Rethinking U.S. Labor History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience

Abstract

In the opening paragraph of their introduction to this collection of essays, the editors note that it has been twenty-five years since the publication of the “path-breaking” Working-Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society (coedited by Michael B. Frisch and Daniel J. Walkowitz, 1983), which announced the arrival of the new labor history (p. 1). While the editors hope that this current volume will also serve “as a marker of an important transitional moment in labor history,” it is not clear that the essays included here show as much of a paradigm shift as that earlier work (ibid.). Where the new labor history changed the focus from working-class institutions (that is, unions) to workers, this collection continues that tradition of writing history from the bottom up. Indeed, the last three essays, included in a section labeled “New Directions in U.S. Labor History,” are specifically meant to suggest new theoretical approaches that historians of labor and the working class should adopt. The first eight essays, in contrast, are meant to showcase new, original research by leading scholars in the field.