Labor History Research Articles

Immigration and Exploitation: A Critical Analysis of Sikkimese Labour History

The paper presents a critical analysis of Sikkimese labour history, with a focus on migration and exploitation. Further, it highlights the impact of the migration of Nepali peasants from Nepal on Sikkim's economy, the introduction of new forms of taxation, and the transition of power from the monarchy to the political officer.

Sacred Pathway, Devotional Praxis: Actors, Aché, and Landscape at the Sanctuary of Regla, Cuba

The ferry from Havana to Regla, Cuba, transports visitors from today’s cruise ship docks across a brief stretch of water in about 20 min. Despite its brevity, this watery passage symbolically foregrounds the Marian devotion on the southern rim of the grand harbor. In this way, water conjoins African diasporic histories of enslavement, labor, survival, resistance, daily life, and religiosity within Havana Bay, into which two urban geographies project. Regla historically served as a municipality for dockworkers and shipwrights and became an enclave for identity creation, civil association, and religious worship for people of African descent. The church and sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Regla (“Our Lady of Regla”) has nurtured this connection as it houses effigies of the venerated Virgin, adorned in blue. The Virgin of Regla represents one of two, along with El Cobre, of the most important Marian devotions on the island of Cuba and is the focus of insular and diasporic pilgrimage. In Regla, the Virgin’s nautical iconography decorates the sanctuary and historically connects her to the working populations who sustained this devotion as they serviced Havana Harbor with their labor. Adjacent to the church is a waterfront park that looks out on the water and the city of Havana beyond. Bordered on one side by a low wall, the park incorporates a large ceiba tree, ceiba pentandra, also known as the silk cotton or kapok tree, a tropical species with a large trunk and spreading tree canopy native to Mexico and Central America, the Caribbean, northern South America, and West Africa (with a similar variety found in South and Southeast Asia). This article considers landscape as a methodology for examining the interplay of this tree and the adjacent church as interwoven and mutually reinforcing sites of devotion for the worship of the Virgin Mary and the oricha Yemayá in Regla, Cuba, with a view toward a broader set of local and global spaces.

Introduction: Launching a Labor History of Science

Introduction: Launching a Labor History of Science

Historiographies of science and labor: From past perspectives to future possibilities.

This article offers suggestions for what a labor history of science might look like and what it might accomplish. It does so by first reviewing how historians of science have analyzed the history of both "science as labor" and "science and labor" since the 1930s. It then moves on to discuss recent historiographical developments in both the history of science and labor history that together provide an analytical frame for further research. The article ends by projecting into the future, considering how a labor history of science might help us grapple with connecting our understanding of the past with the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Global circulation of low-end expertise: Knowledge, hierarchy, and labor migration in a Burmese oilfield.

This article examines the phenomenon of the "global circulation of low-end expertise" through an exploration of the social dynamics surrounding American oil drillers who migrated from the Pennsylvania oil region to British colonial Burma during the early 1900s to the mid-1930s. These working-class drillers, with practical knowledge in oil drilling acquired through familial and community networks, played a crucial role in operating mechanized oil wells and providing geological expertise in colonial Burma. Positioned between labor-intensive agricultural economies in colonial Asia and the higher echelons of British colonial society, these drillers occupied an intermediate social location. Despite their indispensable expertise, they were marginalized due to their lower social standing, leading to their expertise being disregarded by their superiors and forgotten over time. By understanding the complexities of the "global circulation of low-end expertise," this study sheds light on the social construction and erasure of the expertise held by these working-class drillers, revealing overlooked aspects of global histories of science and labor and highlighting the need to reassess dominant historical narratives on knowledge-labor.

Kepler's labors: Figurations of scholarly work c. 1600.

Kepler's intricate trajectory, his self-reflective comments about the conditions of production of knowledge in his time, and the wealth of materials preserved make it possible to reconstruct a whole set of regimes of scholarly work around 1600, each with its typical mode of control, forms of subordination, temporal economy, and means of remuneration. Kepler's maneuvering in this landscape was shaped by his attempts to carve out spaces for the kind of work he considered his very own - his "speculations" or "private studies" - within work relationships involving service and subordination. Thus, we find nonalienated, self-directed scholarly work embedded, constrained, and enabled by heteronomous regimes of work, a field of tensions that I seek to capture in the formula "work within work." A labor history of science could thus offer us an opportunity for exploring historically documented, nonincidental and partly institutionalized forms of less alienated work, and trace the ways in which they related to and interacted with dominant relations of production.

Ottoman plants, nature studies, and the attentiveness of translational labor.

Translations, whether in the form of text, illustration, or interpretive analysis, served knowledge-making in multiple ways. It offered a refuge, severed contexts, and concealed the various workers that created it. Over the course of the seventeenth century, European naturalists in Istanbul, such as Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658-1730), procured illustrations of Ottoman nature as fundamental resources to identify, collect, and compare indigenous plants and newly bred varieties. Despite maintaining an actual mediation for cross-cultural interactions, these sources of virtual communication remain largely forgotten in modern scholarship. This article argues that this curious yet invisible corpus was not a nonagentive medium in an alienated leisure of a gentleman-scholar; instead, these illustrations were designed to call upon the viewer's constant attention in self-motivated scientific labor. Such handy tools responded and contributed to early modern scholars' modes of working, and in exchange they determined these sources' own function, position, and visibility - either as a by-product or as a derivative. It is therefore only when integrated into the labor history of science that the degrees of invisibility pertaining to both Ottoman nature studies and self-directed labor can come into a granular view.

Unnamed, not unskilled: Toward a new labor history of pharmacy.

By recovering the dependent, often enslaved, laborers who helped to make European medicines commercially available in the New England colonies, this article offers a new history of early American pharmaceutical knowledge and production. It does so by considering the life and labor of an unnamed, enslaved assistant who was said to make tinctures, elixirs, and other common remedies in a 1758 letter between two business partners, Silvester Gardiner, a successful surgeon and apothecary in Boston, Massachusetts, and William Jepson, his former apprentice, in Hartford, Connecticut. Using strategies from slavery and critical archive studies, as well as from social history and the history of medicine, this article emphasizes the materiality and embodiment of pharmaceutical production and follows fragmentary evidence beyond the business archive to reverse the systemic erasure of enslaved and indentured laborers from the records of eighteenth-century manufacturers of medicines. The medicine trades of men like Gardiner and Jepson appear more reliant upon dependent laborers - named and unnamed - who not only performed rote tasks but brought their experience and judgment to their labors as well. Their contributions could be obviously medical (preparing remedies) or more ambiguous (stoking fires, shipping goods), but these actions together constituted early modern pharmacy, enabled the expansion of the transatlantic medicine trade, and laid the foundations for the more self-sufficient and industrialized pharmacy that developed in the nineteenth century. Centering the skill and knowledge among subordinated laborers in one facet of an emergent transatlantic care economy affirms the entanglement of slavery and science and underscores the necessity of asking new questions of old sources.

Nelson Lichtenstein's Essential Contributions to Understanding Class, Labor, Capitalism, and Democracy in the United States

Abstract In a prolific career more than five decades long, Nelson Lichtenstein has devised a kind of labor history that was always implicitly, and by now obviously, a broad “history of capitalism” founded on a radical critique of capital's reign. His meticulous research and sharp-focused analyses provide keys to reveal the main currents and the meaning of US history over the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first. And in interpreting the ebbs and flows of labor struggle, he sets the highest standard of what it means to be an engaged scholar.

White Coats with Blue Collars: Doctors’ Labor Protests and the Struggle for Democracy in Brazil, 1978–1982 – CORRIGENDUM

AbstractThis article explores the labor struggles of doctors in late 1970s and early 1980s Brazil, the final years of the nation's dictatorship. Health workers’ protests for better salaries and working conditions were extensive and reflected a dramatic change in the way medical practitioners in Brazil perceived their professional and political identities. Fusing together histories of medicine and labor, the article shows how physicians not only led strikes and unionized by their tens of thousands but also collaborated with blue-collar sectors in a larger struggle for working rights, access to healthcare, and structural reforms. Dictatorship officials, the article reveals, were significantly concerned by hospital strikes and particularly by the emerging cross-sector alliance. In this sense, the doctors’ movement played a significant role in challenging Brazil's military rule and advancing the nation's transition to democracy.

THE ROLE OF FEMALE WORKERS IN OIL PALM PLANTATIONS (A CASE STUDY IN UJONG KRUENG VILLAGE, TRIPA MAKMUR SUB-DISTRICT, NAGAN RAYA REGENCY)

Oil palm is one of the plantation commodities that needs to increase its production as it is a major producer of vegetable oil. The expansion of oil palm plantations has been taking place in various regions, including Aceh, particularly in Ujong Krueng Village, Tripa Makmur sub-district, Nagan Raya regency. The purpose of this research is to explore the history of female labor in oil palm plantations and understand the lives of female workers in Ujong Krueng Village. The research methods employed include observation and interviews. The results indicate that female laborers are workers in oil palm plantations who earn wages from the landowners. The emergence of women as laborers in Ujong Krueng's oil palm plantations is due to the increasing number of plantations and their rapid growth, requiring a large labor force. This provides opportunities for women who want to contribute to their family's economy. The lives of female laborers in Ujong Krueng include: firstly, women have a dual role, working both in their homes and in public spacec; secondly, some women, especially those who are widowed or whose husband is are dealing with severe illness, take on the responsibility of being breadwinners; thirdly, the economic of the community is positively impacted by income generated from oil palm plantations, meeting the basic living needs; fourthly, women are now undertaking tasks that were traditionally performed by men, such as transporting harvested produce.

Double Whammy Cases of Severe Mitral Stenosis in Peripartum: A Survival Case Series

Background: Valvular heart disease in pregnancy is still not widely studied. The combination of mitral stenosis and the physiology of pregnancy for both mother and fetus often result in poor hemodynamics, and management during labor and peripartum period greatly determines the prognosis of both lives.Case: A 42 years old G3P2A0 (Case A) and A 33 years old G3P1A1 (Case B) both had a history of previous SC labor, presented worsening shortness of breath since 2nd trimester, coughing and swelling in both legs, also unable to rest in a flat position. especially, case B was frequent re-hospitalized with prolonged LOS during 2nd – the 3rd trimester due to acute lung edema. We found a mid-diastolic murmur grade II/IV at the apex. Electrocardiography (ECG) of case A: sinus rhythm, left atrial enlargement (LAE), while case B: AF rapid response. The echocardiography of case A revealed severe MS, while case B revealed severe MS, moderate tricuspid regurgitation and, a high probability for PH. Those findings support the diagnosis of severe mitral stenosis and rheumatic heart disease in pregnancy, then they were programmed to do balloon mitral valvuloplasty (BMV) in 3rd trimester.Discussion: The BMV was performed, and succeeded in case A reducing the mitral valve pressure gradient (MV PG) from 24.7mmHg to 12.1mmHg by using local anesthesia along the procedure, while in case B specifically done BMV with general anesthesia due to supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) and pulmonal congestive during procedure, reducing the MV PG from 17.7mmHg to 8.6mmHg, as well as improvement in symptoms, up to pregnancy was terminated as obstetric indication by SC on 36-37 weeks' gestation in both cases. The baby born was healthy with weights of each case 2340gr and 2630gr. Conclusion: Mitral stenosis in the peripartum needs to be managed by interprofessional collaboration properly, to decrease the risk of morbidity and mortality for the mother and fetus.

Comparison of Alloimmunization in Pregnant People with Sickle Cell Disease Receiving Chronic Versus on-Demand Transfusions: A Multinational Study

Introduction Despite exceptional maternal morbidity and mortality risk, people with sickle cell disease (SCD) lack firm indications for chronic transfusion therapy (CTT) during pregnancy. Alloimmunization may cause hemolytic transfusion reactions and can limit the safety of future blood transfusions; thus it is a rationale for restricting CTT during pregnancy. Little data quantifies this risk. The 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Guidelines for SCD TransfusionSupport recommend CTT in some pregnancies, but adoption in clinical practice is unknown. This study's purpose is to use a large two-center SCD pregnancy cohort to describe alloimmunization rates in SCD pregnancies treated with CTT vs on-demand transfusion (ODT) and to determine the fraction of SCD pregnancies meeting the ASH Guideline to initiate CTT in pregnancy. Methods We reviewed SCD pregnancies delivered at Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto (1990-2017) and Johns Hopkins Hospital (2000-2021). We collected data on transfusions and SCD complications before and during pregnancy, delivery, and fetal outcomes. Analyses classified subjects and pregnancies as receiving CTT or ODT. We defined CTT as pregnancies treated with scheduled, prophylactic transfusions; ODT as pregnancies transfused as-needed, including no transfusions. Sinai routinely matched transfusions for Rh and K antigens while Hopkins matched Rh only. Both centers provided extended matching if an alloantibody was detected. The first analysis included singleton pregnancies to primigravida subjects. We compared new alloantibody development, SCD complications, and pregnancy outcomes in CTT vs. ODT groups and in genotype stratified groups. We used Chi-squared and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for categorical and continuous variables; p < .05 was significant. The second analysis included all cohort pregnancies and identified which met criteria for CTT per ASH Transfusion Guidelines which advise CTT for (A) severe SCD complications before or during pregnancy here defined by acute chest syndrome (ACS) or pain requiring acute care in the year before or during pregnancy, any history of venous thromboembolism (VTE), stroke, or multi-organ failure or (B) features of high-risk pregnancy, defined by multiple gestation, pre-eclampsia, gestational hypertension, cardiac comorbidities, or preterm labor history. Results Among 145singleton, primigravida pregnancies, more received ODT than CTT (119 ODT vs 26 CTT). Among ODT subjects 46/119 received at least one transfusion during pregnancy. CTT subjects had more severe SCD than ODT subjects before pregnancy (Table 1). During pregnancy, SCD severity did not differ (Table 2). Before pregnancy, 18 subjects were alloimmunized and did not differ by treatment group (6/26 CTT vs 12/119 ODT, p=0.07). During pregnancy, six subjects developed an alloantibody and did not differ by treatment group (1/26 CTT vs 5/119 ODT, p=0.93). Half (3/6) had a history of alloimmunization before pregnancy (1 CTT vs 2 ODT, p=0.27) and three did not (0 CTT vs 3 ODT, p=0.27). All subjects with new antibodies during pregnancy and historic alloimmunization developed anti-K antibodies (1 CTT, 2 ODT) at both sites. Those without alloimmunization history developed anti-Jkantibodies (3 ODT) at Sinai. In the secondary analysis, we included 299 pregnancies to 203 subjects. Among them, 249 pregnancies (83%) met at least one ASH Guideline criteria for initiating CTT. This included all CTT pregnancies (61/61, 39 subjects) and 79% of ODT pregnancies (188/238, 164 subjects), 46% of which received at least one transfusion during pregnancy (86/188). Conclusions In this SCD pregnancy cohort, alloimmunization rates were low and did not differ between those treated with CTT versus ODT. As alloimmunization events were inconsistent with institutional matching practices, new antibody development may be attributable to transfusions from outside hospitals or pregnancy-associated alloimmunization. Antigen matching per ASH Transfusion Guidelines avoids C, E, K and Jk alloimmunization. Scheduled transfusions may reduce emergency transfusion which increases alloimmunization risk. Finally, all CTT and 79% of ODT pregnancies met ASH Guideline criteria for CTT in pregnancy, however the cohort predates ASH Guideline publication. Guideline adherence may lead to increased use of CTT during pregnancy. More discriminating tools are needed to inform CTT use in SCD pregnancy.

Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Committee on Labour History, 8 June 2023, Convened virtually from locations across Turtle Island

Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Committee on Labour History, 8 June 2023, Convened virtually from locations across Turtle Island

Correlation Between History of Type of Childbirth and Early Initiation of Breastfeeding with Exclusive Breastfeeding

Exclusive breastfeeding means breastfeeding until six months of age with no other additives except vitamins and medicine. Exclusive breastfeeding coverage in Kediri District (34.30%) is still below the national target (45%). Low breastfeeding coverage rates are influenced by many factors, including the history of childbirth and early initiation of breastfeeding. To prevent problems due to the failure of exclusive breastfeeding, this study was conducted to determine the relationship between the history of childbirth and early initiation of breastfeeding with exclusive breastfeeding. The sample size of the research was 49 respondents. The sampling method for this study used simple random sampling. The statistical test of chi square is used for data analysis. The results showed that most respondents had a history of spontaneous labor (69.4%) and early initiation of breastfeeding (69.4%), and also most respondents provided exclusive breastfeeding (51%). Statistical tests showed that there was no correlation between history of childbirth and exclusive breastfeeding (P 0.051) and there was a correlation between and early initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding (P 0.010). Therefore, it has been found that mothers who received early initiation of breastfeeding measures had a greater chance of being able to provide exclusive breastfeeding. Through early initiation of breastfeeding, babies were able to learn to suckle and become accustomed to sucking on nipples, and also helping mothers to prepare their bodies to produce breast milk so they could start providing breast milk to their babies as early as possible and increasing the chances of successful exclusive breastfeeding.

‘We build Barren Island, Barren Island builds us’: Of imprisoned humans and mobilized stone in the Yugoslav Cominformist Labor Camp (1949–1956)

ABSTRACT Goli Otok (Barren Island) was a site of the master political prison and forced labor camp of the socialist Yugoslavia between 1949 and 1956. The imprisoned, accused of siding with Stalin in the Tito–Stalin political rift, were sent to undergo ‘self-managed re-education’ through ‘socially beneficial labor’ in the island’s limestone quarries. The inmates were forced to build their own prison out of that very limestone – the first known human dwellings on the previously uninhabited island. They were also often forced to break, crumble and to carry massive stone loads from one place to another and back, with no constructive or productive purpose. However, the labor camp authorities also operated a lucrative business, oriented towards country-wide distribution, and sometimes towards international export of the island’s limestone. The quarried stone of the island therefore travelled more widely than its excavators, whose movements were limited to their island-prison. Set at the intersection of labor history and environmental history and drawing on the archival materials of the Yugoslav State Security Service, oral history interviews with the former prisoners, and their published and unpublished written memoirs, this paper examines the interrelations of the prison-island, its stone material, and the prisoners’ laboring bodies.

Indigenous Communities that Resisted Historical Labor Conscription Are More Likely to Obtain Accommodation from the State

Indigenous Communities that Resisted Historical Labor Conscription Are More Likely to Obtain Accommodation from the State

A prospective study of antepartum anxiety screening in patients with and without a history of spontaneous preterm birth

Maternal stress has been identified as one of the most common clinical phenotypes associated with preterm birth. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends anxiety screening at least once in the perinatal period. The prevalence of perinatal anxiety is challenged by the absence of formalized screening protocols and underreporting in high-risk populations, such as those with a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes. This study administered a validated anxiety screening tool in a cohort of patients with and without a previous spontaneous preterm birth and compared differences in score and rate of a positive screen between groups. Moreover, this study evaluated perinatal outcomes associated with a positive screen and described a referral protocol involving evaluation by a perinatal mental health counselor and clinical diagnoses. A hypothesis was made that patients with a previous history of spontaneous preterm birth would have higher self-reported anxiety symptoms than controls and that those with recurrent preterm delivery at <35 weeks of gestation would have the highest anxiety screening scores. This was a prospective observational cohort study administering the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item screen to patients enrolled in 2 prenatal care clinics at our institution. The preterm birth cohort consisted of patients with a history of spontaneous preterm labor, premature rupture of membranes, or cervical insufficiency compared with the control cohort without this history. Screening was initiated at entry to prenatal care or referral to our high-risk obstetrical clinic. The inclusion criteria included English- or Spanish-speaking patients and singleton pregnancy, and the exclusion criteria included pregnancies complicated by a major congenital anomaly, enrollment after 34 weeks of gestation, delivery at <20 weeks of gestation, and incomplete delivery data. Referral to a mental health counselor was offered to those with a Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item screen score of ≥10. Perinatal outcomes as a comparison between the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item screen-positive group and Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item screen-negative group were performed with statistical methods, including the Student t test, chi-square test, and Wilcoxon rank-sum test, with a P value of <.05 to determine significance. Between September 2020 and December 2021, 1349 participants were analyzed, with 143 patients (11%) in the previous preterm birth cohort and 1206 (89%) patients in the control cohort. Patients with a history of preterm birth and subsequent delivery at ≤35 weeks of gestation in the study pregnancy had significantly higher Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item screen scores than controls with delivery after 35 weeks of gestation (median score: 4 [interquartile range, 1-9] vs 2 [interquartile range, 0-6], respectively; P=.006). Overall, 187 participants (14%) screened positive with significantly higher rates in the previous preterm birth group than in the control group (20% vs 13%; P=.036). Of note, 117 patients (63%) accepted a referral, and 32 patients (17%) with a positive screen were diagnosed with a perinatal mood disorder. Patients with recurrent preterm birth have higher self-reported anxiety using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item screen than controls. Of those with a positive screen, 17% were diagnosed with a perinatal mood disorder.

Knowledge Production and Forced Labor: The Intellectual Work and Worlds of Andean Mitayos in the Late Colonial Period.

This article, which focuses on silver mining in the colonial Andes, attempts to bring silo-ed conversations in the history of science and labor history into a shared dialogue. In so doing, it offers a way to reassess the traditional historiographic consensus that independent wage laborers were “high skilled” and forced laborers were “low skilled.” Through linguistic analysis and legal case studies, it shows that miners often crossed back and forth between labor categories and positions, and that frameworks like skills and wages are inadequate to understand workers’ experiences and expertise in highly coercive extractive industries like mining in the colonial period.

Crucial role of corticotropin-releasing hormone, corticotropin-releasing hormone -binding protein, mir-200c, and mir-181a in preterm delivery: A case-control study.

Preterm birth before 37 wk of gestation is called premature birth. Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and CRH-binding protein (BP) act on various maternal and fetal tissues during pregnancy, such as the myometrium, which regulates the transition from the dormant phase of the uterus to the active phase. Studies have shown that mir-200c and mir-181a interact with CRH and CRH-BP. The present study aimed to investigate the expression of mir-200c, mir-181a, CRH, and CRH-BP in women with a history of preterm birth. In this case-control study, the gene expression level of mir-200c, mir-181a, CRH, and CRH-BP in placental tissue samples obtained from 48 women with a history of preterm labor was assessed in the Mojibian hospital of Yazd, Iran, from January to March 2023. Differences between mir-200c, mir-181a CRH, and CRH-BP gene expressions among cases and controls were assessed. The outcomes indicated that the expression of CRH increased with going on to the regular parturition time (p 0.001). While outcomes indicated, CRH-BP decreased with going on to the regular parturition time (p 0.001). In addition, the results showed that the expression of mir-181a increased and mir-200c decreased with approaching the normal delivery time (p 0.001). In conclusion, the expressions of mir-200c, mir-181a, CRH, and CRH-BP were dissimilar in different weeks of gestation. It could be proposed to use mir-200c, mir-181a, CRH, and CRH-BP as biomarkers to weigh the exact delivery time, which could minimize the side effects of preterm labor for the mother and fetus.