Papers by Silke Neunsinger
BRILL eBooks, Jun 28, 2017
BRILL eBooks, Jun 28, 2017
Cover illustration: Left (women in shop with shopping carts): Shop interior with instructions abo... more Cover illustration: Left (women in shop with shopping carts): Shop interior with instructions about selfservice, Sweden 1948. The text on the poster reads: "Take a basket or a trolley. Help yourself to what you want. Pay at the exit." Right (man below flags): kf exhibition "Without Borders", organized in conjunction with the ica congress in Stockholm, 1957. Both images are used with kind permission by the Swedish Labour Movement's Archive and Library (Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek).
Palgrave studies in the history of social movements, 2023
On Saturdaythe 3rd of May1969, in the speaker'scorner of the Amsterdam Vondelpark,apeculiarg athe... more On Saturdaythe 3rd of May1969, in the speaker'scorner of the Amsterdam Vondelpark,apeculiarg athering took place. Some two hundred students from schools in Amsterdam listened to as peech by the young teacher of Dutch languagea nd literature Piet Calis. The youngsters had convened because of a pamphlet thatd eclaredt he final examsi ns chools to be an infringement of the LawonG ambling,n amely because the exam wasbasedo ncompletelyarbitrary criteria, giving its passers an unfair advantage towardearning alargersalary.Worse, one could onlyp ass the exam by acceptingt he current social selection system which discouraged critical thinking, social empathya nd creativity. Subsequently,t he youngsters marched with Calis to the Prinsengracht,t o lodge their complaint at the Palace of Justice. Soon afterwards, the Kritiese Leraren (Critical Teachers, written in the new spelling of 1960sa ction movements) presented themselvesa samovements et to radicallyd emocratize the school system. Not onlyd id they see it as riddled with authoritarian teachers replicating ac apitalist society,b ut they also denounced, in the words of progressive educator S. Goedemoed, that "politics in the classroom is taboo, just like sexual education. It'sl ike everyone'sa fraid that the Americanp oliciesi nV ietnam will be denounced, or that Mao Zedong will be glorified, that the school will foster leftist sympathies…"¹ Andi ndeed, progressive teachers brought the global struggles of the Third World to the classroom. International solidarity provides afresh perspective on the historiographyof the radical schoolm ovement of the 1960s, inspired by the student movement and radicalizedm odern pedagogicalm ovements, from Montessori to Jenaplan.² Most attention in the literature, which generallyi gnores notice of the Critical Teachers movement,i su suallyg iven to the movement'sa nti-authoritarian features,libertarian sexual morals, and provocative rhetoric, describingitaseither
The Internationalisation of the Labour Question, 2020
This chapter traces the history of the debate on equal remuneration in India from the colonial pe... more This chapter traces the history of the debate on equal remuneration in India from the colonial period, and then analyses the interaction between the government of India, the International Labour Organization and workers’ and women’s organisations in the quest for gender parity in remuneration during the course of the twentieth century. It contributes to our understanding of the role of global concepts for workers in multiple ways. First, it sheds light on the intersections of different scales, the local, the national and the international, and brings out how advances in global norms and international political opportunity structures can be used by national actors. Second, it shows that, despite the limited achievement of equal remuneration for men and women, the concept has been used in a broader sense to demand equal remuneration for the same or similar work independent of gender. In this sense, the struggle of women’s movements and worker’s organisations has provided a tool applicable to other forms of wage discrimination and has, in fact, been used in the broader struggle for wage justice.
Scandinavian Economic History Review
This article deals with the recent developments of labour history in and about the Nordic countri... more This article deals with the recent developments of labour history in and about the Nordic countries. We identify patterns, problems and possibilities in these recent developments in the field – roughly within the last two decades. Our main source of analysis is the research presented and exchanged in the Nordic labour history journals, the Nordic Labour History Network, the labour history associations, the archives and libraries. We relate current trends to developments in European and Global labour history. We claim that the revival and expansion of Nordic labour history must also be understood through its exchange with labour history outside the Nordic sphere and with other disciplines and research fields. The expansion of the field occurred through increased attention and sensitivity to the specificities of various forms of labour, the lived lives of those who work, the places in which work takes place, the various ways in which workers form collective practices and structures, and how they understand themselves in relation to as well as within and outside the parties and institutions that organise and claim to represent workers and labour interests.
Studies in Global Social History; (2021), Nov 1, 2021
A Global History of Consumer Co-operation since 1850, 2017
Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers, 2015
that is ultimately highly personal" (p. 193), the themes that emerged, underpinning her understan... more that is ultimately highly personal" (p. 193), the themes that emerged, underpinning her understanding of criminal organization and confederacy, were: expanding print culture; the interactions between the public and the publicity of crime; and the evolution of networks and territory. What the book offers is a series of "snapshots, moments and episodes in the making of the modern underworld" (p. 193), an underworld that does not exist, but is constructed, and whose discursive power acts as a shorthand for commentators who sought "to describe the worlds of the criminal, deviant and the poor, and to keep them at arm's length" (p. 195). This, then, is a very interesting book, drawing on the digitization of the Old Bailey records and other archival and published sources. At times, its arguments seem somewhat elusive, and the emphasis on print culture, criminal networks, and criminal territory slightly repetitive. Some sections offer empirical narratives that are overly detailed, and there is no sustained exploration of the "criminal class". While Shore employs a long time-frame, whether the events of the 1720s or the 1920s were a case of a break from the past, or of continuity, remains unclear. And as the author is the first to admit, the book relies heavily on the records of the Old Bailey, so we hear much less about the experience of other cities. Nevertheless, the basic premise of the bookthat the underworld was both a cultural and a social constructis an appropriate one, and the case study approach offers one way of revealing its overlapping communities. While actual levels of crime in working-class neighbourhoods are not reconstructed here, and probably cannot be, this book goes far towards mapping the changing contours of London's criminal underworlds.
This chapter traces the history of the debate on equal remuneration in India from the colonial pe... more This chapter traces the history of the debate on equal remuneration in India from the colonial period, and then analyses the interaction between the government of India, the International Labour Organization and workers’ and women’s organisations in the quest for gender parity in remuneration during the course of the twentieth century. It contributes to our understanding of the role of global concepts for workers in multiple ways. First, it sheds light on the intersections of different scales, the local, the national and the international, and brings out how advances in global norms and international political opportunity structures can be used by national actors. Second, it shows that, despite the limited achievement of equal remuneration for men and women, the concept has been used in a broader sense to demand equal remuneration for the same or similar work independent of gender. In this sense, the struggle of women’s movements and worker’s organisations has provided a tool applic...
Feminina finanser : Om finansieringens betydelse for svensk kvinnororelses verksamhet pa 1920-talet
In 1939 a law was passed in Sweden which forbade employers to dismiss female employees because of... more In 1939 a law was passed in Sweden which forbade employers to dismiss female employees because of marriage or pregnancy. In Germany a law had been introduced already in 1932, which gave employers the right to dismiss a woman when she married. It also gave women right to end their employment for the same reason. The political decisions behind these legal changes were in both cases the result of an extended debate on the right of employment of married women. This debate occurred in most industrialised European countries in the interwar period.The increasing participation of women on the labour market was by some groups interpreted as a cause of mass unemployment. Economic crisis contributed to a crisis of masculinity, which then led to attacks on the rights of married women to paid employment. In Sweden there was a state commission set up in 1936 with the task of investigating women’s employment. This commission, kvinnoarbetskommitten, managed to demonstrate that dismissing women woul...
Historisk Tidsskrift, 2013
Review of Elisabeth D. Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in... more Review of Elisabeth D. Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Post-War Germany
The Routledge Companion to the History of Retailing, 2018
"Jag skulle sa garna vilja gifta mig om jag hade nage pa fotterna! Nagra tankar kring alder,... more "Jag skulle sa garna vilja gifta mig om jag hade nage pa fotterna! Nagra tankar kring alder, civilstand och genus
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Papers by Silke Neunsinger