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PREFACE xii the turn of the last century and is unlikely to slow down in the near future.

This book is about the more than half of humanity that works–or is seeking to work–for a wage. It is written for degree students (and their teachers) in the social sciences taking courses on labour in the modern world. If not now, then in the future, this book is thereby about you the reader–just as it about us the authors: for students, like academics, must earn a living and they tend to do so by labouring for others in return for money. Indeed, so ‘normal’has it become in the modern world for most people to offer themselves as wage-workers that it’s easy to forget what a relatively new norm this is. One can work for oneself; one can work for others but for non-monetary returns; and one can work with others in order to produce things that are not exchangeable for coins and notes. In some parts of the world–especially in the South–these …