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This series will trace at the example of work the historical connections between regions and critically engage with the idea of the North Atlantic World as normal and the rest as exceptional. The aim is to publish studies that change focus back and forth from the intimacy and complexity of relationships in specific places and their connections to distant places and long-term processes of change thereby looking beyond locality and region.

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Global Histories of Work is the first title in the new series "Work in Global and Historical Perspective". This collection of selected articles written by leading scholars in different disciplines provides both an introduction and numerous insights into themes, debates and methods of Global Labour History as they have been developed over the last years. The contributions to the volume discuss crucial historiographical developments; present different professions that have gained new attention in the context of an emerging Global Labour History; critically engage the boundaries of "free" labour and the ambiguities contained in this concept; and take up and historicize current debates about "informal labour". Global Histories of Work will familiarize readers with a burgeoning fi eld of high academic, social, and political relevance.

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Andreas Eckert, Humboldt University of Berlin

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