2026-richard-robinson-business-history-workshops

2026 RRBHW

6th Biennial Richard Robinson Business History Workshop

6th BIENNIAL

RICHARD ROBINSON BUSINESS HISTORY WORKSHOP

2026 Conference Title, The Past & Present of Work

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

April 30 - May 2, 2026 | Portland OR

Richard Joseph Robinson
(credit: PSU Archives Digital Gallery)

The Richard Robinson Business History Workshop at Portland State University has been made possible by a bequest from Richard Robinson.

Richard Joseph Robinson, who passed away in May 2014, was Professor Emeritus of Management and former Chair of Management in the School of Business Administration at Portland State University. He received the BS from Indiana University-Bloomington in 1949 and the MBA from the same institution the following year. In 1965 he earned the Doctorate of Business Administration from the University of Washington. Hired by Portland State University in 1962, he retired at the end of 1989. His publications include:

Co-authored with Wendell L. French, "Collective Bargaining by Nurses and Other Professionals: Anomaly or Trend?" Labor Law Journal, vol. 11, no. 10 (Oct. 1960), pp. 903-910, 944.
"How Should Business Behave?" in McGuire, Joseph William, ed., Interdisciplinary Studies in Business Behavior (Cincinnati: South-Western Pub Co, 1962), pp. 207-224.
"Personnel Practices in Denmark and Holland: An Environmental Analysis," DBA diss., University of Washington, 1966.
United States Business History, 1602-1988: A Chronology (Westport, Conn: Greenwood P, 1990).
Business History of the World: A Chronology (Westport, Conn: Greenwood P, 1993).

The Richard Robinson Business History Workshop has held small workshops on particular themes in business history since 2012.

THU 4.30.2026 | Keynote Address | 6:30pm

Preceded by Reception, 6:00pm

Smith Memorial Student Union
SMSU RM 294
1825 SW Broadway

Stanhope Gold Mine Photo for Keynote Speaker ay RRBHW

Contradictions of Freedom: African Labour Relations in Historical Perspective

Centuries of African labor relations reflect the broader history of African societies, yet this history is too often framed as a straightforward progression from unfreedom to freedom. In practice, what appears as a shift from slavery to free wage labor often involved structural displacements in which coercion was relabeled rather than eliminated, and multiple forms of labor relations coexisted simultaneously. Drawing on the comparative taxonomy developed by the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations (IISH, Amsterdam), this presentation examines African labor history as social change — while recognizing that change does not always mean progress. The binary of freedom versus unfreedom, though central, is insufficient on its own. Incorporating commodification, reciprocal labor, and tributary labor reveals that many arrangements contain internal contradictions even when they appear progressive. A productive lens for reading this history is to ask what makes certain labor and social arrangements seem inevitable, and what renders others transient.

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Stefano Bellucciis lecturer at the University of Leiden and senior researcher at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam Netherlands, where he served as head of the Africa Desk until 2015. His scholarship centers on the intersections of capitalism and labor in Africa, the history of African trade unionism, and the social and labor dimensions of Italian colonialism in Africa. Outside of academia, he has worked at UNESCO and the OECD. His publications include works in both English and Italian, including Africa contemporanea: Politica, cultura, istituzioni a sud del Sahara (Contemporary Africa: Politics, Culture, Institutions South of the Sahara) and Storia delle guerre africane: Dalla fine del colonialismo al neoliberalismo globale (History of African Wars: From the End of Colonialism to Global Neoliberalism), as well as a book co-authored with Holger Weiss, The Internationalisation of the Labour Question. He also leads the ILO-funded General Labour History of Africa project, a three-volume series, in addition to editing two book series with De Gruyter Brill and Palgrave. Bellucci is currently writing a history of international trade unionism in Africa.

(All times listed are Pacific Daylight Time)

All panels shown in the program are FREE and Open to the Public.
Those interested in attending the panels are welcome to read the papers beforehand.
For access to the papers, please email psu.business.history.workshop@gmail.com

Co-organizers:
Chia Yin Hsu (Portland State University)
Thomas M. Luckett (Portland State University)
Erika Vause (St. John’s University)

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

THU April 30th · SMSU 294

6:00 pm · RECEPTION
Refreshments | Meet & Greet

6:30 pm · KEYNOTE LECTURE

by Stefano Bellucci | International Institute of Social History & Leiden University
“Contradictions of Freedom: African Labor Relations in Historical Perspective”

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FRI May 1st · SMSU 328/9

8:30–9:00 Coffee

9:00–10:45 1 Small Business, Specialty Service, & Self-Employment

Chair: Erika Vause

Ronny Regev (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Humble Ventures: Rethinking the Work and Economic Lives of Small-Business Owners in the United States, 1880–1920” [Remote]
Robert P. Kaminski (University of Florida), “The Business of Brewing Labor: Labor-Relations Strategies in Late Nineteenth-Century Milwaukee and New York Breweries”
Xavier Jou-Badal (Pompeu Fabra University), “Gendered Labor Hierarchies and Mobility in the Chocolate Factory, Barcelona, 1910–1936”

10:45–11:00 Break

11:00–12:45 2 Mercantilist & Peri-Industrial Labor Discipline

Chair: Chia Yin Hsu

Flavian Minel (University of Perpignan & Lyon 3 Jean Moulin University), “Governing Labor as a Strategic Resource: Workforce Regulation, Mobility, and Institutional Conflict at the Pennautier Woolen Manufactory (1696–1740s)”
Roberto Rossi (University of Palermo), “Colonial Proto-Management: Discipline, Coercion, and Accounting in the Obrajes of the Spanish Americas, Eighteenth Century”
Noelle Turtur (European University Institute), “From Imperial Tribute to Fascist Extraction: Forced Labor at the Prasso Mining Concession in Jubdo”

12:45–2:30 Lunch

2:30–4:15 3 Plantations & Mines: Financing, Recruiting, & Debt Bondage

Chair: Erika Vause

Önder Eren Akgül (Northwestern University), “‘Life under Bondage and Domination’: The Çiftlik Business, Dispossession, and the Labor Regimes in the Late Ottoman Commercial Heartland”
Ritesh Kumar Jaiswal (University of Delhi & University of Bonn), “Chettiars & the World of Indian Migrants and Non-European Capital in the Bay of Bengal Rim of the Indian Ocean”
Rebekah McCallum (Independent Scholar), “Labor Recruitment Strategies for Company-Owned Tea Plantations in India: The Assam Labor Board, 1915–1933”

4:15–4:45 Break

4:45–6:30 4 Indentures, Labor Migrations, & Local/Indigenous Entrepreneurship

Chair: Thomas Luckett

Johan Mathew (Rutgers University), “Coercive Care: Maintaining Human Capital in the Witwatersrand Gold Mines, 1902–1950”
Dexnell Peters (University of West Indies at Mona) & Jamelia Harris (University of Warwick), “The Business Sector, Transition of Labor Systems and its Legacies in the Nineteenth-Century and Present-Day British Caribbean”
Sally Eunsong Yi (Princeton University), “‘Processing Aliens and Merchandise’: Trade, Immigration, and Industrialization in the Mariana Islands”

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SAT May 2nd · KMC 285

8:30–9:00 Coffee

9:00–10:15 5 Skills, Expertise, Identity, & Perceptions of Productive Work

Chair: Thomas Luckett

Hunter Moskowitz (Northeastern University), “‘Practical Men’: White Patriarchal Skill in the North American Textile Industry”
Santosh Kumar Rai (Delhi University), “Skills and Expertise in Business: Systems of Job Training & the Handloom Industry in Colonial North India” [Remote]

10:15–10:30 Break

10:30–12:15 6 Public-Private Welfare & Management: Colonial, Collectivist, & Neoliberal

Chair: Chia Yin Hsu

Trish Kahle (Georgetown University in Qatar), “The Heart of Electrical Empire: Meralco and its Employees in the American Colonial Philippines” [Remote]
Simon Neumaier (European University Institute), “Private Work for Public Consumers: Labor Management and Public Provisioning in Red Vienna”
Nicholas C. Scott (University of Chicago), “Neoliberal Managers and Territorial Labor Organizers: The Case of Chile’s Radio and Television Industry, 1965–1990”

12:15–1:45 Lunch

1:45–3:30 7 Technologies of Productivism: Animal Labor, Surveillance, & Automation

Chair: Erika Vause

David Schley (Durham University), “Can a Horse Go on Strike? Streetcar Drivers and Interspecies Labor in New York City, 1865–1893”
Bruno Settis (Gramsci Foundation Emilia-Romagna), “Authority and Surveillance in Mass Production: The Case of Fiat”
Salem Elzway (Vanderbilt University), “The Cybernetic Assembly Line: Robots, Technopolitics, and the Lordstown Strike of 1972”

3:30–4:00 Break

4:00–5:45 8 The Labor of Managers/Entrepreneurs: White-Collar Work, Niche Knowledge, & Social Status

Chair: Chia Yin Hsu

Aleksandr Turbin (University of Illinois Chicago), “‘German,’ ‘Russian,’ ‘Kunstovsky’: Workplace Hierarchies and the Strategic Performance of Identities in a ‘German’ Firm in the Early Twentieth-Century Russian Far East”
Bryna Goodman (University of Oregon), “The Labor of the Exchange: Employment and Mobility in an Early Chinese Financial Bubble”
Christophe Lécuyer (Sorbonne University Jussieu), “The Corporation as a Total Institution: Management-Employee Relations in Silicon Valley”

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