Abstract
The first chapter aims to provide the theoretical framework of the book, analysing the concepts of “work” and “labour” in the Early Modern period. Terms like “free-unfree labour”, “tributary labour”, “productive and reproductive labour”, “pluriactivity” have by now integrated in historiography the simplistic identification of “labour” with “salaried labour”. This identification sounds inadequate for the modern period, and even more so for the early modern one, because it does not consider the various declensions of labour, leaving at the borders of the analysis a great number of workers. Besides the deepening of these categories, the chapter will show how the concept of labour (and the self-awareness of workers) changed in different times and different places.
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Mocarelli, L., Ongaro, G. (2019). Work and Labour: Meanings and Concepts. In: Work in Early Modern Italy, 1500–1800. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26546-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26546-5_1
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