scholarly journals Working-Class Women’s Literature: An Introduction to Study

2014 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 62-76
Author(s):  
Paul Lauter
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Women's Literature ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Working Class Literature ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Working People ◽  
Industrial Novels

Writing ‒ and indeed thinking ‒ about working-class literature presents a number of unique problems. To begin with, what do we mean by “working-class literature”? Literature about working-class people, literature by them, or literature addressed to them? If we use the first definition, should we include works that are ignorant of or hostile to the working-class people they write about like some turn of-the-century “industrial” novels? If we focus on writing by working people, do we include pieces that do not deal with their lives or even with their real concerns, like some “popular” songs? Should we include, say, literature by people of working-class origins, like D. H. Lawrence?

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.

Working-Class Fictions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Industrial Community ◽  
Working People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Exciting Wave

This chapter explores why working-class fictions flourished in the period from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s and the distinctive contributions that they made to the post-war British and Irish novel. These writers of working-class fiction were celebrated for their bold, socially realistic, and often candid depictions of the lives and desires of ordinary working people. Their works were seen to herald a new and exciting wave of gritty social realism. The narrative focus on the individual signalled a shift in the history of working-class writing away from the plot staples of strikes and the industrial community, striking a chord with a post-war reading public keen to see ordinary lives represented in books in a complex and realistic manner. The cultural significance of such novels was enhanced as they were adapted in quick succession for a mass cinema audience by a group of radical film-makers.

Sustaining Labor Politics in Hard Times: Race, Labor, and Coalition Building in Racine, Wisconsin

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-63
Author(s):  
Naomi R Williams
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
Working People ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract This article explores the shifting politics of the Racine, Wisconsin, working-class community from World War II to the 1980s. It looks at the ways Black workers’ activism influenced local politics and how their efforts played out in the 1970s and 1980s. Case studies show how an expansive view of the boundaries of the Racine labor community led to cross-sector labor solidarity and labor-community coalitions that expanded economic citizenship rights for more working people in the city. The broad-based working-class vision pursued by the Racine labor community influenced local elections, housing and education, increased the number of workers with the power of unions behind them, and improved Racine's economic and social conditions. By the 1980s, Racine's labor community included not only industrial workers but also members of welfare and immigrants’ rights groups, parents of inner-city students, social workers and other white-collar public employees, and local and state politicians willing to support a class-based agenda in the political arena. Worker activists’ ability to maintain and adapt their notion of a broad-based labor community into the late twentieth century shows how this community and others like it responded to the upheaval of the 1960s social movements by creating a broad and relatively successful concept of worker solidarity that also incorporated racial justice.

Transition in Social Foundations for Collective Action

1980 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-451
Author(s):  
Craig Calhoun
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Working People ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Traditional Communities

During the 1820s and early 1830s, two largely different populations of working people lived alongside each other in the region surrounding Manchester. Today, they represent, in an important and clear contrast, the social foundations which have supported distinctive directions of popular protest and collective action. The theory of working-class radicalism, as developed by Marx and others, has tended to confound the two. The necessary radicalism and fundamental opposition to the growth of capitalist industry of more traditional communities of craft workers was wedded to the concentrated numbers of new industrial workers and the clarity of their exploitation by capitalists. This marriage took place in theory, but not in concrete social movements. The working class emerged as a foundation for basically reformist collective actions, while the radical and reactionary populist craftsmen lost the war of the industrial revolution.

“The Workingman's Bible”: Robert Blatchford's Merrie England, Radical Literacy, and the Making of Debsian Socialism, 1895–1900

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason D. Martinek
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social System ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Moral Indignation ◽  
Missionary Zeal ◽  
The People ◽  
Adequate Food

Turn-of-the-century socialists radicalized literacy. Unlike middle-class reformers, whose desire for mass literacy arose from the need for a hardworking, compliant workforce, socialists used it to undermine capitalism. Through their printed culture of dissent, they not only sought to transform individual lives, but an entire social system. They took up the task of using literacy to convert workers with a missionary zeal. Moral indignation fueled their crusade. In a nation of such wealth, they asked, why was it that so many industrious people did not have enough to provide themselves and their families with adequate food, clothing, and shelter? Their answer was that America's political and economic institutions had been corrupted by the nation's monied power. In their minds, only an enlightened, educated working-class could challenge the prerogatives of capital and make these institutions fully socially accountable to the people.

scholarly journals Styles of Life, the “Labour Aristocracy” and Class Relations in Later Nineteenth Century Edinburgh

1973 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Q. Gray
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
The Third ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Working People ◽  
Relative Earnings

The idea of a “labour aristocracy” pervades writing about the British working class of the second half, and especially the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This emphasis is, in my view, correct: the behaviour and consciousness of working people cannot be explained without some such concept of divisions within the working class. But this proposition has too often been allowed to conclude, rather than to commence the enquiry. The fragmentation of the manual working class into different strata and sub-cultures may take several forms, and is bound to have local and industrial variations. In approaching the problem it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between differences in the class situation of various groups of workers, and the formation of separate working class strata – a cultural and political process. Three main levels of analysis are relevant to this problem: the stratification within the working class, in terms of class situations (relative earnings, security, prospects and opportunities, position of subordination or autonomy in the workplace, and so on); the extent to which various strata of manual workers were distinguished by the cultivation of particular styles of life, and by commitment to particular sets of norms and values; and the consequences of these for institutions embodying the interest of manual workers as a class (unions, parties, etc.) and for the patterning of conflict and consensus in the society.

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