choices employers make in response to economic globalization, industry deregulation, and advances in information technology affect the lives of tens of millions of workers at the bottom of the wage distribution. Based on data from hundreds of establishments in twenty-five industries—including manufacturing, telecommunications, hospitality, and health care—the case studies document how firms' responses to economic restructuring often results in harsh working conditions, reduced benefits, and fewer opportunities for advancement. For instance, increased pressure for profits in newly consolidated hotel chains has led to cost-cutting strategies such as requiring maids to increase the number of rooms they clean by 50 percent. Technological changes in the organization of call centers—the ultimate "disposable workplace"—have led to monitoring of operators' work performance, and eroded job ladders. Other chapters show how the temporary staffing industry has provided paths to better work for some, but to dead end jobs for many others; how new technology has reorganized work in the back offices of banks, raising skill requirements for workers; and how increased competition from abroad has forced U.S. manufacturers to cut costs by reducing wages and speeding production. Although employers' responses to economic pressures have had a generally negative effect on frontline workers, some employers manage to resist this trend and still compete successfully. The benefits to workers of multi-employer training consortia and the continuing relevance of unions offer important clues about what public policy can do to support the job prospects of this vast, but largely overlooked segment of the American workforce. Low-Wage America challenges us to a national self-examination about the nature of low-wage work in this country and asks whether we are willing to tolerate the profound social and economic consequences entailed by these jobs. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Case Studies of Job Quality in Advanced Economies