Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880-1930

ISBN-13: 9780521778190 / Angielski / Miękka / 2000 / 332 str.

Gunther Peck

Opis

One of the most infamous villains in North America during the Progressive Era was the padrone, a mafia-like immigrant boss who allegedly enslaved his compatriots and kept them uncivilized, unmanly, and unfree. In this first-ever history of the padrone, Gunther Peck argues that they were not primitive men but rather thoroughly modern entrepreneurs who used corporations, the labor contract, and the right to quit to create far-flung coercive networks. Drawing on Greek, Spanish, and Italian language sources, Peck analyzes how immigrant workers emancipated themselves using the tools of padrone power to their own advantage.

Recenzje

'Gunther Peck reworks familiar ideas about free labor and reconceives the historical spaces in which they have operated. His analysis is a wonderful combination of engagement with both the structural constraints of capitalism at a given moment and the ways in which seemingly powerless workers contest, challenge and sometimes change the economic and social limits that they face and the ideologies intended to confine them.' Richard White, Stanford University

Spis treści

List of illustrations and tables; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. The World Padrones Made: 1. Free land and unfree labor; 2. Padrones and corporations; 3. Defenders of contract; Part II. Reinventing Free Labor: 4. Manhood mobilized; 5. Mobilizing community; 6. Spaces of freedom; Epilogue: the vanishing padrone; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.