From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Mon Apr 18 2005 - 09:51:25 EDT
> "Labour History as the History of Multitudes" > Marcel van der Linden, Multitudes http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/1744204&mode=nested&ti> If this conclusion is justified, then labour historians will indeed > be expected to expand their field of research considerably. Linebaugh > and Rediker write: "The emphasis in modern labor history on the > white, male, skilled, waged, nationalist, propertied artisan/citizen > or industrial worker has hidden the history of the Atlantic > proletariat of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth > centuries." (Linebaugh and Rediker, 332) From the standpoint of someone who taught in a labor studies program for 19 years and is familiar with the way in which labor history and other working-class studies are taught, this idea that the emphasis of contemporary labor historians is on "white, skilled, waged, nationalist, propertied artisan/citizen or industrial worker ..." is quite absurd! From the standpoint of classroom instruction, I know of no instructor of labor history or working-class studies for whom the "emphasis" is so narrowly understood. Moreover, even the most casual examination of journals relating to labor history -- and dissertations written related to labor studies -- will show that the claim above about the narrow "field of research" and the emphasis among those doing research on these subjects is so far from the truth that it is comical: it's as if L & R are stuck in a time warp and haven't been brought up to date about research in the last 35 years. It is also not true that bonded labour, including slavery, is not discussed or emphasized by labor historians. Indeed, there has been an enormous amount of research on that topic in recent decades. I certainly know of no course in US labor history (which includes the 19th Century) that doesn't examine slavery. Indeed, I know of no US labor historian who thinks that subject isn't important from the standpoint of comprehending subsequent developments in US history and divisions within the working class. It is simply amazing to me that anyone would take such a claim seriously. But, I guess among politically-inspired researchers there's always the temptation to make exaggerated claims. In solidarity, Jerry
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