Housework and domestic service have become popular topics within the scholarly community. . . Van Raaphorst . . . adds to this growing literature by illuminating the efforts to organize domestics in the years from the Civil War to WWII. The book does much more than this however. It surveys the period from early colonization to the 1930s and divides the history of domestic service into four distinct chronological eras. . . . The author examines the psychology of housework and assesses the occupation from the perspectives of the employer and employee. Finally, she sketches the seemingly innumerable but inevitably fleeting attempts to better the lot of the domestic either through organization or unionization. "Choice"

"Union Maids Not Wanted" offers a comprehensive investigation of why the most populous group of the female workforce, domestic workers, was unable to establish long-lasting, powerful unions as have other groups of laborers. The author chronicles the number of colorful yet failed attempts at organization throughout the period of 1870-1940, analyzing the factors which worked together to prevent successful unionization. She systematically examines the psychology and nature of domestic work, union rejection of domestic laborers, employers' opposition to organization, and the frequent disagreements among the domestics themselves. Finally, she demonstrates how these factors affected the orientation of domestic workers to the organized labor movement as a whole and as a force within their own ranks.

This Workshop was organized to assess the status of knowledge on the behaviour of phosphorus in sediments and to define gaps and reassess research strategies, particularly with respect to prevalent methodology and future approach; and to define gaps and reassess research strategies for water management measures in aquatic ecosystems, especially in relation to the release of phosphorus from the sediments and its impact on the functioning of the whole system.

"La Vie de Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Rousseau", redigee au printemps 1738 mais dont la virulence excluait la publication, est la biographie tendancieuse d'un ennemi jure. L'un des multiples chefs d'accusation contre Rousseau etait son arrivisme. Voltaire traite du meme theme a la fin de l'annee sur un registre bien plus gai: la comedie des "Originaux", dans laquelle un soi-disant aristocrate est entoure de personnages tous plus excentriques les uns que les autres, s'inspire du theatre de la Restauration anglaise pour neutraliser la vogue de la comedie sentimentale. "Sur Messieurs Jean Law, Melon, et Dutot" revele l'interet de Voltaire pour l'economie. Rendant compte des ecrits de Melon, autrefois secretaire du celebre financier Law, et de ceux de Dutot, employe de la Compagnie des Indes, Voltaire note d'un ton approbateur que 'jamais les belles-lettres n'ont ete si liees avec la finance'. "De la gloire, ou entretien avec un Chinois", ou figure un Chinois negociant et lettre, reitere que la litterature et les affaires sont 'deux choses qui ne devraient point du tout etre incompatibles', et emploie le regard de l'etranger pour remettre en question la conception euro-centrique de l'histoire et de la religion.

This book explores the social dynamics of the interaction between inspectors and their inspectees in the public sector. Government inspectors have a crucial role in enforcing rules and standards. The role of inspectors has changed. Their task is no longer to merely inspect and enforce, but also to educate, to negotiate, and to make compromises. Their decisions come about as a result of an interaction with inspectees: Do I punish or do I let go? Do I negotiate or do I issue a fine? Do I believe what this inspectee is telling me? Using insights from public administration, regulation and sociology, this book looks at the daily work of a diverse group of inspectors such as tax inspectors, veterinary inspectors, school inspectors, environmental inspectors or health inspectors.