Class and Other Identities: Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labour History.

Class and Other Identities: Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labour History. By Marcel van der Linden and Lex Heerma van Voss (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2002. vi plus 256 pp. Cloth $69.95, Paper $25.00).

For the past ten years, American labor history has been involved in a prolonged state of reflection (or crisis depending on whom you ask). Labor historians have struggled to respond to the cultural turn in history and the perceived challenge it offered to the notion of class, that bedrock concept of labor and working-class history. With reactions ranging from an enthusiastic embrace of language and representation to a stubborn affirmation of the primacy of economic and material forces in history, most US labor historians have ended up somewhere in between. This collection, Class and Other Identities: Gender Religion and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labour History, offers an account of the situation in Western European labor history, written mostly by historians working in England or continental Europe. The book ends with a series of invaluable bibliographical tools, including lists of all periodicals dealing with Western European labor history, of bibliographical essays in this field since 1965, of relevant biographical dictionaries, of websites, and of recent monographs in the field.

As the essays in this collection reveal, European labor historians have dealt with very similar issues as their American colleagues. Is class dead? Does accounting properly for gender, ethnicity or religion mean an end to the predominant role labor historians accorded to class? Without such a dominant role for class, can there be such a thing as labor or working class history? What methods or theoretical insights could allow labor historians to get a grip on the complex interaction of social, cultural, and economic forces in the creation of the multiple identities we now accord workers in the past?

This collection, edited by Marcel van der Linden and Lex Heerma van Voss, is organized in a straightforward fashion to engage these questions. Two introductory essays outline the current state of the field, analyzing the causes of crisis and assessing potential cures. The editors' introduction offers an overview of the major phases of Western European labor history from its nineteenth century origins through the 1990s. The second essay, by Jurgen Kocka, "New Trends in Labour Movement Historiography: A German Perspective," contrasts the sense of crisis in labor history with the continuities found in published scholarship and weighs proposed new directions for the field. The next four essays take up the question of class and its main competitors. Mike Savage writes on "Class and Labour History," followed by Eileen Yeo on "Gender in Labour and Working-Class History," John Belchem on "Ethnicity and Labour History, with Special Reference to Irish Migration" and Patrick Pasture on "The Role of Religion in Social and Labour History". Outside assessment of this collective act of reflection is provided in the form of critiques by Alice Kessler-Harris ("Two Labour Histories or One?") and Janaki Nair ("Paradigm Lost? The Futures of Labour History").

Although the scholars collected here (leaving aside Kessler-Harris and Nair for the moment) offer contrasting perspectives and emphases, they agree to a large extent on the state of their field and the possibilities for future development. As a group, they accord blame for the erosion of class analysis to factors both outside and inside the academy: on the one hand, an increasingly conservative political climate, accompanied by the decline of workers' movements and, on the other hand, rising interest in alternate sources of identity (gender, ethnicity, race, religion) and the turn to linguistic and symbolic analysis. On the whole, these scholars accept the legitimacy of new directions encouraged by "identity politics" while rejecting or resisting the linguistic turn and (not surprisingly) deploring the broader political situation. Hope for the future therefore seems to lie in new ways of conceiving class and of assessing its interaction with other forms of identity. Gender (usually meaning women but sometimes men and masculinity too) emerges as the frontrunner among these categories, universally accepted and often embraced. Ethnicity and religion are frequently mentioned, but clearly have not acquired the same status or legitimacy.

Interesting suggestions for new directions emerge throughout the collection. Mike Savage calls for a new attention to "space" and "place" in labor history, which he proposes to examine from the perspective of sociological network analysis. Eileen Yeo advocates an exploration of relations among women within and across classes. In examining the varied interactions of religion and class for Irish Catholics in Australia, England and America, John Belchem highlights the importance of comparative work and the insights into the public/private divide to be gained through a study of ethnicity and ethnic-based communal associations. Patrick Pasture argues that focusing on religion would allow labor historians to contribute to a new understanding of religion and religious belief as well as revealing non-economic forms of social cleavage that helped shape the working class.

When all is said and done, the critiques by Kessler-Harris and Nair strike home, particularly for a North American audience. As Kessler-Harris points out, the authors' lack of enthusiasm for the "excesses" of the linguistic turn risks resulting in an insensitivity to language and discourse. She is also correct in noting that the "Marxist" versus "post-structuralist" framework running through the collection has outlived its shelf-life. This slightly dated feel is perhaps not surprising, given that the collection originated in a 1997 congress organized by the International Institute of Social History. Since that date scholars in other fields may not have reached consensus on a new paradigm, but they at least seem to have agreed not to structure every discussion around this by-now caricatural opposition. Yet even Kessler-Harris does not adequately explain the insistence (which she seems to share) on retaining class as a primary category of analysis, a question Nair raises with regard to the collection as a whole. Does granting the need for a "gendered and racialised conception of class" (p. 139) really get us out of the class quagmire? One is also struck by the overall lack of recognition accorded to North American historians working in European labour history.

This book will be a valuable asset to scholars and, in particular, to students preparing for preliminary examinations and dissertation research. The essays offer thoughtful evaluations of past and present research in European labor history and suggest important new areas of investigation. The bibliographic tools alone ensure the book a wide audience inside and outside the field.

Clare Crowston

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign