scholarly journals Builders of Empire: Rewriting the Labor and Working-Class History of Anglo-American Global Power

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Julie Greene
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American

This Is Not a Game

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-82
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lead Poisoning ◽  
Import Substitution ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Socioeconomic Crisis

This chapter argues that lead poisoning acted as a metonym of a general social imaginary of crisis associated with the collapse of the neoliberal model while also being rooted in the legacies of the mid-twentieth-century Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) period. The chapter counters Uruguay’s modern foundational myths of “exceptionalism” with social imaginaries anchored in the militant working-class history of La Teja. The chapter critically examines these foundational myths in relation to the all-encompassing socioeconomic crisis that began in 2002, arguing that activists interpreted the lead-poisoning epidemic within the working-class counter-narrative of Uruguayan national identity and history, politics and society, and in dialogue with a counter-imaginary of crisis linked to the material and symbolic fallout of the neoliberal order.

scholarly journals “Mind Forg’d Manacles” and Recent Pathways to “New” Labor Histories

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan D. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
Survey Article ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Unfree Labor ◽  
Global Study ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of

AbstractSince the 1990s, labor history has been presented as “in crisis”. This negative evaluation is an overstatement. It has nevertheless prodded historians, often productively, to rethink the basic orientations of working-class history. This survey article explores three recent pathways to a “new” labor history: the turn to transnational and global study; the “new” history of capitalism; and the study of slavery as unfree labor. These new approaches to labor history highlight an old dilemma: how the structured determinations of laboring life are balanced alongside dimensions of human agency in understanding the complex experience of the working-class past. It is argued that we need to consider both structureandagency in the researching and writing of labor history. If an older “new” labor history accented agency, new pathways to labor history too often seem constrained by “mind forg’d manacles” that limit understandings of workers’ past lives by emphasizing structure and determination.

The Development of Labor History in UK Museums and the People's History Museum

2009 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-35
Author(s):  
Chris Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Common People ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Textile Conservation ◽  
Academic Labor ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of

Labor history in UK museums is constantly in a state of change. A hundred-year-old tradition of displaying and interpreting the history of the common people has seen a shift from the folk life museum to a much more all-encompassing model. The academic trend for and acceptance of working-class history began this process, and museums followed, albeit at a much slower pace. Young curators actively involved in the History Workshop, Oral History, and Women's History movements brought their new philosophies into the museum sphere. This internally driven change in museums has been matched with demand for change from above. Museums have been given a central role in the current Labour government's wide-ranging strategies to promote an understanding of diversity, citizenship, cultural identity, and lifelong learning as part of a broader social inclusion policy. The zenith of this plan would be a museum devoted to British national history, though whether this will take place is yet to be seen. The transformation of the People's History Museum makes an interesting case study. The museum, originally an institution on the fringes of academic labor history and actively outside the museum community, is now at the forefront of labor history display, interpretation, textile conservation, and working-class historical research.

Labor History and Public History: Introduction

2009 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Miller Klubock ◽  
Paulo Fontes
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Public History ◽  
Labor History ◽  
New Left ◽  
The United States ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Labor history and public history have had a long relationship in the United States, as James Green argues in Taking History to Heart, dating back to Progressive-era historians like Mary Ritter and Charles A. Beard. Labor historians like Phillip Foner, who identified with the “Old Left,” made labor history public history through ties to labor organizations and the Communist Party. Then, during the 1960s, historians identified with the “New Left” and inspired by E.P. Thompson, worked to extend social history and working-class history “from the bottom up” beyond the confines of the academy, even as they shifted their focus from the institutional histories of unions and political parties, to make the history of “ordinary people” and “everyday life” public history. The organization of history workshops and the proliferation of oral history projects reflect the ways in which historians of the working class made their practices public history in new ways during the 1960s and 1970s while expanding the sphere of both “the public” and “labor” to include histories of women, gender and patriarchy, and ethnic and racial minorities.

scholarly journals Ireland's Working-Class Literature: Neglected Themes, Amphibian Academics, and the Challenges Ahead

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Michael Pierse
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Working Class Literature ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Working People ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Work Songs ◽  
To Come ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry

Irish working-class history, culture, and literature are attracting increasing academic interest. With the publication of A History of Irish Working-Class Writing (2017), Declan Kiberd could write that its focus on ‘an astonishing range of writing – from work-songs and political rhymes to poetry and government reports, from novels and plays to biographies by or about working people’, would ‘set many of the terms of cultural debate in the decade to come’. This essay asks a number of timely questions in that regard: What is the likely shape of that future debate, in terms of class and culture in Ireland, and what are the lacunae that will guide research and publishing priorities for those who engage with it in academia and the arts? What has been achieved in terms of the recent scholarly inquiry into working-class writing and what are that inquiry's blindspots and limitations? The international contexts, historical breadth, categorical limitations, and institutional and societal challenges are all surveyed in this necessarily short sketch of some of the major issues.

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