Labor geography and labor history: insights and outcomes from a decade of cross-disciplinary dialogue

Abstract

An enhanced dialogue between history and geography concerning the study of labor relations offers prospects for deeper insights and richer explanatory capacity in academic scholarship. Similar interdisciplinary activity linking labor geography and studies of labor relations has been underway for some time. In this paper, we identify problems that arise when geography remains implicit in the study of labor history. Building on work already conducted which synthesizes labor geography and labor relations, we outline what can be gained from a more explicit engagement between labor history and labor geography. We argue that the three disciplines – labor history, labor geography and labor relations – can work together in ways that are productive for all to enhance understanding of the social relations of the world of work. Finally, we detail some of the essays in a recently published collection – The Handbook of Employment and Society: Working Space – that was designed to bring geographers and labor relations scholars into closer dialogue and suggest that this might serve as a model for a closer dialogue between historians and geographers.

Notes

1. For example, Castree et al., Spaces of Work; Herod, Organizing the Landscape; Herod, Labor Geographies; Peck, Work-Place.

2. For example, Gregory and Urry, Social Relations and Spatial Structures; Harvey, Limits to Capital; Massey, Spatial Divisions of Labour; Morgan and Sayer, Microcircuits of Capital; Peet, International Capitalism and Industrial Restructuring; Scott and Storper, Production, Work, Territory; Storper and Walker, Capitalist Imperative.

3. McGrath-Champ, Herod, and Rainnie, Handbook of Employment and Society.

4. Webb and Webb, Industrial Democracy; Webb and Webb, History of Trade Unionism; Commons, ‘American Shoemakers’.

5. Massey, Power-Geometries.

6. Herod and Wright, ‘Placing Scale’.

7. McGrath-Champ, Herod, and Rainnie, Handbook of Employment and Society, 1–16.

8. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class.

9. Ellem and Shields, ‘Rethinking “Regional Industrial Relations”’; McGrath-Champ, ‘Back to the Map?’.

10. Freeman, ‘Workers, Suburbs, and Labor Geography’, 3.

11. Freeman, ‘Workers, Suburbs, and Labor Geography’, 5.

12. Wills, ‘Space, Place, and Tradition’.

13. Beynon and Hudson, ‘Place and Space in Contemporary Europe’, 182.

14. Quoted in Peck, Work-Place, 15.

15. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 52; also Jonas, ‘Local Labour Control Regimes’.

16. See among others Eklund, ‘“Intelligently-Directed Welfare Work”?’.

17. See, respectively: Benson and Hince, ‘Regional Industrial Relations Systems’; Hince, Conflict and Coal; Walker, Australian Industrial Relations Systems; Sykes, ‘Mount Isa Affair’; Dufty, Industrial Relations. For a fuller critique of such approaches, see Ellem and Shields, ‘Rethinking “Regional Industrial Relations”’.

18. Cohen, Making a New Deal; Cowie, Capital Moves; Gilbert, Perfect Cities; Mosher, Capital's Utopia; Freeman, Working-Class New York.

19. We might add that in many such studies history was viewed in much the same manner as geography, as little more than a backdrop.

20. For an overview of scale, see Herod and Wright, ‘Placing Scale’.

21. Ellem and Shields, ‘Rethinking “Regional Industrial Relations”’ on Peck, Work-Place.

22. Herod and Wright, ‘Placing Scale’.

23. Webb and Webb, Industrial Democracy; Webb and Webb, History of Trade Unionism; Commons, ‘American Shoemakers’.

24. For an attempt to re-read Australian labor in this way, see Cooper and Ellem, ‘Union Power’; see also Herod in this volume and also Herod, ‘Labor's Spatial Praxis’.

25. Dufty, Industrial Relations; Hince, Conflict and Coal; Sykes, ‘Mount Isa Affair’.

26. All the mines discussed below export their ore and are owned by multinational corporations.

27. For a fuller analysis, see Ellem, ‘Contested Communities’.

28. Savage, ‘Geographies of Organizing’; Walsh, ‘Labour Regulation in the United States’.

29. Ellem, ‘Scaling Labour’, 371.

30. Ellem and Shields, ‘Placing Peak Union Purpose’; Ellem and Shields, ‘Making the “Gibraltar of Unionism”’.

31. Markey and Nixon, ‘Peak Unionism in the Illawarra’; Markey and Wells, ‘Labour Movement in Wollongong’.

32. Ellem, ‘Contested Communities’.

33. Massey, Spatial Divisions of Labour.

34. Bray and Waring, ‘Rhetoric and Reality’; MacDonald and Rimmer, ‘Award Structure and the Second Tier’; Rimmer, ‘Workplace Relations Act 1996’.

35. For scale, see McGrath-Champ, ‘Back to the Map?’; for the challenge to workers, McGrath-Champ, ‘Enterprise Bargaining and Regional Prospects’.

36. McGrath-Champ, ‘Back to the Map?’.

37. Five of those cities account for 60% of the population and 90% of Australia's wage and salary earners are located in ‘Major Cities’ and ‘Inner Regional Areas’: ABS, Characteristics of Wage and Salary Earners.

38. McGrath-Champ, Herod, and Rainnie, Handbook of Employment and Society, 76.

39. Lambert and Gillan, ‘Working Space and the New Internationalism’; Pun and Smith, ‘Dormitory Labour Regimes’; Mohammad, ‘Gender, Space’.

40. Bailey, ‘Blue Singlets and Broccoli’; Eklund, ‘“Place” of Politics’; Taksa, ‘Like a Bicycle’.

41. Castree et al., Spaces of Work.

42. Kelly, ‘Filipino Migration’.

43. Jessop, ‘Globalization and the State’.

44. Berndt, ‘Methodological Nationalism and Territorial Capitalism’; Garza, ‘New Economic Model’.

45. Freeman, ‘Workers, Suburbs, and Labor Geography’, 6.

46. Patmore, ‘Time and Work’.