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Complicating Categories: An Introduction

  • Eileen Boris and Angélique Janssens
Extract

This 1999 Supplement of the International Review of Social History focuses on complicating central concepts in the understanding of economic and social history: class, gender, race and ethnicity. In concentrating on industrial workers, their politics, and institutions, labor and working-class history had tended to ignore gender, race, and ethnicity as discursive and material forces. It discussed the woman or black or immigrant worker as a subset of worker, assumed to be male, white, and of the dominant national or ethnic group. Only during recent years have historians began to ask how gender, race, and ethnicity as categories of analysis change narratives of class formation and working-class experience. This question has become particularly salient as the European Union and the United States seek to grapple with the human consequences of colonial and imperialist legacies both within and beyond national boundaries in an increasingly global economy.

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References
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1. Frader, Laura L. and Rose, Sonya O., “Introduction: Gender and the Reconstruction of European Working-Class History”, in Frader, Laura L. and Rose, Sonya O. (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1996), p. 10 ; Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and The Politics of History (New York, 1988), pp. 72 , 79. See also Alexander, Sally, “Women, Class, and Sexual Difference”, History Workshop, 17 (1984), p. 131.

2. Roediger, David R., The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991) ; idem, “‘Labor in White Skin’: Race and Working Class History”, in Roediger, David, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness (London, 1994), p. 25 ; idem, “The Crisis in Labor History: Race, Gender and the Replotting of the Working Class Past in the United States”, in Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, pp. 69-81. Similarly, see Hill, Herbert, “The Problem of Race in American Labor History”, Reviews in American History, 24 (1996), pp. 189208 ; Painter, Nell Irvin, “The New Labor History and the Historical Moment”, International journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2 (1989), pp. 369370.

3. Higgenbotham, Evelyn Brooks, “African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race”, Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 17 (1992), pp. 251274 ; Frank, Dana, “White Working-Class Women and the Race Question”, International Labor and Working-Class History, 54 (1998), pp. 80102.

4. For history, Kessler-Harris, Alice, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York, 1982) ; Scott, Joan Wallach and Tilly, Louise, Women, Work, and Family (New York, 1978) ; for theory , Barrett, Michele, Women's Oppression Today (London, 1980) ; Sargent, Lydia (ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (Boston, MA, 1981) ; Walby, Sylvia, Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford, 1990) . For die dual systems critique , , Frader and , Rose, “Introduction”, p. 19.

5. For one summary of old and new directions, Sharpe, Pamela and Bradley, Harriet (eds), Labour History Review, 63 (1998) , special issue on “Gendering Work: Historical Approaches”.

6. Excellent summaries of the literature are found in Frader and Rose, “Introduction”, and the remaining essays in Gender and Class in Modern Europe, see also Baron, Ava, Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (Ithaca, NY, 1991) . For the home , Boris, Eileen, “The Home as a Workplace: Deconstructing Dichotomy”, International Review of Social History, 39 (1994), pp. 415428.

7. , Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”, in Gender and the Politics of History, pp. 2852 ; Baron, Ava, “On Looking at Men: Masculinity and the Making of a Gendered Working-Class History”, in Shapiro, Ann-Louise (ed.), Feminists Revision History (New Brunswick, NJ, 1994.). PP. 146171.

8. Some recent critiques include duCille, Ann, “The Occult of True Black Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies”, Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 19 (1994), pp. 591629 ; Friedman, Susan Stanford, ”Beyond White and Other: Relationality and Narratives of Race in Feminist Discourse“, Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 21 (1995), pp. 149 ; see also Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, ”Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses“, in Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Russo, Ann, and Torres, Lourdes (eds), Third World Feminisms and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington, IN, 1991), pp. 5180.

9. For example, Palmer, Phyllis, Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920–1945 (Philadelphia, PA, 1989).

10. Notable examples include Jones, Jacqueline, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family (New York, 1985) ; Hunter, Tera W., To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives After the Civil War (Cambridge, MA, 1997) ; Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia, PA, 1986.) ; Ruiz, Vicki L., Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950 (Albuquerque, NM, 1987) ; Tabili, Laura, ‘We Ask British Justice’: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, NY, 1994) genders black working-class men. Recent work in Australia also has reclaimed the history of Aboriginals. See McGrath, Ann and Saunders, Kay, with Huggins, Jackie, “Aboriginal Workers”, special issue of Labour History, 69 (1995).

11. For example, the forum on Nelson, Bruce, “Class, Race, and Democracy in the CIO: The ‘New’ Labor History Meets the ‘Wages of Whiteness’”, International Review of Social History, 41 (1996), pp. 351374 , which dismisses the comments of Elizabeth Faue.

12. Arnesen, Eric, “Up from Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History”, Reviews in American History, 26 (1998), pp. 146147.

13. Dawley, Alan and Trotter, Joe William Jr, “Race and Class”, Labor History, 35 (1994), p. 486.

14. Barrett, James R. and Roediger, David, “Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality and the ‘New Immigrant’ Working Class”, Journal of American Ethnic History, 16 (1997), pp. 344 ; Jacobson, Mathew Frye, Whiteness of a Different Color (Cambridge, MA, 1998) ; Brodkin, Karen, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America (New Brunswick, NJ, 1998) ; Gutierrez, Raymond, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, CA, 1991).

15. , Dawley and , Trotter Jr, ”Race and Class“, p. 492 . For examples , Boyle, Kevin, ”The Kiss: Racial and Gender Conflict in a 1950s Automobile Factory“, Journal of American History, 84 1997.) PP. 496523 ; Boris, Eileen, “You Wouldn't Want One of Em Dancing With Your Wife: Racialized Bodies on the Job in WWII”, American Quarterly, 50 (1998), pp. 77108.

16. Hodes, Martha, ”Introduction: Interconnecting and Diverging Narratives“, in Hodes, Martha (ed.), Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York, 1999), p. 1 ; see also Pascoe, Peggy, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth-Century America”, The Journal of American History, 81 (1996), pp. 4469.

17. Liu, Tessie, ”Teaching die Differences Among Women from a Historical Perspective: Rethinking Race and Gender as Social Categories“, Women's Studies International Forum, 14 (1991), p. 271.

18. For one attempt that privileges race, Anthias, Floya and Yuvaly-Davis, Nira with Cain, Harriet, Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle (London, 1992.).

19. Curthoys, Ann, “The Three Body Problem: Feminism and Chaos Theory”, Hecate, 17 (1991), pp. 1421.

20. See also Frager, Ruth A., ”Labour History and the Interlocking Hierarchies of Class, Ethnicity, and Gender“, International Review of Social History, 44 (1999), pp. 217247.

21. Clancy-Smith, Julia and Gouda, Frances (eds), Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville, VA, 1998) ; Lewis, Earl and Ardizzone, Heidi, “A Modern Cinderella: Race, Sexuality, and Social Class in the Rhinelander Case”, International Labor and Working-Class History, 51 (1997), pp. 129147.

22. For a sample, see Wing, Adrien Katherine, Critical Race Feminism (New York, 1997).

23. Young, Iris Marion, “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective”, Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 19 (1994), pp. 713738 ; Rose, Sonya O., “Class Formation and the Quintessential Worker”, in Hall, John R. (ed.), Reworking Class (Ithaca, NY, 1997.). PP. 133166.

24. For example, Stoler, Ann Laura, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia”, in Leonardo, Micaela di (ed.), Gender At the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era (Berkeley, CA, 1991), pp. 51101 ; McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York, 1995) ; Boris, Eileen, ‘The Racialized Gendered State: Conceptions of Citizenship in the United States’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 2 (1995), pp. 160180.

25. Scott, Joan Wallach, Only Paradoxes To Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 6.

26. Sacks, Karen Brodkin, “Toward a Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender”, American Ethnologist, 16 (1989), p. 534.

27. See, for example, Workers in Racially Stratified Societies”, thematic issue of International Labor and Working-Class History, 51 (1997).

28. See essays in Hall, Reworking Class.

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International Review of Social History
  • ISSN: 0020-8590
  • EISSN: 1469-512X
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