ABSTRACT
For many people, regular interaction with the ‘economy’ takes place through work in its different forms, and our chances of making a decent living are shaped
Chapter map The chapter begins with some basic definitions of work and employment, together with a brief examination of how the relationship between them varies in time and space. It then proceeds to explore some of the key changes to the world of work that have characterized
employment. In the developed capitalist economies, the majority of us make a living through forms of paid employment, where we exchange our human labour for a wage. In less developed countries, much of the population is still engaged in non-capitalist forms of work linked to subsistence agriculture. The increasing integration of the world into a single global capitalist economy often threatens such traditional lifestyles, although it also opens up the possibility for some groups to escape feudal or more traditional forms of oppression to work as waged labour. As such, the processes of geographical uneven development and economic restructuring that we have considered in earlier chapters take on particular significance in terms of how they affect our conditions of employment and livelihoods. It is in this sense that economic geography has been defined as the geography of people’s attempts to make a living (Lee, 2000, p.195). In this chapter, our purpose is to examine the nature of employment change in the contemporary economy, exploring in particular the transformation of work that has occurred since the 1970s and the role played by geography in shaping change. We also emphasize that, unlike other factors of production, labour is not passive to processes of economic restructuring but plays a more active role. At both the individual and collective levels (through organizations such as trade unions), labour helps to shape the changing landscape of capitalism, although it is often at a strategic disadvantage because of its relative immobility (Herod, 2001).
