American Exceptionalism? U.S. Working-Class Formation in an International Context: Commonwealth Fund Conference, 1995

Abstract

ing labor historians and others for two days of extremely lively discussion. Several of the papers took on contentious issues that provoked spirited debate; it is a perhaps a measure of how irritating and yet influential the concept of exceptionalism still is that many of the points raised remained unresolved at the end of the conference. Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh kicked off the proceedings with their paper Notes on The Tempest and the Origins of Atlantic Capital ism, in which they explored the ways that working-class identity and consciousness were articulated both within the play and in the larger At lantic world. Their detailed and teasing analysis of Shakespeare's text underscored the potential value of shifting the conventional frame of working-class history back a century or two. Peter Thompson, using the same time scale for his paper on the moral economy of the Atlantic world, in echoing E. P. Thompson's famous phrase looked at some exam ples of sailors who had faced maritime famine?most notably those instances in which sailors had been compelled to eat their crewmates for survival. David Roediger and James Barrett (Inbetween Peoples: Race, Na tionality and the New Immigrant Working-Class) argued that in order to imbue the study of race and racism with significance, a meaningful chrono logical context is necessary. Theirs was a lengthy and wide-reaching look at the implications and effects on immigrants of their racial identity and cul tural assimilation into white American society. Following hot on their heels, James Grossman took this a step further in his paper 'Social Bur den' or Amiable Peasantry': Constructing a Place for Black Southerners and made it clear that the in question here concerned geography far less than the construction (by white American society) of a social loca tion or a place within society, which would depend on African Americans' acceptance of that place and the concomitant status it would bestow upon them. In her paper Present at the Creation: Working-Class Catholics in the United Leslie Woodcock Tentler sought to correct the so-called failure of labor historians to attend to religion, particularly as positive force in working-class life. Pointing out that while Protestants have always constituted a substantial majority in the United States, the working class