Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn't. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn't. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

Explores the variety of legal and regulatory regimes that existed in Western Europe to control labour and how workers experienced those controls. Many economic historians have assumed that labour in Western Europe was 'free' after the end of serfdom in the fifteenth century. These assumptions are increasingly being questioned and labour laws have been identified as creating significant restrictions on workers' freedom. This collection is the first book to look at labour laws across Western Europe from a longer-term perspective. It is interdisciplinary in nature bringing together studies in social, political, economic and legal history. Elements of labour legislation appeared before the Black Death, but were strengthened afterwards particularly in places and periods where labour became scarce. The collection focuses on the rural economy in the late medieval and early modern period. It provides a series of studies which introduce a range of approaches to labour regulation and the very idea of labour across Europe. Uniquely, the collection offers observations on the impact of labour laws on everyday social relations. Attempts to regulate work and labour varied widely: in places they amounted to wishful thinking on the part of the regional authorities, whereas elsewhere they could impose severe limitations on individual freedoms. Contributors: Davide Cristoferi, Theresa Johnsson, Thijs Lambrecht, Charmian Mansell, Francine Michaud, Hanne Østhus, Raffaella Sarti, Carolina Uppenberg and Jane Whittle.

This is the first book to survey the experience of servants in rural Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. This is the first book to survey the experience of servants in rural Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Live-in servants were a distinctive element of early modern society. They were typically young adults aged between 16 and 24 who lived and worked in other people's households before marriage. Servants tended to be employed for long periods, several months to years at a time, and were paid with food and lodging as well as cash wages. Both women and men worked as servants in large numbers. Unlike domestic servants in towns and wealthy households, rural servants typically worked on farms and were an important element of the agricultural workforce. Historians have viewed service as a distinct life-cycle stage between childhood and marriage. It brought both freedom and servility for young people. It allowed them to leave home and earn a living before marriage, whilst learning a range of agricultural and craft skills which reduced their dependence on their parents and increased their choice in marriage partners. Still, servants had limited rights: they were under the authority of their employer, with a similar legal status to children. In many countries the employment of servants was tightly controlled by law. Servants could demand their wages, and leave when the contract ended, but had to work long hours and had little say in their work tasksduring employment. While some servants effectively became family members, trusted and cared for, others were abused physically and sexually by their employers. This collection features a range of methodologies, reflecting the variety of source materials and approaches available to historians of this topic in a range of European countries and time periods. Nonetheless, it demonstrates the strong common themes that emerge from studying servants and will be of particular interest to historians of work, gender, the family, agriculture, economic development, youth and social structure. JANE WHITTLE is Professor of Rural History at the University of Exeter. Contributors: CHRISTINE FERTIG, JEREMY HAYHOE, SARAH HOLLAND, THIJS LAMBRECHT, CHARMIAN MANSELL, HANNE OSTHUS, RICHARD PAPING, CRISTINA PRYTZ, RAFFAELLA SARTI, CAROLINA UPPENBERG, LIES VERVAET, JANE WHITTLE