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Taking Stock: Labor History during the Past Fifty Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2013

Neville Kirk
Neville Kirk*
Affiliation:
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
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Extract

This essay has two aims. The first is to provide a critical overview of the nature and development of labor history in selected places during the past fifty years. The second is to offer a critical evaluation of the recent “transnational turn” in labor history and its likely future development. Although reference is made to the global context and to labor history beyond national borders, my main focus rests upon the development of labor history in parts of the Americas and the countries of Britain, Ireland, Germany, India, Japan, and Australia.

Type
Review Essays
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 82 , Fall 2012 , pp. 156 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2013

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References

NOTES

1. Jones, Owen, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (London, 2011)Google Scholar.

2. Lockman, Zachary, “Reflections on Labor and Working-Class History in the Middle East and North Africa,” in Global Labour History: A State of the Art, ed. Lucassen, Jan (Bern, 2006), 117–46Google Scholar.

3. French, John D., “The Laboring and Middle-Class Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean: Historical Trajectories and New Research Directions,” in Global Labour History, 289–333 Google Scholar; Batalha, Claudio H.M., da Silva, Fernando Teixeira, and Fortes, Alexandre, Culturas de Classe: Identidade E Diversidade Na Formacao do Operariado, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Editora da Unicamp, 2004)Google Scholar.

4. Burton, Antoinette, “Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating ‘British’ History,” in Cultures of Empire: A Reader, ed. Hall, Catherine (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar, ch. 6.

5. See the essays by McIlroy, John, Duncan, Robert, Hopkin, Deian, and O'Connor, Emmet in Making History: Organizations of Labour Historians in Britain since 1960, eds. McIlroy, John, Campbell, Alan, Halstead, John, and Martin, David (London, 2010)Google Scholar.

6. Thompson, Dorothy, ed., The Essential E.P. Thompson (New York, 2001)Google Scholar, Introduction; Palmer, Bryan, E.P. Thompson: Objections and Oppositions (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Thompson, Dorothy, ed., Beyond the Frontier: The Politics of a Failed Mission (Woodbridge, 1994)Google Scholar; Thompson, E.P., Alien Homage: Edward Thompson and Rabindanath Tagore (Delhi, 1993)Google Scholar; Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1991 edition), 469–85Google Scholar.

7. For transnationalism's “promise” to “redraw” labor history's map, see Price, Richard, “Histories of Labour and Labour History”, Labour History Review 75 (2010): 263–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. French, John D., “Another World History is Possible: Reflections on the Translocal, Transnational, and Global,” in Workers across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History, ed. Fink, Leon (Oxford, 2011)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

9. See, for example, the contributions by Lucassen himself, Marcel van der Linden, Shelton Stromquist, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Ratna Saptari, Ian Phimister, Lex Heerma van Voss, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, and Lucy Taksa.

10. Labour History Review 74 (2009)Google Scholar; 75 (2010).

11. See, for example, Kirk, Neville, Comrades and Cousins: Globalization Workers and Labour Movements in Britain, the USA, and Australia from the 1880s to 1914 (London, 2003)Google Scholar; Kirk, , Labour and the Politics of Empire; Britain and Australia 1900 to the Present (Manchester, 2011)Google Scholar; Frank, Billy, Horner, Craig, and Stewart, David, eds., The British Labour Movement and Imperialism (with Foreword by Tony Benn) (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010)Google Scholar.

12. Dyrenfurth, Nick, Heroes and Villains: The Rise and Fall of the Early Australian Labor Party (Melbourne, 2011)Google Scholar, Introduction; Worley, Matthew, ed., Labour's Grass Roots: Essays on the Activities of Local Labour Parties and Members 1918–45 (Aldershot, 2005)Google Scholar; Worley, “Building the Party”; Kirk, Labour and the Politics of Empire, ch. 1.

13. Lake, Marilyn and Reynolds, Henry, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Carlton, Vic., Australia, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Kenefick, William, “Confronting White Labourism: Socialism, Syndicalism and the Role of the Scottish Radical Left in South Africa before 1914,” International Review of Social History 55 (2010): 29–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hyslop, Jonathan, “Scottish Labour, Race and Southern African Empire c. 1880–1922: A Reply to Kenefick,” International Review of Social History 55 (2010): 63–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sangster, Joan, “Fifty Years of Labour History: Gendering Labour History across Borders,” Labour History Review 75 (2010): 143–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.