In July 1998, the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, INFN, decided to make its researchers start clocking in and out of the lab. They did not know the backlash this would inspire: not only at the institute but also across the world. Hundred of scientists around the world wrote in support of the INFN professor‘s complaints: saying that the book was needlessly bureaucratic, insulting, and out of step with how the researchers actually worked.
Even after a drastic rise in wage labour after the Civil War, it was compared to prostitution or slavery, sometimes by white workers wanting distance between sex workers and enslaved Black people. But Black free people too noticed the similarity of a hireling to a slave. Richard L. Davis, a miner, maintained that “none of us who toil for our daily bread are free.” “At one time we were chattel slaves, today we are, white and Black, wage slaves.”
Nanni notes the colonial missions tried to induce people not simply to work, but to work in a regular and uniform manner for a specific period of time per day. This view of abstract labour hours could not have been more alien to task-oriented communities, who recognized their activities based on different ecological and cultural cues, such as the flowering and rooting of certain plants, and where things took however much time they took. /1
so-soI had way more fun with the visual storytelling and turn-the-book text gimmick than with the fairly schmaltzy message and somewhat cliche/confused narrative. I think I would look for other Santat picture books for that pictures alone.
Best inclusion of a back of book barcode in the cover art I've seen in a while. 😁
