THE WORKING WORLD: A MINI-SYMPOSIUM ON WORK, OCCUPATIONS, AND LABOUR RELATIONS IN EURASIA BETWEEN 1500 AND 2000 İstanbul Bilgi University Santral Campus Board of Trustees Meeting Room (Santral Residence Building) In recent years the field of labour history has expanded its scope of research from an almost exclusive focus on industrial, blue-collar, unionized, male labourers to include workers’ multiple, overlapping identities as well as concepts like work, occupational categories, and labour relations in a broader and gendered perspective. To this end, this mini symposium has two related objectives. The first aim is to highlight the work of artisans, craftsmen, labourers, and the concomitant labour relations of artisanal and craft production. The second goal is to contribute to the internationalization of Ottoman and Turkish labour history. More generally within the field of Ottoman history there is an urgent need to understand developments in the Empire within the broader context of Eurasia. Global labour history has the potential to open comparative perspectives on the Ottoman Empire that have until now been largely unexplored. The Department of History at İstanbul Bilgi University would like to invite you to this international gathering that will include contributions on work and labor in India, the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, Russia, as well as reflections on shifts in global labour relations over the last five hundred years. For further information please contact Tevfik Karatop: [email protected] M. Erdem Kabadayı: [email protected] PROGRAM Session I 14:00 – 16:00 Vijaya Ramaswamy (Jawaharlal Nehru University) – Craft Technologies and Craft Communities in Peninsular India: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries Bidisha Dhar (University of Jadavpur / International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam) – The Embroidery Artisans of Lucknow (India) Since 1850s Suraiya Faroqhi (Istanbul Bilgi University) – Bursa Artisans of the late 18th century Coffee Break

16:00 – 16:30

Session II 16:30 – 18:30 Gijs Kessler (International Institute of Social History, Moscow) - Changing Labour Relations in Manual Brickmaking, Russia 15th - 20th centuries Gavin Brockett (Wilfrid Laurier University) / M. Erdem Kabadayı (Istanbul Bilgi University) - Crafts and Occupations from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic Jan Lucasssen / Karin Hofmeester (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam) – Explaining shifts in labour relations worldwide between 1500 - 2000

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