LABOR COMMODIFICATION AND SKILLED SELVES IN LATE 19TH-CENTURY AUSTRALIA

This article uses the concept of labour commodification to critique co mmon historiographical portraits of skilled workers in transition to i ndustrial capitalism. The meanings with which skilled workers in late nineteenth-century Australia understood their own labour went far beyo nd a repertoire of technical abilities. They viewed skill as a socio-b iological disposition specific to a human type (adult, male, Anglo-Sax on), and this view intimately connected artisans' work and selfhood. C apitalist industrial change threatened to disrupt those connections. T he notoriously exclusive union policies skilled workers invented can t hus be seen as designed not simply to position their members more adva ntageously on the labour market, but to protect: artisanal selves and identities from the corrosive effects of labour commodification.