Book launch: Mattie Armstrong: Respectability on the line (Hybrid)

This event is hosted by The Centre for Law & Social Change (SOAS). The Centre for Law and Social Change is a place for projects encouraging interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral and intergenerational collaboration, with a focus on progressive social change and a commitment to active anti-racist, feminist, and decolonial practice. The event is hybrid and we will send a joining link to those who have registered. In-person at SOAS, R201, Main Building, second floor. We will be providing some iftar snacks, and feel free to bring your own. Wheelchair accessible venue. About the Author: Mattie Armstrong-Price is Assistant Professor of History at Fordham University. Before coming to Fordham, they were a member of the Michigan Society of Fellows, having done their graduate work at UC Berkeley. They study labor, technology, and gender in modern imperial Britain and have published with History of the Present, Mediations, South Atlantic Quarterly, and Postmodern Culture. About the discussant: Dr Aparajita Mukhopadhyay is a Lecturer in 19th-century imperial history, at the University of Kent. Dr Mukhopadhyay gained her BA, MA and MPhil from Delhi University, India, before completing a PhD at SOAS University of London which investigated the role railways played in shaping colonial Indian society. About the book: Respectability on the Line offers a social and cultural history of railway labor in Britain and colonial India from the 1840s through World War I. The book treats the railway industry as a microcosm through which to study the history of capitalism in the liberal imperial era. Using company records, Mattie Armstrong-Price shows how executives shaped the domestic and working lives of higher-grade employees with an eye to cultivating their respectability. Meanwhile workers' writings reveal how railway towns provided opportunities for some employees to maintain non-heteronormative living arrangements. The book tracks these histories of everyday life while also outlining stories of early trade unionism. In Britain, railway unionists established benefit funds that mimicked company-sponsored provident funds, while in colonial India workers fought to gain access to company benefits on equal terms. This comparative study shows how industrial labor was made through conflict, subversion, and accommodation across an uneven imperial field.