Coercion and Wage Labour : Exploring Work Relations Through History and Art

Novel histories of people who experienced physical, social, political, or cultural compulsion in the course of paid work.

Broad in scope, Coercion and Wage Labour examines diverse areas of work including textile production, war industries, civil service, and domestic labor, in contexts from the Middle Ages to the present day. This book demonstrates that wages have consistently shaped working people’s experiences and failed to protect workers from coercion. Instead, wages emerge as versatile tools to bind, control, and exploit workers. Remuneration mirrors the distribution of power in labor relations, often separating employers physically and emotionally from their employees and disguising coercion.

The book makes historical narratives accessible to interdisciplinary audiences. Most chapters are preceded by illustrations by artists invited to visually conceptualize the book’s key messages and to emphasize the presence of the body and landscape in the realm of work. In turn, the chapter texts reflect back on the artworks, creating an intense intermedial dialogue that offers mutually relational “translations” and narrations of labor coercion. Other contributions written by art scholars discuss how coercion in remunerated labor is constructed and reflected in artistic practice. The collection serves as an innovative and creative tool for teaching and raises awareness that narrating history is always contingent on the medium chosen and its inherent constraints and possibilities.