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Labor history

April 30, 2024

For other uses, see Labor history (disambiguation).

Labor history is a sub-discipline of social history which specializes on the history of the working classes and the labor movement. Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors besides class but chiefly focus on urban or industrial societies which distinguishes it from rural history.

The central concerns of labor historians include industrial relations and forms of labor protest (strikes, lock-outs), the rise of mass politics (especially the rise of socialism) and the social and cultural history of the industrial working classes.

Labor history developed in tandem with the growth of a self-conscious working-class political movement in many Western countries in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Whilst early labor historians were drawn to protest movements such as Luddism and Chartism, the focus of labor history was often on institutions: chiefly the labor unions and political parties. Exponents of this institutional approach included Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The work of the Webbs, and other pioneers of the discipline, was marked by optimism about the capacity of the labor movement to effect fundamental social change and a tendency to see its development as a process of steady, inevitable and unstoppable progress.

As two contemporary labor historians have noted, early work in the field was "designed to service and celebrate the Labor movement."[1]

Marxist influence edit

Further information: Historiography of the United Kingdom § Marxist historians

In the 1950s to 1970s, labor history was redefined and expanded in focus by a number of historians, amongst whom the most prominent and influential figures were E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. The motivation came from current left-wing politics in Britain and the United States and reached red-hot intensity. Kenneth O. Morgan, a more traditional liberal historian, explains the dynamic:

the ferocity of argument owed more to current politics, the unions' winter of discontent [in 1979], and rise of a hard-left militant tendency within the world of academic history as well as within the Labour Party. The new history was often strongly Marxist, which fed through the work of brilliant evangelists like Raphael Samuel into the New Left Review, a famous journal like Past and Present, the Society of Labour History and the work of a large number of younger scholars engaged in the field. Non-scholars like Tony Benn joined in. The new influence of Marxism upon Labour studies came to affect the study of history as a whole.[2]

Morgan sees benefits:

In many ways, this was highly beneficial: it encouraged the study of the dynamics of social history rather than a narrow formal institutional view of labor and the history of the Labour Party; it sought to place the experience of working people within a wider technical and ideological context; it encouraged a more adventurous range of sources, 'history from below' so-called, and rescued them from what Thompson memorably called the 'condescension of posterity'; it brought the idea of class centre-stage in the treatment of working-class history, where I had always felt it belonged; it shed new light on the poor and dispossessed for whom the source materials were far more scrappy than those for the bourgeoisie, and made original use of popular evidence like oral history, not much used before.[3]

Morgan tells of the downside as well:

But the Marxist – or sometimes Trotskyist – emphasis in Labour studies was too often doctrinaire and intolerant of non-Marxist dissent–it was also too often plain wrong, distorting the evidence within a narrow doctrinaire framework. I felt it incumbent upon me to help rescue it. But this was not always fun. I recall addressing a history meeting in Cardiff... when, for the only time in my life, I was subjected to an incoherent series of attacks of a highly personal kind, playing the man not the ball, focusing on my accent, my being at Oxford and the supposedly reactionary tendencies of my empiricist colleagues.[4]

Thompson and Hobsbawm were Marxists who were critical of the existing labor movement in Britain. They were concerned to approach history "from below" and to explore the agency and activity of working people at the workplace, in protest movements and in social and cultural activities. Thompson's seminal study The Making of the English Working Class[5] was particularly influential in setting a new agenda for labor historians and locating the importance of the study of labor for social history in general. Also in the 1950s and 1960s, historians began to give serious attention to groups who had previously been largely neglected, such as women and non-caucasian ethnic groups. Some historians situated their studies of gender and race within a class analysis: for example, C. L. R. James, a Marxist who wrote about the struggles of blacks in the Haitian Revolution. Others questioned whether class was a more important social category than gender or race and pointed to racism, patriarchy and other examples of division and oppression within the working class.

Labor history remains centered on two fundamental sets of interest: institutional histories of workers' organizations, and the "history from below" approach of the Marxist historians.

Despite the influence of the Marxists, many labor historians rejected the revolutionary implications implicit in the work of Thompson, Hobsbawm et al. In the 1980s, the importance of class itself, as an historical social relationship and explanatory concept, began to be widely challenged. Some notable labor historians turned from Marxism to embrace a postmodernist approach, emphasizing the importance of language and questioning whether classes could be so considered if they did not use a "language of class". Other historians emphasized the weaknesses and moderation of the historic labor movement, arguing that social development had been characterized more by accommodation, acceptance of the social order and cross-class collaboration than by conflict and dramatic change.

United States edit

Main article: Labor history of the United States

Labor history in the United States is primarily based in history departments, with occasional representation inside labor unions. The scholarship deals with the institutional history of labor unions and the social history of workers. In recent years there's been special attention to historically marginal groups, especially blacks, women, Hispanics and Asians.[6] The Study Group on International Labor and Working-Class History was established: 1971 and has a membership of 1000. It publishes International Labor and Working-Class History.[7] H-LABOR is a daily email-based discussion group formed in 1993 that reaches over a thousand scholars and advanced students.[8] the Labor and Working-Class History Association formed in 1988 and publishes Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas.

Prominent scholars include John R. Commons (1862–1945),[9] David Brody (b. 1930),[10] Melvyn Dubofsky,[11] David Montgomery (1927–2011),[12] and Joseph A. McCartin (born 1959).[13]

United Kingdom edit

Kirk (2010) surveys labor historiography in Britain since the formation of the Society for the Study of Labour History in 1960. He reports that labor history has been mostly pragmatic, eclectic and empirical; it has played an important role in historiographical debates, such as those revolving around history from below, institutionalism versus the social history of labor, class, populism, gender, language, postmodernism and the turn to politics. Kirk rejects suggestions that the field is declining, and stresses its innovation, modification and renewal. Kirk also detects a move into conservative insularity and academicism. He recommends a more extensive and critical engagement with the kinds of comparative, transnational and global concerns increasingly popular among labor historians elsewhere, and calls for a revival of public and political interest in the topics.[14] Meanwhile, Navickas, (2011) examines recent scholarship including the histories of collective action, environment and human ecology, and gender issues, with a focus on work by James Epstein, Malcolm Chase, and Peter Jones.[15]

Outside the Marxist orbit, social historians paid a good deal of attention to labor history as well.[16]

Addison notes that in Britain by the 1990s, labor history was, "in sharp decline", because:

there was no longer much interest in history of the white, male working-class. Instead the 'cultural turn' encouraged historians to explore wartime constructions of gender, race, citizenship and national identity.[17]

Others edit

For most of its history China had a limited industrial sector, but the Treaty of Shimonoseki brought the growth of factories and a new working class in the country.[18]

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ Mike Savage and Andrew Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class, 1840–1940, Routledge, 1994, p. 1. ISBN 0-415-07320-0
  2. ^ Kenneth O. Morgan, My Histories (University of Wales Press, 2015) p 85.
  3. ^ Morgan, My Histories (2015) p 86.
  4. ^ Morgan, My Histories (2015), p. 86. online at JSTOR.
  5. ^ E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1963. ISBN 0-14-013603-7.
  6. ^ Daniel J. Walkowitz and Donna T. Haverty-Stacke, eds. Rethinking U.S. Labor History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756-2009 (2010)
  7. ^ See ILWCH Website
  8. ^ See H-LABOR website
  9. ^ John Rogers Commons, Myself (1934), his autobiography.
  10. ^ David Brody, "The old labor history and the new: In search of an American working class." Labor History(1979) 20#1 pp: 111-126.
  11. ^ Melvyn Dubofsky (b. 1934), Hard Work: The Making of Labor History (2000) excerpt
  12. ^ David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (1980) excerpt
  13. ^ Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-21. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997; and Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America. Oxford University Press, 2011.
  14. ^ Neville Kirk, "Challenge, Crisis, and Renewal? Themes in the Labour History of Britain, 1960–2010," Labour History Review, Aug 2010, Vol. 75 Issue 2, pp 162-180
  15. ^ Katrina Navickas, "What happened to class? New histories of labour and collective action in Britain," Social History, May 2011, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 192-204
  16. ^ John McIlroy, "Asa Briggs and the Emergence of Labour History in Post-War Britain." Labour History Review 77.2 (2012): 211-242.
  17. ^ Paul Addison and Harriet Jones, eds. A Companion to Contemporary Britain: 1939-2000 (2005) p. 4
  18. ^ Shaffer, Lynda (1981). "Modern Chinese Labor History, 1895-1949". International Labor and Working-Class History. 20 (20): 31–37. doi:10.1017/S0147547900000296. JSTOR 27671371. S2CID 143258181 – via JSTOR.

Further reading edit

  • Allen, Joan, Alan Campbell, Eric Hobsbawm and John McIlroy. Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (2010)
  • Arnesen, Eric. Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (3 Vol 2006)
  • Kirk, Neville. "Challenge, Crisis, and Renewal? Themes in the Labour History of Britain, 1960–2010," Labour History Review, Aug 2010, Vol. 75 Issue 2, pp 162–180
  • Linden, Marcel van der. Transnational Labour History: Explorations (2003)
  • McIlroy, John. "Asa Briggs and the Emergence of Labour History in Post-War Britain." Labour History Review 77.2 (2012): 211–242.
  • Mapes, Kathleen, and Randi Storch. "The Making and Remaking of a Labor Historian: Interview with James R. Barrett." Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas. 13.2 (2016): 63–79.
  • Navickas, Katrina. "What happened to class? New histories of labour and collective action in Britain," Social History, May 2011, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 192–204
  • Price, Richard. "Histories of Labour and Labour History," Labour History Review, Dec 2010, Vol. 75 Issue 3, pp 263–270, on Britain
  • Robert, Jean-Louis, Antoine Prost and Chris Wrigley, eds. The Emergence of European Trade Unionism (2004)
  • Heerma van Voss, Lex, and Marcel van der Linden, eds. Class and Other Identities: Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labor History (Berghahn Books, 2002)
  • Walkowitz, Daniel J., and Donna T. Haverty-Stacke, eds. Rethinking U.S. Labor History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756-2009 (2010)

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Labor history.

Canada

  • British Columbia Labour Heritage Centre
  • Canadian Committee on Labour History
  • Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies

United States

  • Pacific Northwest Labor History Association
  • Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project
  • Illinois Labor History Society
  • New York Labor History Association
  • U. of Hawai'i - Center for Labor Education & Research
  • Michigan Labor History Society
  • Pennsylvania Labor History Society
  • Rhode Island Labor History Society
  • Wisconsin Labor History Society
  • Greater New Haven Labor History Association

Europe

  • Working Class Movement Library
  • Society for the Study of Labour History

April 30, 2024
labor, history, other, uses, disambiguation, discipline, social, history, which, specializes, history, working, classes, labor, movement, labor, historians, concern, themselves, with, issues, gender, race, ethnicity, other, factors, besides, class, chiefly, fo. For other uses see Labor history disambiguation Labor history is a sub discipline of social history which specializes on the history of the working classes and the labor movement Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender race ethnicity and other factors besides class but chiefly focus on urban or industrial societies which distinguishes it from rural history The central concerns of labor historians include industrial relations and forms of labor protest strikes lock outs the rise of mass politics especially the rise of socialism and the social and cultural history of the industrial working classes Labor history developed in tandem with the growth of a self conscious working class political movement in many Western countries in the latter half of the nineteenth century Whilst early labor historians were drawn to protest movements such as Luddism and Chartism the focus of labor history was often on institutions chiefly the labor unions and political parties Exponents of this institutional approach included Sidney and Beatrice Webb The work of the Webbs and other pioneers of the discipline was marked by optimism about the capacity of the labor movement to effect fundamental social change and a tendency to see its development as a process of steady inevitable and unstoppable progress As two contemporary labor historians have noted early work in the field was designed to service and celebrate the Labor movement 1 Contents 1 Marxist influence 2 United States 3 United Kingdom 4 Others 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Further reading 8 External linksMarxist influence editFurther information Historiography of the United Kingdom Marxist historians In the 1950s to 1970s labor history was redefined and expanded in focus by a number of historians amongst whom the most prominent and influential figures were E P Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm The motivation came from current left wing politics in Britain and the United States and reached red hot intensity Kenneth O Morgan a more traditional liberal historian explains the dynamic the ferocity of argument owed more to current politics the unions winter of discontent in 1979 and rise of a hard left militant tendency within the world of academic history as well as within the Labour Party The new history was often strongly Marxist which fed through the work of brilliant evangelists like Raphael Samuel into the New Left Review a famous journal like Past and Present the Society of Labour History and the work of a large number of younger scholars engaged in the field Non scholars like Tony Benn joined in The new influence of Marxism upon Labour studies came to affect the study of history as a whole 2 Morgan sees benefits In many ways this was highly beneficial it encouraged the study of the dynamics of social history rather than a narrow formal institutional view of labor and the history of the Labour Party it sought to place the experience of working people within a wider technical and ideological context it encouraged a more adventurous range of sources history from below so called and rescued them from what Thompson memorably called the condescension of posterity it brought the idea of class centre stage in the treatment of working class history where I had always felt it belonged it shed new light on the poor and dispossessed for whom the source materials were far more scrappy than those for the bourgeoisie and made original use of popular evidence like oral history not much used before 3 Morgan tells of the downside as well But the Marxist or sometimes Trotskyist emphasis in Labour studies was too often doctrinaire and intolerant of non Marxist dissent it was also too often plain wrong distorting the evidence within a narrow doctrinaire framework I felt it incumbent upon me to help rescue it But this was not always fun I recall addressing a history meeting in Cardiff when for the only time in my life I was subjected to an incoherent series of attacks of a highly personal kind playing the man not the ball focusing on my accent my being at Oxford and the supposedly reactionary tendencies of my empiricist colleagues 4 Thompson and Hobsbawm were Marxists who were critical of the existing labor movement in Britain They were concerned to approach history from below and to explore the agency and activity of working people at the workplace in protest movements and in social and cultural activities Thompson s seminal study The Making of the English Working Class 5 was particularly influential in setting a new agenda for labor historians and locating the importance of the study of labor for social history in general Also in the 1950s and 1960s historians began to give serious attention to groups who had previously been largely neglected such as women and non caucasian ethnic groups Some historians situated their studies of gender and race within a class analysis for example C L R James a Marxist who wrote about the struggles of blacks in the Haitian Revolution Others questioned whether class was a more important social category than gender or race and pointed to racism patriarchy and other examples of division and oppression within the working class Labor history remains centered on two fundamental sets of interest institutional histories of workers organizations and the history from below approach of the Marxist historians Despite the influence of the Marxists many labor historians rejected the revolutionary implications implicit in the work of Thompson Hobsbawm et al In the 1980s the importance of class itself as an historical social relationship and explanatory concept began to be widely challenged Some notable labor historians turned from Marxism to embrace a postmodernist approach emphasizing the importance of language and questioning whether classes could be so considered if they did not use a language of class Other historians emphasized the weaknesses and moderation of the historic labor movement arguing that social development had been characterized more by accommodation acceptance of the social order and cross class collaboration than by conflict and dramatic change United States editMain article Labor history of the United States Labor history in the United States is primarily based in history departments with occasional representation inside labor unions The scholarship deals with the institutional history of labor unions and the social history of workers In recent years there s been special attention to historically marginal groups especially blacks women Hispanics and Asians 6 The Study Group on International Labor and Working Class History was established 1971 and has a membership of 1000 It publishes International Labor and Working Class History 7 H LABOR is a daily email based discussion group formed in 1993 that reaches over a thousand scholars and advanced students 8 the Labor and Working Class History Association formed in 1988 and publishes Labor Studies in Working Class History of the Americas Prominent scholars include John R Commons 1862 1945 9 David Brody b 1930 10 Melvyn Dubofsky 11 David Montgomery 1927 2011 12 and Joseph A McCartin born 1959 13 United Kingdom editKirk 2010 surveys labor historiography in Britain since the formation of the Society for the Study of Labour History in 1960 He reports that labor history has been mostly pragmatic eclectic and empirical it has played an important role in historiographical debates such as those revolving around history from below institutionalism versus the social history of labor class populism gender language postmodernism and the turn to politics Kirk rejects suggestions that the field is declining and stresses its innovation modification and renewal Kirk also detects a move into conservative insularity and academicism He recommends a more extensive and critical engagement with the kinds of comparative transnational and global concerns increasingly popular among labor historians elsewhere and calls for a revival of public and political interest in the topics 14 Meanwhile Navickas 2011 examines recent scholarship including the histories of collective action environment and human ecology and gender issues with a focus on work by James Epstein Malcolm Chase and Peter Jones 15 Outside the Marxist orbit social historians paid a good deal of attention to labor history as well 16 Addison notes that in Britain by the 1990s labor history was in sharp decline because there was no longer much interest in history of the white male working class Instead the cultural turn encouraged historians to explore wartime constructions of gender race citizenship and national identity 17 Others editFor most of its history China had a limited industrial sector but the Treaty of Shimonoseki brought the growth of factories and a new working class in the country 18 See also edit nbsp Organized labor portal Business history Communist Party Historians Group Critique of work Historiography of the United Kingdom New labor history History of trade unions in the United Kingdom Wisconsin Labor History SocietyNotes edit Mike Savage and Andrew Miles The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840 1940 Routledge 1994 p 1 ISBN 0 415 07320 0 Kenneth O Morgan My Histories University of Wales Press 2015 p 85 Morgan My Histories 2015 p 86 Morgan My Histories 2015 p 86 online at JSTOR E P Thompson The Making of the English Working Class Victor Gollancz Ltd 1963 ISBN 0 14 013603 7 Daniel J Walkowitz and Donna T Haverty Stacke eds Rethinking U S Labor History Essays on the Working Class Experience 1756 2009 2010 See ILWCH Website See H LABOR website John Rogers Commons Myself 1934 his autobiography David Brody The old labor history and the new In search of an American working class Labor History 1979 20 1 pp 111 126 Melvyn Dubofsky b 1934 Hard Work The Making of Labor History 2000 excerpt David Montgomery Workers Control in America Studies in the History of Work Technology and Labor Struggles 1980 excerpt Labor s Great War The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations 1912 21 Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina Press 1997 and Collision Course Ronald Reagan the Air Traffic Controllers and the Strike that Changed America Oxford University Press 2011 Neville Kirk Challenge Crisis and Renewal Themes in the Labour History of Britain 1960 2010 Labour History Review Aug 2010 Vol 75 Issue 2 pp 162 180 Katrina Navickas What happened to class New histories of labour and collective action in Britain Social History May 2011 Vol 36 Issue 2 pp 192 204 John McIlroy Asa Briggs and the Emergence of Labour History in Post War Britain Labour History Review 77 2 2012 211 242 Paul Addison and Harriet Jones eds A Companion to Contemporary Britain 1939 2000 2005 p 4 Shaffer Lynda 1981 Modern Chinese Labor History 1895 1949 International Labor and Working Class History 20 20 31 37 doi 10 1017 S0147547900000296 JSTOR 27671371 S2CID 143258181 via JSTOR Further reading editAllen Joan Alan Campbell Eric Hobsbawm and John McIlroy Histories of Labour National and International Perspectives 2010 Arnesen Eric Encyclopedia of U S Labor and Working Class History 3 Vol 2006 Kirk Neville Challenge Crisis and Renewal Themes in the Labour History of Britain 1960 2010 Labour History Review Aug 2010 Vol 75 Issue 2 pp 162 180 Linden Marcel van der Transnational Labour History Explorations 2003 McIlroy John Asa Briggs and the Emergence of Labour History in Post War Britain Labour History Review 77 2 2012 211 242 Mapes Kathleen and Randi Storch The Making and Remaking of a Labor Historian Interview with James R Barrett Labor Studies in Working Class History of the Americas 13 2 2016 63 79 Navickas Katrina What happened to class New histories of labour and collective action in Britain Social History May 2011 Vol 36 Issue 2 pp 192 204 Price Richard Histories of Labour and Labour History Labour History Review Dec 2010 Vol 75 Issue 3 pp 263 270 on Britain Robert Jean Louis Antoine Prost and Chris Wrigley eds The Emergence of European Trade Unionism 2004 Heerma van Voss Lex and Marcel van der Linden eds Class and Other Identities Gender Religion and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labor History Berghahn Books 2002 Walkowitz Daniel J and Donna T Haverty Stacke eds Rethinking U S Labor History Essays on the Working Class Experience 1756 2009 2010 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Labor history Canada Alberta Labour History Institute British Columbia Labour Heritage Centre Canadian Committee on Labour History Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies United States Pacific Northwest Labor History Association Seattle Civil Rights amp Labor History Project Illinois Labor History Society New York Labor History Association U of Hawai i Center for Labor Education amp Research Michigan Labor History Society Pennsylvania Labor History Society Rhode Island Labor History Society Wisconsin Labor History Society Greater New Haven Labor History Association Monroe County Michigan Labor History Museum Europe Working Class Movement Library Society for the Study of Labour History Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Labor history amp oldid 1216157227, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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