Introduction: The Conservative Turn in Postwar United States Working-Class History

2008 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-75
Author(s):  
Jefferson Cowie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World ◽  
Working People ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Big Box ◽  
Conservative Turn

The topic of working-class conservatism in the postwar United States might seem a particularly narrow and nationally-specific theme for a journal that stakes its reputation on the broader terrain of comparative and transnational history. Yet, in so many ways, the United States—despite its recently diminished role both economically and militarily around the world—continues to be the center of the globe's economic and military power structure. To risk overstatement, the domestic politics of the United States are a central part of international politics. At the core of a nation's political culture, it might be added, are its working people, whether in dying industrial towns or burgeoning big box retail centers. Readers outside the United States might have some sympathy for the plea of British rocker Billy Bragg who included a note to his American fans in his 1988 release. “I have no vote in your Presidential election,” Bragg explained as the Reagan years wound to a close, “yet its outcome will directly affect my future and the future of millions of other people around the world. Forgive me for putting this immense responsibility on your shoulders… . Remember, when you elect a President, you are electing a President for all of us. Please be more careful this time.”

Visions of Japan and Other “Countries” in the World

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-67
Author(s):  
Gideon Fujiwara
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Regional Diversity ◽  
Northern Island ◽  
The World

This chapter begins by outlining Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival and the “opening” of Hakodate port. It analyses the crises of foreign policy and domestic politics of the United States and Japan after a historic treaty was signed to “open” Japan. With such awareness, the chapter documents Hirao Rosen's journeys to Ezo in 1855 and how he rediscovered “Japan,” its regional diversity, and its place within a larger global community. It reviews Rosen's observation on the governance of Matsumae castle town and Hakodate, as well as the diverse populations residing there. As an ethnographic scholar, he was perplexed to see peoples from the United States, England, and other European countries interacting freely, while noticing stark contrasts between the cultures and mannerisms of the Japanese and the Westerners. The chapter also discusses Rosen's documents on the local and Japanese cultures he encountered on the northern island, as well as the commonalities and differences in the seasonal festivals and ceremonies practiced locally and transmitted there from Tsugaru, Nanbu, and elsewhere in Japan. Ultimately, it focuses on Rosen's ethnographic inquiries on Tsugaru and Japan, and his engagement with kokugaku.

Scottsboro—and Collapse

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Horne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Black America ◽  
The World

This chapter focuses on the Scottsboro campaign. Buoyed by massive global support, the Scottsboro campaign took black America and then the nation by storm. Patterson asserted accurately in early 1934 that Scottsboro “has raised the question of international working class solidarity to its highest level.” Thus, he said beamingly, “Every Negro worker and toiling slave on the land breathes freer because of the activities of the ILD,” while the “southern landlord lynchers have learned to curse its name and to dread the presence of its organizations.” The main point, he stressed, was “a new understanding of the term—international working class solidarity.” Moreover, as a result of this case, “The world began to act on the [mal]treatment of [the] Negro.” This was particularly true in the aftermath of 1945, when the United States found it necessary to more effectively charge Moscow with human-rights violations—in part to counter Moscow's charges about Washington's deficiencies in this crucial realm.

scholarly journals Italian Immigrants and Working-Class Movements in the United States: A Personal Reflection on Class and Ethnicity

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolph J. Vecoli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Important Work ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Italian Americans ◽  
Italian American ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Italian Immigrants ◽  
American Radicalism

Abstract The article argues that the locus of the most interesting and important work in the fields of immigration and labor history lies precisely at the intersection of class and ethnicity. In developing this thesis, particularly with respect to Italian immigrant working-class movements in the United States, the author draws on his experiences as a working-class ethnic and historian as well as his readings of the literature. In the course of his research on Italian immigrants in Chicago, the author stumbled upon the submerged, indeed suppressed, history of the Italian American left. Italian-American working-class history has since been the focus of his work. Since mainstream institutions had neglected the records of this history, the recovery of rich documentation on Italian American radicalism has been a source of particular satisfaction. These movements had also been "forgotten" by the Italian Americans themselves. Despite important work by a handful of American scholars, relatively few Italian American historians have given attention to this dimension of the Italian American experience. Curiously the topic has received more attention from scholars in Italy. Mass emigration as much as revolutionary movements was an expression of the social upheavals of turn-of-the-century Italy. As participants in those events, the immigrants brought more or less inchoate ideas of class and ethnicity to America with them. Here they developed class and ethnic identities as Italian-American workers. The construction of those identities has been a process in which the Italian immigrants have been protagonists, filtering cultural messages through the sieve of their own experiences, memories, and values. Historians of labor and immigration need to plumb the sources of class and ethnic identity more imaginatively and sensitively, recognizing that personal identity is a whole of which class and ethnicity are inseparable aspects. The author calls upon historians to salvage and restore the concepts of class and ethnicity as useful categories of analysis.

scholarly journals The Ties Allowed to Bind: Kinship Legalities and Migration Restriction in the Interwar Americas

2013 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 191-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Putnam
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Patterns ◽  
The World ◽  
Work Family ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Impact ◽  
New System

AbstractNew immigration restrictions in the United States and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s made legal entry dependent on specific kinship formalities. This article explores the impact of the new system through a study of British Caribbean migrants. Because family patterns and the place of church and state sanction within them varied greatly by class—here, as in many parts of the world—the result was a curtailment of mobility that affected elites very little, and working-class would-be migrants enormously. In order to elucidate de facto patterns of exclusion, the author concludes, historians of transnational labor must begin paying more attention to the work “family” does.

A People's Theater on Skid Row

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (9) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Walda Katz-Fishman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Skid Row ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World

In Acting Like It Matters, James McEnteer gives a compassionate account of John Malpede—actor, activist, and co-creator of the political theatre troupe the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD)—and of the Skid Row community that is the organization's heart and soul. The story of Malpede and the LAPD is one of life as art and art as life, and its protagonists are the dehumanized homeless citizens of Los Angeles and their compatriots in cities across the United States and the world, who represent a growing part of today's global working class pushed out of the formal economy.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization, the State and the Extra-Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics

2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
System A ◽  
The World ◽  
Transnational Civil Society ◽  
Mexican Politics

How should we conceptualize membership, citizenship and political community in a world where migrants and their home states increasingly maintain and cultivate their formal and informal ties? This study analyzes the extra-territorial conduct of Mexican politics and the emergence of new migrant membership practices and relations between migrants and home states. Standard globalist, transnationalist or citizenship theories cannot properly contextualize and analyze such practices. I propose that we rethink the concept of membership in a political community not only as a Marshallian status granted by states, but also as an instituted process embedded within four other institutions and processes: home state domestic politics; the home state's relationship to the world system; a semi-autonomous transnational civil society created in part by migration; and the context of reception of migrants in the United States. A main conclusion is that the state itself plays a key role in creating transnational political action by migrants and new migrant membership practices. The article draws on printed sources and interviews and ethnography done since 1990.

Placing and Preserving Labor History

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83
Author(s):  
Rachel Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American History ◽  
Public History ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Working Class History

This article focuses on the significance of sites and landscapes of labor history in public history, particularly in the fields of preservation and interpretation. Through the preservation of labor history sites, public historians can educate various audiences about the diversity of the working-class experience in the United States. Although sites of work have long been identified as historically significant, all too often the workers have been excluded from these narratives. By understanding which sites are important in working-class history and by bringing workers’ voices into the act of protecting, commemorating, and interpreting sites of labor, we can achieve a more inclusive view of labor history—one that connects these stories to the national narrative and illustrates the centrality of labor and labor activism to American history.

Combat in the Streets

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Jentz ◽  
Richard Schneirov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Labor Leader ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
Working People

This chapter discusses the great railroad strike of 1877. In the summer of 1877, the United States experienced its first national strike, an unorganized, spontaneous rebellion of working people in cities from Baltimore and Pittsburgh to St. Louis and Chicago. The Great Strike produced a fundamental change in public awareness. Beforehand, according to Socialist and labor leader George Schilling, “the labor question was of little or no importance to the average citizen.” After the strike, no one could deny that there was a “labor question” or a working class that did not feel on an “equal footing” with the rest of society. In the new climate of opinion, the Socialists prospered because they had answers to the new labor question, whereas others had denied its existence.

Writing Working-Class History from the Bottom Up and Beyond

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-34
Author(s):  
Talitha L. LeFlouria
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Book ◽  
Made In

This essay recognizes the important role the Working Class in American History book series has played in shaping our understanding of the historical experiences of African American and women workers in the United States. It outlines the advancements historians have made in the field of working-class labor history and challenges scholars to incorporate the stories of informal, enslaved, and incarcerated workers.

scholarly journals Persecution and Martyrdom: Global Debates and Christian Responses

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
M. CHRISTIAN GREEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
The World

The Article Examines Religious Persecution, In The United States And Abroad, Through The Lens Of An Extreme Result Of Persecution: Martyrdom. It Examines Maximal And Minimal Definitions Of Martyrdom And Recent Claims And Instances Of Martyrdom, Both In United States Law And Political Culture And Against Christian And Other Religious Groups Around The World. The Article Concludes With Some Principles From Which To Discern An Ethic Of Martyrdom And Claims Of Martyrdom, Recommending Especially Attention To The Role Of The Martyr As Witness. KEYWORDS: Religious Persecution, Martyrdom, Law And Religion, Human Rights, Religious Freedom, Ethics, Witness

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