Editors: Dalia BÁTHORY, Ștefan BOSOMITU, Luciana JINGA

Work and workplace have had a multitude of functions and interpretations along the 20th century: cultural, political, economic, philosophic. They have been among the most important drives for change, both political and behavioral. They have stirred solidarity actions, artistic reactions, and profound changes in the interpretations of social rights. They have provided place and context for horizontal cooperation in the people’s fight for their rights. Workers experienced upward social mobility, exchanging work in agriculture with work in industry, or by promotion within industrial workplaces. New educational opportunities have been made available.

But they were used as pretext for power abuse as well, providing a dictatorial and many times a totalitarian framework within which labor camps were legitimate exploitation tools and political opinion made a good case for imprisonment. Forced industrialization, bringing along forced modernization, distorted old habits and disrupted the “old course of life”, while land expropriation and collectivization, and projects of urbanization of rural areas left people dreading and in distress.

The current call for papers seeks new, transnational, methodologically innovative perspectives on labor and workers, stressing on the transformations work and work relations have undergone during the 20th century.

Editors welcome contributions from all related fields of research: contemporary history, political science, sociology, gender studies, philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, etc.