1st Edition

Colonization and Domestic Service Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Edited By Victoria K. Haskins, Claire Lowrie Copyright 2015
400 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

382 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

382 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This groundbreaking book brings together two key themes that have not been addressed together previously in any sustained way: domestic service and colonization. Colonization offers a rich and exciting new paradigm for analyzing the phenomenon of domestic labor by non-family workers, paid and otherwise. Colonization is used here in its broadest sense, to refer to the expropriation and... Read more

Introduction: Decolonizing Domestic Service: Introducing a New Agenda  Victoria K. Haskins and Claire Lowrie  1. An Historical Perspective: Colonial Continuities in the Global Geography of Domestic Service  B. W. Higman  Part I: Anxieties and Intimacies  Victoria K. Haskins and Claire Lowrie  2. Domesti-city: Colonial Anxieties and Postcolonial Fantasies in the Figure of the Maid  Shireen Ally  3. Settling In, From Within: Anglo-Indian ‘Lady Helps’ in 1920s New Zealand  Jane McCabe  4. ‘Ah Look Afta De Child Like Is Mine’: Discourses of Mothering in Jamaican Domestic Service, 1920-1970  Michele A. Johnson  5. ‘Always a Good Demand’: Aboriginal Child Domestic Servants in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Australia  Shirleene Robinson  6. Maids’ Talk: Linguistic Containment and Mobility for Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon  Fida Bizri  7. Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore: Historical and Contemporary Reflections on the Colonial Politics of Intimacy  Maria Platt  Part II: Domination and Resistance  Victoria K. Haskins and Claire Lowrie  8. ‘Strictly Legal Means’: Assault, Abuse and the Limits of Acceptable Behaviour in the Servant/Employer Relationship in Metropole and Colony 1850-1890  Fae Dussart  9. Imperial Legacies and Neoliberal Realities: Domestic Worker Organizing in Postcolonial New York City  Alana Lee Glaser  10. Tactics of Survival: Images of Aboriginal Women and Domestic Service  Michael Aird  11. ‘I Would Like the Girls at Home’: Domestic Labor and the Age of Discharge at Canadian Indian Residential Schools  Mary Jane Logan McCallum  12. White Women and Chinese ‘Houseboys’: Domestic Politics in Singapore and Darwin from the 1910s to the 1930s  Claire Lowrie  Part III: Legacies and Dreams  Victoria K. Haskins and Claire Lowrie  13. Baby Halder’s A Life Less Ordinary: A Transition from India’s Colonial Past?  Swapna M. Banerjee  14. From Our Own Backyard?: Understanding UK Au Pair Policy as Colonial Legacy and Neo-Colonial Dream  Rosie Cox  15. Taking Colonialism Home: Cook Island ‘Housegirls’ in New Zealand, 1939-1948  Charlotte Macdonald  16. British Caribbean Women Migrants and Domestic Service in Latin America, 1850-1950: Race, Gender and Colonial Legacies  Nicola Foote  17. Contemporary Balinese Cruise Ship Workers, Passengers and Employers: Colonial Patterns of Domestic Service  Pamela Nilan, Luh Putu Artini and Steven Threadgold  18. A Contemporary Perspective: ‘Picking the Fruit from the Tree’: From Colonial Legacy to Global Protections in Transnational Domestic Worker Activism  Jennifer N. Fish  Conclusion: Agency, Representation, and Subalternity: Some Concluding Thoughts Victoria K. Haskins and Claire Lowrie

Biography

Victoria K. Haskins is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Claire Lowrie is a Lecturer in History at the University of Wollongong, Australia.