Thammasat University students who are interested in business, economics, labor history, political science, sociology, culture, law, cultural and social anthropology, public policy, and related subjects may find a newly available book useful.

Working At Night: The Temporal Organisation of Labour Across Political and Economic Regimes is an Open Access book, available for free download at this link:

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/59638

The TU Library collection includes other books about different aspects of labor.

The publisher’s description of the book notes:

The night has always and almost universally represented a special ‘out of the ordinary’ temporal zone with its own meanings, possibilities, and dangers. It is only since the modern era that the night has become increasingly ‘normalised’. Although 24/7 industrial production is often seen as a consequence of capitalist expansion, other political and economic regimes adopted the ‘night shift’, normalising it as part of an alternative modernity.

The book’s editors are Professor Ger Duijzings, who teaches social anthropology at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and Dr. Lucie Dušková, who teaches at the Institute of Economic and Social History, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.

The introduction begins:

The night represents almost universally a special, liminal or “out of the ordinary” temporal zone with its own meanings, possibilities and dangers, and political, cultural, religious and social implications.
Only in the modern era was the night systematically “colonised” and nocturnal activity “normalised,” in terms of (industrial) labour and production processes. In the first instance, the night was a temporal and moral frontier that had to be conquered, which led to forms of resistance and “moral panics” regarding the various transgressions that the night presumably allowed, undermining daytime social expectations and norms.

Although the globalised 24/7 economy is usually seen as the outcome of capitalist modernisation, development and expansion starting in the late nineteenth century, other consecutive and more recent political and economic systems, like socialism, adopted perpetual production systems as well, extending work into the night and forcing workers to work the “night shift,” normalising it as part of an alternative non-capitalist modernity.

This volume draws attention to these extended work hours and night shift work, which have remained underexplored in the history of labour and the social science literature. By describing and comparing various political and economic “regimes,” it argues that, from the viewpoint of global labour history, night labour and the spread of 24/7 production and services should not be seen, only and exclusively, as an epiphenomenon of capitalist production, but rather as one of the outcomes of industrial modernity.

Not having the intention here to present an all-encompassing global history of night work, which is a far too ambitious task, we rather want to make a programmatic statement and open this field of investigation as an interesting and viable topic for future research. Based on diverse case studies offered in this volume, we would like to draw attention to the preconditions, implications and consequences of night labour.

Most of the texts gathered here focus on negotiating the conditions around the formalised night shifts, and their perception by the workers concerned and the impacts on society and family. To a lesser extent do they deal with the changes in life and circadian rhythms, which are covered in the literature on the adversarial physical, mental, behavioural and generally harmful health consequences for people working long hours and extended (evening or night) shifts.

The contributions also show that night labour is not limited to industrial shift work; there are other forms of informal, non-industrial and overtime work carried out during (part of) the night, such as (as mentioned in the texts) in the platform economy and service industry, in hospitals, bakeries, shops and internet-based services across time zones.

Nevertheless, the overall context of industrial modernity is crucial. Night shift work and other nocturnal forms of labour indeed primarily emerged during the early industrial period, enabled by artificial light, reinforced by the appearance of modern means of transportation and spawned by the rise of mobility and communication technologies connecting different parts of the world.

Hence, the night shift is intimately tied up with industrial modernity. The key game changers were coal, gas and light (from the beginning of the nineteenth century) and the mass-produced electric light bulb (from the 1880s onwards) which made a systematic extension of the work day into the night possible for the first time in history. One of the consequences was the creation of a full-fledged “night shift.”

Then, with the rise of chronometric instruments (clocks and watches) and standardised “rational time,” industrial production started to expand into the night, with an ever-increasing list of activities added: (public) transport and railway services, policing, night-watch and security services, medical care and firefighting services, postal services, (road) construction and maintenance work, gas and electricity supply services, newspaper presses, hotels, cleaning companies, mining, iron and steel works, etc.

Also, various other trades and businesses started to take place during the night, which often carried the stigma of belonging to the grey or informal economy; finally, the night also became host to “illicit” activities through which people tried to make a living (such as theft, burglaries and prostitution).

Most available research on nocturnal work patterns focuses on the negative consequences of sleep deprivation and the disruption of sleep patterns and circadian rhythms. Especially those working full night shifts experience adverse health effects.

Jonathan Crary has shown that military research enabling perpetual combat readiness among soldiers has been instrumental in encouraging a trend towards the “end of sleep” in other spheres of life. As is often the case, these military innovations percolate down to the rest of society, leading, amongst others, to the transformation of industrial production processes.

There are no reliable figures on how many workers worldwide are currently working at night or working night shifts, but in the US alone nearly 15 million Americans “work a permanent night shift or regularly rotate in and out of night shifts.”  […]

This volume aims at defining commonalities and particularities of night (shift) work for the modern period, starting with the era of early industrialisation to the current “neoliberal” and “post-industrial” stage of digital platform economies, covering various political and economic regimes that can be identified along the way.

The volume’s intention is to explore, through a number of case studies, the proliferation of night work, including work extending into the evening or the “small hours” (often not called the “night shift”) across various political and economic regimes. It addresses night work not only as a labour phenomenon but also as a contentious social and political issue, subject to public debate and expert opinion.

Hence, the volume investigates how different political and economic stakeholders (such as state officials, politicians, industrialists, workers, trade unions, labour organisations and health experts) have conceptualised and intervened in discussions around night work, covering the period from the end of the nineteenth to the start of the twenty-first century.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)