Contested Domains: Debates in International Labour Studies.

Authored between 1972 and 1990, nine previously-published essays (with wry new introductions) explore overt and covert ways by which workers worldwide are simultaneously controlled and seek to resist. Drawing on extensive experience in Nigeria and the West Indies, Cohen analyzes worker responses in over 15 countries, paying special attention to peasant-workers in developing nations and agricultural workers in the USA. His stance he defines as a form of "socialist realism," by which he means a focus on workers "without falling into the trap of romanticizing the proletariat or exaggerating the possibilities of it fulfilling its ascribed role as an unfailing and exclusive vanguard …