Labour in the Long Nineteenth Century

The study of labour in the long nineteenth century has enjoyed a rich critical history, guided by the twentieth century’s New Left focus on class formation and experience, and extended by recent scholarship which has diversified traditional and non-traditional categorisations of ‘labour’ . Scholars working within the postcolonial and ecocritical ‘turn’ have called for a re-imagining of the structures of labour, resource consumption, and value production, looking to the nineteenth century for its complexly-interwoven transfers of labour value across domestic and imperial boundaries. This issue of the Journal seeks to question the thinking by which we identify forms of labour in the first place: who, both in the nineteenth century and now, is allowed to decide what counts as labour? Which voices of the long nineteenth century emerge if we diversify our definition(s) of labour? And, how can the scholarship of labour – or the labour of scholarship – help us navigate the nature, purpose, and value of labour in a mid- and post-Covid era?