Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Quetier, Jean, Le travail de parti de Marx: intervenir dans les organisations ouvrieres. (La philosophie a l'oeuvre) 315 p. 2023:7 (Ed. de la Sorbonne, FR) <709-85>
ISBN 979-10-351-0883-0 paper ¥6,077.- (税込) EUR 25.00

Bravi, Cecilia Maria / Locatelli, A. M. (eds.), Christian Democracy and Labour after World War II. (Travail et Societe / Work and Society 87) 350 pp. 2023 (P. Lang, SZ) <709-794>
ISBN 978-2-87574-596-5 paper ¥16,755.- (税込) SFR 68.00 *

Labour is an essential feature of economic development and social change in industrialised Western countries. Yet economic and social theory as well as historical research have been underestimating its role. This volume discusses the labour vision developed by Christian Democratic-oriented parties and associations in the second half of XXI Century, in relation to the democratic and republican choice and ? at the same time ? capitalistic development. For a long time, Christian Democrats ruled in Western European countries, managing different choices and making policies for the labour market and the defence of workers’ rights. In addition, Christian churches paid increasing attention to social questions. The essays also emphasise the leading role of civil society (associations, movements and trade unions) in supporting labour policies. Hence, the historical readings collected here offer the opportunity to understand convergences but also differences among the experiences.

Joseph, Gillian, Home-based Work in Victorian Britain: Insights for Contemporary Occupational Health and Safety. 112 pp. 2023:12 (Routledge, UK) <709-1405>
ISBN 978-1-03-211017-2 hard ¥38,907.- (税込) GB￡ 135.00 *

Home- based work has increased in recent decades and intensified as a result of policies created to control the spread of COVID-19, creating a labour market in rapid transition. Yet little attention has been paid to the issues associated with occupational health and safety or to how employers will monitor and maintain employee health and safety in a home- based work environment. Using historical case studies from Victorian Britain, this book reflects on the past to examine resurfacing health and safety concerns that shaped, and continue to shape, the home- based working experience.Anchored by family research case studies, this book presents documents and newspaper accounts about the diverse experiences of three real people who lived and worked from their homes in the Victorian era. Supported by academic and popular literature on work and policy about the era, the book discusses changing worldviews and social context that shaped occupational health and safety at the time and critiques the outcomes of policies that were challenged to address these risks. The case study experiences are used as a touchstone between the past and present to draw parallels between important health and safety concerns that may be resurfacing in our modern post-COVID transition to home-based work. This book will be a valuable resource for researchers, academics and postgraduate students of occupational health and safety, occupational science, labour history and human resource management, as well as Victorian studies. It will also be of interest to policymakers and practitioners working across the fields of workplace and occupational health and safety.

McCulloch, Michael, Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers' Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit. (Urban Life, Landscape and Policy) 240 pp. 2023 (Temple U. Pr., US) <709-1407>
ISBN 978-1-4399-2391-7 hard ¥24,796.- (税込) US$ 110.50 *
ISBN 978-1-4399-2392-4 paper ¥7,841.- (税込) US$ 34.95 *

The dream of the modern worker's house emerged in early twentieth-century America as wage earners gained access to new, larger, and better-equipped dwellings. Building a Social Contract is a cogent history of the houses those workers dreamed of and labored for. Michael McCulloch chronicles the efforts of employers, government agencies, and the building industry who, along with workers themselves, produced an unprecedented boom in housing construction that peaked in the mid-1920s. Through oral histories, letters, photographs, and period fiction, McCulloch traces wage earners' agency in negotiating a new implicit social contract, one that rewarded hard work with upward mobility in modern houses. This promise reflected workers' increased bargaining power but, at the same time, left them increasingly vulnerable to layoffs.Building a Social Contract focuses on Detroit, the quintessential city of the era, where migrant workers came and were Americanized, and real estate agents and the speculative housebuilding industry thrived. The Motor City epitomized the struggle of Black workers in this period, who sought better lives through industrial labor but struggled to translate their wages into housing security amid racist segregation and violence. When Depression-era unemployment created an eviction crisis, the social contract unraveled, and workers rose up-at the polls and in the streets-to create a labor movement that reshaped American capitalism for decades. Today, the lessons McCulloch provides from early twentieth-century Detroit are a necessary reminder that wages are not enough, and only working-class political power can secure affordable housing.