Micro-Spatial Histories of Labour: Towards a New Global History

Abstract

Is it possible to bring global- and micro-history into a productive engagement? If so, which streams in these sub-disciplines might be relevant or open to such an interaction? What might be the theoretical and methodological implications of such an engagement? These questions present the central concern of this introductory essay: to identify the significant opportunities that arise from bringing together global history and micro-history. This chapter begins by (re-)defining ‘global’ and ‘micro’ from the perspective of their interaction. It then moves to an exploration of how the perspective of micro-spatial history relates to periodisation and conceptualisations of time. The final section addresses the potential of micro-spatial history for labour studies in particular. We close by framing this approach as an alternative perspective on global history.

Draft versions of this article were discussed during the session on ‘Translocal- and micro-histories of global labour’ at the European Social Science History Conference 2014 (Vienna, 25 April 2014), at the Cosmopolis seminar (Leiden, 13 October 2014) and at the writing workshop held at Warwick on 23–24 January 2015. For their insightful feedback, we would like to thank all participants, together with the following colleagues (in random order): Simona Cerutti, Juliane Schiel, István M. Szijártó, Andrea Caracausi, Lara Putnam, Franco Ramella, Jos Gommans, Tom Cunningham, Valentina Favaró, Henrique Espada Lima, Evelien de Hoop, Eloisa Betti, Sigurđur Gylfi Magnússon, Piero Brunello, Jesús Agua de la Roza, Michele Nani, Lorenzo D’Angelo. Many thanks to Emma Battell Lowman for her excellent work as copy-editor.