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Injury impoverished : workplace accidents, capitalism, and law in the progressive era / Nate Holdren.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Holdren, Nate, 1978- author.
- Series:
- Cambridge historical studies in American law and society
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Workers' compensation--Law and legislation--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.
- Workers' compensation.
- Industrial accidents--Law and legislation--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.
- Industrial accidents.
- Industrial accidents--Law and legislation.
- Social aspects.
- History.
- Workers' compensation--Law and legislation.
- United States.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xvii, 292 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- System Details:
- text file
- Summary:
- The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century US economy maimed and killed employees at an astronomically high rate, while the legal system left the injured and their loved ones with little recourse. In the 1910s, US states enacted workers' compensation laws, which required employers to pay a portion of the financial costs of workplace injuries. Nate Holdren uses a range of archival materials, interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, and compelling narration to criticize the shortcomings of these laws. While compensation laws were a limited improvement for employees in economic terms, Holdren argues that these laws created new forms of inequality, causing people with disabilities to lose their jobs, while also resulting in new forms of inhumanity. Ultimately, this study raises questions about law and class and about when and whether our economy and our legal system produce justice or injustice.
- Contents:
- Introduction : Injuries And Abstractions
- Commodification and Recognition within the Tyranny of the Trial
- Injury Impoverished
- Suffering and the Price of Life and Limb
- Trampler and Tramped on in the Cherry Mine Fire
- The Disabling Power of Law and Market
- Insuring Injustice
- Discrimination Technicians and Human Weeding
- Resistance and Aftermath
- Coda: Narrative, Machinery, Law.
- Notes:
- Based on author's thesis (doctoral - University of Minnesota, 2014) issued under title: 'The compensation law put us out of work' : workplace injury law, commodification, and discrimination in the early 20th century United States.
- Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 08 Apr 2020).
- Other Format:
- Print version:
- ISBN:
- 9781108657730
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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