Unemployment and Protest: New Perspectives on Two Centuries of Contention (Studies of the German Historical Institute London)

2011 OUP hardcover edition. Light reading wear else very good condition. The unemployed are usually depicted as passive and politically apathetic individuals who are traumatized by their experience and broken in body and spirit. The seminal study of Marienthal's unemployed in the 1930s, based on pioneering methodology and rich empirical findings, helped to entrench this image as cross-disciplinary common sense. This book challenges this dominant view by revealing the wide transnational repertoires of protest and resistance that the unemployed have deployed from the early nineteenth century to the present. They have contested their situation in a discontinuous but recurrent battle for recognition, for rights to work or welfare, and for dignity. The case studies in this volume deal with contentious actions of the unemployed across different European countries, the United States, New Zealand, and Palestine. They highlight the diverse responses of the workless to their fate beyond the apathy habitually ascribed to them, from passive resistance and individual protest to organized large-scale protest marches and from protest in newspapers, books, or internet forums to agitation and direct action in the streets, benefit fraud, and legal challenges of administrative measures or government laws. Instead of following the traditional focus on Communist-led protest during the inter-war period, this volume accentuates the plurality of individuals and organizations that have tried to organize the unemployed over the past two centuries. Part I. Introduction 1. Beyond Marienthal: Understanding Movements of the Unemployed by Matt Perry and Matthias Reiss 2. Mobilizing the Unemployed: The Social Psychology of Movement Participation by Bert Klandermans Part II. Movements of the Unemployed in Nineteenth-Century Britain 3. The March of the Blanketeers: Tragic Failure or Pioneer of Unemployed Protest? by Margrit Schulte Beerbuhl 4. From Poor Relief to Politics: The Protest of the British Unemployed in the 1870s and 1880s by Matthias Reiss Part III. The Golden Age of Unemployed Movements: The Inter-War Years 5. 'Natural Love for a Good Thing': The Struggle of the Unemployed Workers' Movement for a Government Jobs Programme, 1931-1942 by Jeannette Gabriel 6. Explaining Unemployed Protest in the Ruhr at the End of the Weimar Republic by Alex Zukas 7. Violating the 'Rules of Hospitality': The Protests of Jobless Immigrants in Depression-Era France by Philip H. Slaby 8. Politicization of Unemployment in British-Ruled Palestine by David De Vries and Shani Bar-On Part IV. Beyond Collective Street Protest 9. Protesting Individuals: The French Unemployed in the 1930s by Michael Seidman 10. 'The Workers Are in the Mood to Fight the Act': Protest against the Means Test, 1931-1935 by Stephanie Ward 11. Unemployment without Protest: The Ironstone Mining Communities of East Cleveland in the Inter-war Period by Malcolm Chase Part V. Self-Representations of Movements of the Unemployed 12. Breaking the Silence: Rationale, Protest, and Identity in the Provincial Press of the Unemployed in France, 1931-1939 by Matt Perry 13. From Protest to Warning: Representations of the Unemployed in Victor Gollancz's Left Book Club, 1937-1945 by Antoine Capet 14. Radio Lorraine Coeur d'Acier, Longwy-France, 1979-1980: Reacting to the Threat of Unemployment by Ingrid Hayes Part VI. Recent Movements of the Unemployed 15. Fractious Factions: The Organized Unemployed and the Labour Movement in New Zealand, 1978-1990 by Cybele Locke 16. How Far beyond Marienthal? Unemployed Protest in Germany in the Internet Era by Deborah Vietor-Englander Part VII. Conclusion 17. The Mobilization of the Unemployed: A Recurrent but Relatively Invisible Phenomenon by Didier Chabanet and Jean Faniel.…