070341 KU Theories, Sources and Methods of Global History (2019S)

The general topic of this course about theories, sources, and methods in global history will be ‘The history of work and workers' struggles in Latin America’. Labour history over the last 20 years has succeeded in opening new perspectives. In its turn towards the ‘global’ both the geographical scope and the notion of ‘worker’ have been broadened to include the history of slaves and other unfree labourers, as well as of self-employed, informal, precarious, or unpaid workers. Latin America is a case in point for such new approaches: Since conquest and colonization in the 16th century, it has witnessed the combination of a broad array of labour relations, from slavery, corvée, and other forms of coerced labour to debt peonage, share cropping, and free wage labour. These different constellations of the organization of work for world market production interacted in complex way with communal subsistence agriculture and the work in households. Up until today, the worlds of labour in Latin America are highly variegated, the Standard Employment Relationship constituting a relative minority in most countries. This situation has, over the centuries, conditioned very different forms of resisting exploitation and defending labour rights, ranging from marronage, peasant uprisings, classical workers’ unions to the organising of informal domestic workers. Recent research in this area has often included a transnational or global dimension, asking for connections between places and actors, as well as embedding their analyses in wider transatlantic exchanges and commodity chains. In this class, such research will be taken as a starting point to reflect upon the theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches involved in current global history. Furthermore, sources used in this research as well as their availability for researchers in Vienna through edited collections or online repositories will be analysed in detail.

Note: this class will partly be held in ‘blocked’ sessions.
The blocked session (Blocktermin) will be: Saturday, 22nd June 2019, 10:00 – 13:00 and 14:00–17:00.

This course, thus, presupposes the availability and willingness for an intensive work schedule from April to June.

This course will introduce ‘theories’ and ‘methods’ in current global historical debates through readings, discussion, and a number of smaller writing assignments. Meanwhile, students will get in touch with ‘sources’ by familiarizing themselves with archival material either published in edited collections or available through online repositories. The aim will be to elaborate a draft paper that specifies a topic a research question which can be related to a such primary material.