Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in Britain, the USA and Africa(St Antony's Series)

What are the different ways in which racial and class identities intersect? The ten essays in this volume explore this question from a number of different angles and in a variety of geographic settings ranging from the copper belt of the American Southwest to the coal mines of Nigeria. Sharing a common concern with the construction of working-class identities, the authors employ a range of methodologies as they examine the construction of group consciousness. Sensitive to the roles of culture and ideology, they ground their analyses firmly within economic life and the labour process. Rather than seeing identities as imposed upon working people from above, either by capital, culture brokers or political leaders, these essays restore to workers a sense of agency. Empirically rich and theoretically informed, the articles here deepen an understanding of the international dimension of labour history.

Table of Contents:
Notes on the Contributors Introduction Empire, Race, and Working-Class Mobilizations; D.Montgomery 'Mexican Labor' in a 'White Man's Town': Racism, Imperialism, and Industrialization in the Making of Arizona, 1840-1905; A.Y.Huginnie The 'Lady' Telephone Operator: Gendering Whiteness in the Bell System, 1900-1970; V.Green The Elusive Irishman: Ethnicity and the Postwar World of New York City and London Dockers; C.J.Davis A Racialized Hierarchy of Labour? Race, Immigration and the British Labour Movement, 1880-1950; K.Lunn Racism and Resistance in British Trade Unions, 1948-1979; S.Virdee Colonial Labour and Work Palaver: Labour Conflict in Britain and West Africa; D.Frost Becoming 'Men', Becoming 'Workers': Race, Gender and Workplace Struggle in the Nigerian Coal Industry, 1937-1949; C.A.Brown 'Did Not Come to Work on Monday': The East London Waterfront in Comparative Perspective, c.1930-1963; G.Minkley Back to Work: Categories, Boundaries and Connections in the Study of Labour; F.Cooper Index

About the Author :
PETER ALEXANDER, now Lecturer in Sociology at the Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, was, until recently, a Research Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His book, Workers, War and the Origins of Apartheid is forthcoming. Currently he is working on a comparative study of Transvaal and Alabama colliers in the early twentieth century. RICK HALPERN is Bissell-Heyd-Associates Chair of American Studies and Professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, Canada.