Sigrid Wadauer

University of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte

Beginning in the 18th century, a turning point in labour history as work encountered an industrialising modernity, this book explores how different forms of work have been valued up to the present day. Focusing on the cultural, intellectual, social and political implications of wages, the chapters in this collection historicise the labour market, c...

In twentieth-century Austria, the share of self-employed in the workforce was declining. Yet, this was not a necessary and linear development. Nor did it concern all trades in the same way. Moreover, in the first decades of the century, this share was not small. According to the 1934 census, about 21 percent of the workforce (Berufsträger) was self...

The contributions in this book examine historical and current conceptions of security, i.e. discourses and practices aimed at collective security, with regard to their interrelationship with categories of diversity such as gender, race, status, religion, etc. and how and where they intersect. What does a historical perspective contribute to an inte...

Historians who use administrative records for their research frequently encounter variations, inconsistencies and contradictions in personal data. Th ese often impede linking records to a certain person (or what appears to be a person in public administration). This may not come as a surprise since administrative work should, in principle, follow r...

Die Studie untersucht, wie in der Habsburgermonarchie bzw. österreich von 1880-1938 neue Vorstellungen und Hierarchien von Arbeit erzeugt, verhandelt und durchgesetzt wurden. Statt einen bestimmten Begriff von Arbeit zu postulieren, werden Auseinandersetzungen über Arbeit und Lebensunterhalt zum Gegenstand gemacht. Ausgangspunkt sind umstrittene Pr...

State social policies and the related administrative practices have contributed substantially since the end of the 19th century to producing and normalising new forms of work in Europe. This has given rise to new rights and obligations and changed the relationship between a state and its citizens. The article looks at struggles on the opportunities...

http://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/intros/WadauerHistory_intro.pdf

The project and approach: My time at re:work was/is dedicated to writing a book which deals with various ways to make a living bound (more or less) to mobility. This ranges from various forms of sales (occupations like travelling salesmen, market sellers, and peddlers), to itinerant trades (such as knife grinders, rag and bone collectors, tinkers,...

In Austria in the early twentieth century, as in Germany legal offences against the Vagrancy Act were not at all clearly codified.2 As the jurist August Finger stated, there was no definition of ‘begging’: ‘in applying the legal regulations’, he wrote, ‘one is forced to use the word as it is understood in common parlance’.3 A broad variety of diffe...

https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:406768/bdef:Content/get

Since the late nineteenth century, job seeking has become increasingly linked to organizations and facilities that offer information on vacancies, offer placement services, or undertake recruiting. The present article focuses on how job placement became a concern for the emerging European welfare states, and how state-run systems of labour intermed...

This paper deals with the making of vagrancy in the context of early state welfare policy. Vagrancy is neither understood as an anachronism nor as deviance or marginality. Rather, it raises central questions concerning social policy and the history of labour. Starting from the problems of definition in the context of contemporary transnational deba...

(Historical) research on migration is still a booming field of research. There is a variety of concepts and approaches as well as manifold empirical studies. Research concepts and categories are developing and subject to change. Nevertheless, some common categories, perspectives, and frames of analysis seem rather persistent. In many cases, they ca...

Handwerker gelten gemeinhin als unmodern. In politischen Debatten des 19. Jahrhunderts fungieren sie als Antithese zu Liberalität und kapitalistischer Wirtschaftsordnung, die mit Freiheit, Konkurrenz und Individualismus assoziiert wird.2 Demgegenüber erscheint das Handwerk als Verfechter zünftisch-genossenschaftlicher Ideen, dem Prinzip der „Nahrun...

The rereading of autobiographical texts of artisans shows, that the 'Wanderschaft', the journeying from place to place - which at first sight appears to be clearly determined by traditions, to be normatively and institutionally defined and protected - is in fact open to various interpretations and ambitions. 'Wanderschaft' does not simply appear as...