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class
Apr 21, 2011 4:31:31 GMT -5
Post by Katrina Navickas on Apr 21, 2011 4:31:31 GMT -5
Labour history has diversified in order to accommodate identities other than that of class. How do protest historians learn from this shift?
Why are medieval historians comfortable with using the term ‘class’, while modern historians now shy away from it?
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class
May 3, 2011 12:28:37 GMT -5
Post by mattroberts on May 3, 2011 12:28:37 GMT -5
What, exactly, is the debate about class nowadays?
Twenty or so years ago, it was largely about the debate between structuralists and postmodernists, which was not only a debate about how important class was but also where it issued from (structures or language). Although this generated a lot of controversy between the likes of Joyce, Vernon, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the latter-day Marxists in the 1980s and 1990s, the debate about class seems to have reached something of a stalemate. Many historians would recognise that class is only one of a number of identities and that it is partly a structural and partly a lingustic category. The result - as I say - is that I'm left wondering what the debate about class is nowadays?
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class
May 7, 2011 16:40:06 GMT -5
Post by shaun0113 on May 7, 2011 16:40:06 GMT -5
As Marxists would say a class for it self not just a class in it self, looking at the period 1790s -1830s, when modern forms of political protest developed, at the same time the idea of class did not really emerge until the 1820s ant best. With hindsight we can see the outcome but for contemporary participants nothing was decided. The use of pre industrial forms odf social protest is not at all surprising, you use the weapons you have available and are familiar with. The existence and role of trade unions during this period of course can no longer be denied but what was their role and perception of society. I think it would be right to say in the earlier part of this period that unions were attempting to defend customs and practices that brought them into conflict with the emerging capitalism and they looked back especially to the Elizabethan laws on apprenticeships to defend custom and practice, yet att te same time they could very far sighted. In the Leeds woollen trade we have the example of work sharing with no loss of jobs to accommodate the introduction of machinery, not wholesale opposition to its use.
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