Workers Across the Americas
The Transnational Turn in Labor History
1st Edition
Published on 9. June 2011
Book
Hardback
488 pages
978-0-19-973163-3 (ISBN)
Description
The first major volume to place U.S.-centered labor history in a transnational or U.S.-in-the-world focus, Workers Across the Americas collects the newest work of leading Canadianist, Caribbeanist, and Latin American specialists, as well as U.S. historians. As distinct from comparative histories built around the integrity of their nation-state subjects, these essays highlight both the supra- or sub-national aspect of selected topics without ignoring the power of nation-states themselves as historical forces. Indeed, the transnational focus opens new avenues for understanding changes in the concepts, policies and practice of states, their interactions with each other and their populations, and the ways in which the popular classes resist, react, and use both nation-state and non-state entities to advance their interests.
What does this transnational turn encompass? And what are its likely perils as well as promise as a framework for research and analysis? To address these questions six eminent scholars (John French, Julie Greene, Neville Kirk, Aviva Chomsky, Dirk Hoerder, and Vic Satzewich) lead off the volume with their own critical commentaries on the very project of transnational labor history. Their responses effectively offer a tour of explanations, tensions, and cautions in the evolution of a new arena of research and writing. Thereafter, Workers Across the Americas groups fifteen research essays around themes of Labor and Empire, Indigenous Peoples and Labor Systems, International Feminism and Reproductive Labor, Labor Recruitment and Immigration Control, Transnational Labor Politics, and Labor Internationalism. Topics range from military labor in the British Empire to coffee workers on the Guatemalan/Mexican border to the Atlantic white slavery traffic to the role of the International Labor Organization in attempting to set common labor standards. Leading scholars--including Camille Guerin-Gonzalez, Alex Lichtenstein, Nelson Lichtenstein, Colleen O'Neill, Premilla Nadasen, and Bryan Palmer--introduce each section and also make recommendations for further reading.
What does this transnational turn encompass? And what are its likely perils as well as promise as a framework for research and analysis? To address these questions six eminent scholars (John French, Julie Greene, Neville Kirk, Aviva Chomsky, Dirk Hoerder, and Vic Satzewich) lead off the volume with their own critical commentaries on the very project of transnational labor history. Their responses effectively offer a tour of explanations, tensions, and cautions in the evolution of a new arena of research and writing. Thereafter, Workers Across the Americas groups fifteen research essays around themes of Labor and Empire, Indigenous Peoples and Labor Systems, International Feminism and Reproductive Labor, Labor Recruitment and Immigration Control, Transnational Labor Politics, and Labor Internationalism. Topics range from military labor in the British Empire to coffee workers on the Guatemalan/Mexican border to the Atlantic white slavery traffic to the role of the International Labor Organization in attempting to set common labor standards. Leading scholars--including Camille Guerin-Gonzalez, Alex Lichtenstein, Nelson Lichtenstein, Colleen O'Neill, Premilla Nadasen, and Bryan Palmer--introduce each section and also make recommendations for further reading.
Reviews / Votes
Labor historians have been slow to respond to the conceptual challenges posed by globalization, but this extraordinary collection more than makes up for the lag. Leon Fink has drawn together an impressive range of new transnational scholarship in an indispensable volume that breathes coherence and depth into a vital emerging field. * Brian Kelly, Queen's University Belfast * I'm convinced that this carefully edited collection of essays will be a standard reference for ten years or more. Based on solid empirical research and unconventional theorizing, Workers Across the Americas connects many areas of interest that working-class historians have either neglected or considered in isolation for too long. It explores connections between the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. It takes reproductive, indigenous, and military work seriously. And it begins to integrate the histories of 'free' and 'unfree' labor. I find this book a great source of inspiration * Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in labor history, political science, labor studies, and institutional economics
Illustrations
Chart
6 black and white halftones, 1 chart
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 31 mm
Weight
889 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-973163-3 (9780199731633)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
05/2011
1st Edition
Oxford University Press Inc
€80.70
Shipment within 15-20 days
E-Book
04/2011
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€27.49
Available for download
E-Book
04/2011
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€25.49
Available for download
Person
Distinguished Professor of History, University of Illinois at Chicago. Author, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (University of North Carolina, 2003); Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment (Harvard, 1998); In Search of the Working Class: Essays in American Labor History and Political Culture (U. of Illinois, 1994); Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (U. of Illinois, 1983).
Content
Preface - Leon Fink ; I. Beyond Borders: The Challenge of Transnational Labor History ; Introduction: Another 'World' History Is Possible: Latin Americanist Reflections on Translocal, Transnational, and Global History - John French ; Chapter 1: Historians of the World: Transnational Forces, Nation-States, and the Practice of U.S. History - Julie Greene ; Chapter 2: Transnational Labor History: Promise and Perils - Neville Kirk ; Chapter 3: Labor History as World History: Linking Regions over Time - Aviva Chomsky ; Chapter 4: Overlapping Spaces: Transregional and Transcultural - Dirk Hoerder ; Chapter 5: Transnational Migration: A New Historical Phenomenon? - Vic Satzewich ; II. Labor and Empire ; Introduction - Alex Lichtenstein ; Chapter 6: "Black service ... white money": The Peculiar Institution of Military Labor in the British Army during the Seven Years' War - Peter Way ; Chapter 7: "We Speak the Same Language in the New World": Capital, Class, and Community in Mexico's "American Century" - Steven Bachelor ; III. Indigenous Peoples and Labor Systems ; Introduction - Colleen O'Neill ; Chapter 8: Indigenous Labor in Mid-Nineteenth-Century British North America: The Mi'kmaq of Cape Breton and Squamish of British Columbia in Comparative Perspective - Andrew Parnaby ; Chapter 9: "De Facto Mexicans": Coffee Workers and Nationality on the Guatemalan/Mexican Border, 1931-1941 - Catherine Nolan-Ferrell ; IV. International Feminism and Reproductive Labor ; Introduction - Premilla Nadasen ; Chapter 10: "No Right to Layettes or Nursing Time": Maternity Leave and the Question of United States Exceptionalism - Eileen Boris ; Chapter 11: The Battle Within the Home: International Women's Year 1975 and the Debate Over Development Feminism, and the Commodification of Caring Labors - Jocelyn Olcott ; V. Labor Recruitment and Immigration Control ; Introduction - Camille Guerin-Gonzales ; Chapter 12: Feminizing White Slavery in the United States: Marcus Braun and the Transnational Traffic in White Bodies, 1890-1910 - Gunther Peck ; Chapter 13: Patronage and Progress: The Bracero Program from the Perspective of Mexico - Michael Snodgrass ; Chapter 14: Unspoken Exclusions: Race, Nation, and Empire in the Immigration Restrictions of the 1920s in North America and the Greater Caribbean - Lara Putnam ; VI. Transnational Labor Politics ; Introduction - Bryan D. Palmer ; Chapter 15: Reclaiming Political Space: Workers, Municipal Socialism and the Reconstruction of Local Democracy in Transnational Perspective - Shelton Stromquist ; Chapter 16: A Migrating Revolution: Mexican Political Organizers and their Rejection of American Assimilation, 1920-40 - John H. Flores ; VII. Labor Internationalism ; Introduction - Nelson Lichtenstein ; Chapter 17: Fugitive Slaves Across North America - Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie ; Chapter 18: Movable Type: Toronto's Transnational Printers, 1866-1872 - Jacob Remes ; Chapter 19: Global Sea or National Backwater? The ILO, Protective Subsidies, and the Shoals of Solidarity - Leon Fink ; Contributors ; Index