in the beginning, there was labor...

Also from Digby (in Update 2 to this post), the Engels article "The Party Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man", 1876. (available at Marxists.org, here)

Good for use either in early man section 1st semester, or in labor unit in 2nd semester.

Oaxacans like to work bent over!

Title of a paper describing berry farm laborers in Washington state (pdf). Salon review by Andrew Leonard here. Opening pages describe harsh and even violent conditions based on racial and citizenship hierarchies in the camps... yes camps, as the Primo Levy reference makes clear. From Leonard:

Holmes loads a hefty basket of theory to explain what he means by "symbolic violence" and the project of "denaturalizing" social inequities, by which I think he means making it so that society does not see brute exploitation as a normal or accepted practice.

So an interesting potential assignment about social inequality and hierarchy, from a cultural-anthropological and economic approach. Nifty!