In the past decade many “new labor historians” have shifted their emphasis away from a narrowly focused social and cultural history and, without abandoning social historical insights, have reengaged vigorously with political history. In addition to their earlier interest in defining a “working-class politics” and tracing how it fared within the electoral system, labor historians recently have begun to reassess the larger periodizing concepts in political history, including those relating to party formation, political mobilization, political language and ideology, and political culture. The result has been significant progress toward the goal first articulated by Herbert Gutman: to rethink the basic building blocks of American history in such a way as to take full account of the experiences, aspirations, and movements of working people and other subordinate groups studied by social historians.
