17th North American Labor History Conference, 1995 - Detroit

Abstract

The Seventeenth Annual North American Labor History Conference was held at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, from 19-21 October, 1995. Over 250 delegates attended the Conference, with papers based on the theme of 'Community and culture in working class history'. The conference organisers had selected papers carefully and there was a remarkable consistency across over 60 odd papers. The sessions were varied in scope and subject matter. Some focused on particular periods of US history (the progressive era, post war period, etc), while others looked at groups of workers like steel workers, textile workers, or those who laboured in the printing industry. Others took a thematic approach, looking at 'consumer culture', 'deindustrialization' or Tabor and the state'. Many were framed within an analysis of gender or ethnicity, two areas which appear to be real strengths in US labor history, although there was little if any material on Native American cultures. There was also a modest attempt to include a comparative aspect with some panels including a consideration of Canadian, Mexican, English, and European history. One particularly valuable session was a reflective analysis of 'Community as construct in working class history'. The terms 'working class community' and 'working class culture' still represent dominant categories of analysis in US labor history, following Herbert Guttman's influential contribution in the mid-1970s. While the concept of 'community' had its advantages, it was often used as a descriptive rather than a well-formulated analytic category, and many participants were uneasy about this. One notable absence in the Conference debates about community was a discussion of the way capitalism, through the process of investment and disinvestment, affects particular 'communities'. There was a session on this topic but it appeared to be compartmentalised off from other principal concerns; the result perhaps of a focus on the detailed shape of community life, rather than the broader forces which create, structure and sometimes destroy working-class communities. Continuing a now well-established tradition, a group of Australian labour historians attended the Conference and presented a panel on class and community in three industrial towns in Australia. Greg Patmore spoke on Lithgow, Bradon Ellem and John Shields covered Broken Hill in the 1920s, while Erik Eklund looked at Port Kembla in the early decades of this century. Presenting to an audience well versed in the discipline of labour history but not specifically in Australian material (with some notable exceptions) is a valuable experience, and the papers provoked some interesting discussion. The panel also had the benefit of a Canadian chair with a good knowledge of