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Labour Commodification and Skilled Selves in Late Nineteenth-Century Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2001

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Abstract

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This article uses the concept of labour commodification to critique common historiographical portraits of skilled workers in transition to industrial capitalism. The meanings with which skilled workers in late nineteenth-century Australia understood their own labour went far beyond a repertoire of technical abilities. They viewed skill as a socio-biological disposition specific to a human type (adult, male, Anglo-Saxon), and this view intimately connected artisans' work and selfhood. Capitalist industrial change threatened to disrupt those connections. The notoriously exclusive union policies skilled workers invented can thus be seen as designed not simply to position their members more advantageously on the labour market, but to protect artisanal selves and identities from the corrosive effects of labour commodification.

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© 1998 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis