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Business, Economics & LawJune 2024The labour movement in Lebanon
Power on hold
by Lea Bou Khater
The labour movement in Lebanon: Power on hold narrates the history of the Lebanese labour movement from the early twentieth century to today. Bou Khater demonstrates that trade unionism in the country has largely been a failure, for reasons including state interference, tactical co-optation, and the strategic use of sectarianism by an oligarchic elite, together with the structural weakness of a service-based laissez-faire economy. Drawing on a vast body of Arabic-language primary sources and difficult-to-access archives, the book's conclusions are significant not only for trade unionism, but also for new forms of workers' organisations and social movements in Lebanon and beyond. The Lebanese case study presented here holds significant implications for the wider Arab world and for comparative studies of labour. This authoritative history of the labour movement in Lebanon is vital reading for scholars of trade unionism, Lebanese politics, and political economy.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2025Threads of labour
Tapestry of an ex-industrial community
by Lisa Taylor
Charting a collaborative art-based project using carpet-making skills and the industrial heritage of the region, the book investigates how a cleaved ex-industrial community used arts methodologies as a cohesion strategy. Drawing on images from the company's archives, the book mines the history of Firths Carpets Limited, a firm that carpeted interiors across the globe from the mid-1800s. Women's labour and tastes were business critical to the production and sale of Firths carpets. Drawing on the author's personal connection to the village, an ethnographic sensibility and novel research techniques, ex-worker responses to a village radically altered by ruination are explored. Ex-workers felt nostalgia for the dignity of work and a sense of homesickness in a village ghosted by industrial spectres of the past. Threads of Labour argues that left-behind deindustrialised places require acts of social re-making if their communities are to survive.
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Business, Economics & LawFebruary 2022The labour movement in Lebanon
by Lea Bou Khater, Simon Mabon
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Humanities & Social SciencesAugust 2018Labour united and divided from the 1830s to the present
by Yann Béliard, Emmanuelle Avril
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2020The modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979–97
by Christopher Massey
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2020The British political elite and Europe, 1959-1984
A higher loyalty
by Bob Nicholls
This book offers an original interpretation of Britain's relationship with Europe over a 25 year period: 1959-84 and advances the argument that the current problems over EU membership resulted from much earlier political machinations. This evidence based account of the seminal period analyses the applications for EEC membership, the 1975 referendum, and the role of the press. Was the British public misled over the true aims of the European project? How significant was the role of the press in changing public opinion from anti, to pro Common Market membership? Why, after over 40 years since Britain became a member of the European community, does the issue continue to deeply divide not only the political elite, but also the British public? These, and other pertinent questions are answered in this timely book on a subject that remains topical and highly controversial.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2026New Labour, new Britain
How the Blair governments reshaped the country
by Glen O’Hara
A bold and balanced re-appraisal of New Labour in power. Rewriting the story of New Labour, Glen O'Hara challenges the prevailing narrative to present a more balanced and positive assessment. New Labour, new Britain is the first book to examine both the intentions behind New Labour's domestic policies and their real-world effects, moving beyond the entrenched left-right debates that have dominated the party's legacy. The period from 1997 to 2007 marked a pivotal moment in modern British history, as New Labour sought to reshape Britain into a more cohesive and forward-thinking society. It saw the rise of socially liberal attitudes and flourishing public services under a government committed to rebuilding and investing in them. Yet New Labour's track record was far from flawless and its legacy remains complicated and contested. Through interviews with key players and rigorous archival research, O'Hara offers a new perspective on Tony Blair's years in power. Painting a fuller picture of New Labour's successes and challenges, he highlights its lasting impact on Britain and offers a thoughtful reassessment of its place in history.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2019Labour united and divided from the 1830s to the present
by Emmanuelle Avril, Yann Béliard
Spanning a period which stretches from the 19th century to the present day, this book takes a novel look at the British labour movement by examining the interaction between trade unions, the Labour Party, other parties and groups of the Left, and the wider working class, to highlight the dialectic nature of these relationships, marked by consensus and dissention. It shows that, although perceived as a source of weakness, those inner conflicts have also been a source of creative tension, at times generating significant breakthroughs. The book brings together labour historians and political scientists who provide a range of case studies as well as more wide-ranging assessments of recent trends in labour organising. It will therefore be of interest to academics and students of history and politics, as well as to practitioners, in the British Isles and beyond.
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2007Labour, the state, social movements and the challenge of neo-liberal globalisation
by Andrew Gamble, Steven Fielding, Steve Ludlam, John Callaghan, Andrew Taylor, Steve Ludlam, Stephen Wood
With the emergence of neo-liberalism in the 1980s as the dominant domestic and international political-economic orthodoxy, labour as both a social category and political movement tended to be written off or ignored by academics, politicians and commentators. However, at a time when the world's working class is growing faster than at any previous time in history and neo-liberalism is widely challenged, this orthodoxy is clearly inadequate. The spread of global production means that to ignore labour, its organisations, interests and politics, is to ignore one of the key components of that process. Labour organisations have not gone away and neither has the state: their relationship remains as significant as ever. The strategic relationship between trade unions and social movements, nationally and internationally, has also developed markedly, especially in the south. New patterns of resistance are emerging to challenge global capital and those who assert that globalisation is irresistible. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2021
Critical race theory and inequality in the labour market
by Ebun Joseph
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2019The British political elite and Europe 1959-1984
by Bob Nicholls
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Sociology & anthropologyFebruary 2017Environment, labour and capitalism at sea
'Working the ground' in Scotland
by Penny McCall Howard. Series edited by Alexander Smith
This book explores how fishers make the sea productive through their labour, using technologies ranging from wooden boats to digital GPS plotters to create familiar places in a seemingly hostile environment. It shows how their lives are affected by capitalist forces in the markets they sell to, forces that shape even the relations between fishers on the same boat. Fishers frequently have to make impossible choices between safe seamanship and staying afloat economically, and the book describes the human impact of the high rate of deaths in the fishing industry. The book makes a unique contribution to understanding human-environment relations, examining the places fishers create and name at sea, as well as technologies and navigation practices. It combines phenomenology and political economy to offer new approaches for analyses of human-environment relations and technologies. It contributes to the social studies of fisheries through an analysis of how deeply fishing practices and social relations are shaped by political economy. It will be read in universities by social scientists and anthropologists and also by those with an interest in maritime Scotland.
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The ArtsFebruary 2026Visual arts and medicine in early modern Europe and beyond
A collection of essays and sources
by Robert Brennan, Fabian Jonietz, Romana Sammern
This book opens up new perspectives on the relationship between art, medicine, and science in late-medieval and early modern Europe. Looking beyond the traditional nexus of art, anatomy, and optics, the volume sheds light on a broader array of connections between artists and physicians: collaborations between painters and doctors on colour charts, handwork skills common to sculptors and surgeons, the transmission of art theory through medical texts long before the emergence of art writing itself as an independent genre, and the kinship of medical diagnosis with early modes of connoisseurship. Reconfiguring the histories of art, medicine, and science, the book also traverses conventional boundaries between physical and mental health, religious and medical modes of healing, menial and exalted forms of knowledge and labour, as well as vernacular and scientific understandings of human difference, including gender, race, and neurodiversity.
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Trade unionsApril 2009Trade unions and democracy
Strategies and perspectives
by Edited by Mark Harcourt and Geoffrey Wood
Available for the first time in paperback, this book explores the role of trade unions as products of, and agents for, democracy. The crisis facing established democratic institutions in the advanced societies has been widely noted. In response, there has been increasing interest in the role of civil society actors, ranging from established socio-political collectives to new grassroots organisations. On the one hand, conventional wisdom holds that organised labour in the advanced societies has remained locked in a cycle of political marginalisation and decline. On the other hand, unions continue to represent a significant component of society within most industrialised countries. Indeed, in many cases, they have demonstrated a capacity for effective renewal and for co-ordinating their efforts with other civil society actors as part and parcel of the current groudswell of public opinion against the neo-liberal orthodoxy. The book brings together a distinguished panel of leading and emerging scholars in the field, and provides a critical assessment of the current role of unions in society, their capacity to impact on state policies in such a manner as to ensure greater accountability and fairness, and the nature and extent of internal representative democracy within the labour movement. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of industrial relations, critical management studies, political studies and sociology, as well as trade union and community activists.
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Humanities & Social SciencesSeptember 2021Nostalgia and the post-war Labour Party
by Richard Jobson
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Business, Economics & LawSeptember 2004Trade unions and democracy
Strategies and perspectives
by Mark Harcourt, Geoffrey Wood
This book explores the changing role of trade unions as products of, and agents for, democracy. Despite conventionally being portrayed as politically marginalised and in terminal decline, trade unions continue to represent a significant component of society within most industrialised countries and have demonstrated a capacity for revival and renewal in the face of difficult corcumstances. It brings together a distinguished panel of leading and emerging scholars in the field, and provides a critical assessment of the current role of trade unions in society, their capacity to impact on state policies in such a manner as to ensure greater accountability and fairness, and the nature and extent of internal representative democracy within the labour movement. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in industrial relations, critical management studies, political studies and sociology. ;
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