Social life, conducted within economic, political, and cultural boundaries, is fundamentally spatial. Adopting an explicitly geographical perspective, this volume demonstrates that labor unionism, no less than any other social practice, is spatial in nature as well.

These essays take up two primary questions: What is the relationship between workers' and unions' social practices and the making of the geography of capitalism? And, how does spatial sensitivity contribute to an understanding of workers' and unions' social behavior? The authors address these questions from a wide range of geographical scales, from the very local to the truly global, and in a variety of contexts including 1920s California, 1930s Massachusetts, 1940s Japan, and contemporary Eastern Europe. An essay by editor Andrew Herod offers a comprehensive review of work done in geography relating to the spatiality of labor unionism.