Labour-Related Conventions and Configurations of Meaning: France, Germany and Great Britain prior to the Second World War ... : Arbeitsbezogene Konventionen und Sinnkonfigurationen: Frankreich, Deutschland und Großbritannien vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ...

Using the economics of convention, this contribution aims at develop an approach capable of explaining the long-term national idiosyncrasies and describing them as stable configurations of meaning. One takes the example of labour in three European countries, France, Germany and Great-Britain, by focussing on the Interwar. Three interconnected objectives are pursued: theoretical (defining labour as activity of realisation); methodological (finding a historical narrative based on conventions and not on institutions); illustrative (shedding light on the deep specificities of the meanings of labour among the three countries). A red line runs along the paper, that of offering a coherent variety of arguments in favour of conventions-based history. It is stressed that in economic and social coordination conventions are prior to institutions. Social objects (in particular institutions) have to be analysed as sedimentations and rearrangements of conventions along history. In such a perspective, historical research ... : Historical Social Research Vol. 36, No. 4 (2011) ...