BOOK: Nate HOLDREN, Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). ISBN 9781108488709, £ 47.99

(Source: CUP)

Cambridge University Press is publishing a new book on workplace accidents and the law in the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) in the US.

ABOUT THE BOOK

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nate Holdren, Drake University, Iowa

Nate Holdren is Assistant Professor in Law, Politics and Society at Drake University, Iowa.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: injuries and abstractions

Part I. The Eclipse of Recognition and The Rise of The Tyranny of The Table:

1. Commodification and recognition within the tyranny of the trial

2. Injury impoverished

3. Suffering and the price of life and limb

Interlude: trampler and tramped-on in the Cherry Mine fire

Part II. New Machineries of Injustice:

4. The disabling power of law and market

5. Insuring injustice

6. Discrimination technicians and human weeding

Conclusion: resistance and aftermath

Coda: narrative, machinery, law.

More info here