Rethinking Labor History

The fundamentals guiding labor historians are under scrutiny today as never before. The field has attempted to uncover the socioeconomic conditions that produced labor militancy and class consciousness, with scholars focusing on proletarianization---the loss of control over the production process---as the key to class conflict. Currently, this entire approach is being questioned.
In Rethinking Labor History, nine well-known French labor historians join the debate. Advocates of both revisionist Marxism and discourse analysis are represented, and examples of empirical research emerging from the theoretical disputes are included.
 

Lenard R. Berlanstein is Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and the author of "The Barristers of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century" (1975) and "The Working People of Paris, 1871-1914" (1984), both from Johns Hopkins.

Lenard R. Berlanstein was Commonwealth Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia.