Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations

Due to the increasing linkage of global production sites, the concept of commodity chains has become indispensable for the investigation of production at a global scale. Although work is the basis of production in every involved location, it is often being neglected as a research subject without taking interest in the workers, the work processes and the working conditions. This edited volume provides a collection of historical and contemporary commodity chain studies by placing labor at the centre of analysis. A global historical perspective demonstrates that splitting production processes to different, hierarchically connected locations are by no means new phenomena. The book is thus an important and valuable contribution to commodity chain research, but also to the fields of social-economic and global labour history.

Contributors are: András Pinkasz, Andrea Komlosy, Christin Bernhold, Ernst Langthaler, Franziska Ollendorf, Goran Music, Jan Grumiller, Johanna Sittel, Jörg Nowak, Karin Fischer, Klemens Kaps, Miroslav Lacko, Santosh Hasnu, Stefan Schmalz, Tamás Gerőcs, Tibor T. Meszmann, and Uwe Spiekermann.

Andrea Komlosy, Ph.D. (1984), University of Vienna, is a professor at the Department for Economic and Social History, University of Vienna, where she is one of the Global History and Global Studies program coordinators. She has published widely on work and labor, migration, borders and uneven development.

Goran Music, Ph.D. (2016), European University Institute, is a postdoctoral associated researcher at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz. His fields of interest include global labor history, the comparative history of workers under state socialism, and the everyday history of socialist Yugoslavia.