Gendered Division of Labor among Special Settlers in the Soviet Union, 1941–1956

In the early 1940s, the Germans of the Soviet Union were mobilized into the labor armies to work for the Soviet war effort. Despite the nationwide ‘feminization of machinery’ in the Soviet Union during the war years, German women deportees were denied access to skilled employment out of a mixture of gender stereotypes and fear of treason. Labor patterns and access to technology in labor armies thus offer a curious insight into the workings of a large sector of economy of the Soviet Union based on forced labor as well as help expose stereotypes about the gendered division of labor that persisted in the Soviet Union despite its many years of gender equality propaganda.     

Union labels and boycotts: Cooperation of the knights of labor and the cigar makers international union, 1885–6

Hard‐Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution, 1860–1910. By Mark Wyman. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979. x, 331 pp. $15.95.

Wage‐Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930. By Leslie Woodcock Tentler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. 266 pp. $14.95.

Feigned Necessity: Hawaii's Attempts to Obtain Chinese Contract Labor, 1921–1923. By John E. Reinecke. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, Inc., 1979. xvi, 697 pp., n.p.

Lumber and Politics: The Career of Mark E. Reed. By Robert E. Ficken. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. xi, 276 pp. $14.95.

The Mess in Washington: Manpower Mobilization in World War II. By George Q. Flynn. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1979. xi, 294 pp. $17.95.

The Great Fear: The Anti‐Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. By David Caute. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978. 638 pp. $14.95.

Which Side Are You On? The Brookside Mine Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. By Lynda Ann Ewen. Chicago: Vanguard Books, 1979. 139 pp. Appendix. $4.95.

A Ghetto Grows In Brooklyn. By Harold X. Connolly. New York: New York University Press, 1977. xv, 248 pp. $15.00.

Voices of Discord: Canadian Short Stories from the 1930's. Edited by Donna Phillips. Introduction by Kenneth J. Hughes. Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1979. 220 pp. $7.95.

Popular Disturbances in England: 1700–1870. By John Stevenson. New York: Longman, 1979. vii, 374 pp. $24.00.

Before The Welfare State: Social Administration in Early Industrial Brit‐tain. By Ursula R. Q. Henriques. New York: Longman, 1979. 294 pp. $10.50.

Aristocracy and People: Britain 1815–1865. By Norman Gash. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. vii, 375 pp. $20.00.

Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth‐Century London: John Gast and His Times. By I. J. Prothero. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 418 pp. $30.00.

The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability 1900–1914. Edited by Alan O'Day. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979. 199 pp. $19.95.

Goodbye to the Working Class: A Study of 122 Former Grammar School Children from Dagenham. By Roy Greenslade. London: Marion Boyars, 1979. 192 pp. $ 5.95.

The Action Française and Revolutionary Syndicalism. By Paul Mazgaj. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979. 281 pp. $24.95.

Paths To Authority: The Middle Class and the Industrial Labor Force in France, 1820–1848. By Peter N. Stearns. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. 222 pp. $12.95.

French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851. By Ted W. Marga‐dent. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. xxiv, 379 pp. $25.00.

The Service City: State and Townsmen In Russia, 1600–1800. By J. Michael Hittle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. viii, 297 pp. $20.00.

Karl Marx, Romantic Irony and the Proletariat: The Mythopoetic Origins of Marxism. By Leonard P. Wessell, Jr. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 297 pp. $20.00.     

Between Convergence and Exceptionalism: Americans and the British Model of Labor Relations,c. 1867–1920

Between the late 1860s and the aftermath of the First World War, American discourse about the ‘labor problem’—relations among workers, unions, employers, and the state—was permeated by comparisons. Reformers looked especially toward Britain, the first industrial nation, for clues about how to build an industrial relations system. This article explores how three generations of American employers reflected on what Britain's experience with relatively strong, recognized, legally secure unions could teach about how to handle the challenge of American labor. Their interest was serious, sustained, if discontinuous. It was most important at key moments of decision in the early 1900s and in 1918–19 when the Open Shop was first built, and then refurbished and defended. Examination of their understanding and representations of the British model of labor relations aids our appreciation of the ideological framework within which they conceived and constructed the American Way.     

Organizing for partnership: the influence of the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organisations on the British Trades Union Congress 1995–2005

The influence of the ‘organizing model’ of trade unionism developed in America by the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) on strategies to rebuild British trade unionism is often remarked. Scholars typically distinguish between adversarial organizing and collaborative partnership with employers as competing roads to union revitalization. This article demonstrates that the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) borrowed organizing principles, techniques and animating aphorisms from America, but not a model of trade unionism. The novelty of organizing lay more in its orchestration and recycling of familiar ideas than in its originality. In the hands of conservative leaders, organizing and partnership are not necessarily distinctive approaches. In Britain, as in America, organizing was proposed as a means to achieve partnership, not to prosecute conflict between capital and labour or create more democratic unions. It proved unsuccessful because of lack of resources, employer resistance and New Labour's unwillingness to provide a sufficiently pro-union public policy.     

Diversities of Class and Gender Experience and the Shaping of Labor Politics: Yorkshire's Manningham Mills Strike, 1890–91 and the Independent Labour Party

New evidence on gender and class reveals the diverse experiences of male and female workers in the worsted and in the rising silk plush industry in late nineteenth-century Bradford, Yorkshire and prompts a re-examination of the historiography surrounding the Manningham strike and labor politics. In the context of changing labor processes and the exclusionary policies of Yorkshire trade unionism, the striking velvet weavers in 1890–91 were developing their own political and organizational agenda based on gender cooperation and mutual support, similar to the trade unionism of Lancashire. This agenda was deflected by the rise of the Independent Labour Party and the onset of long-term industrial crisis in the West Riding.     

Religion,Same-Sex Desire,and the Imagined Geographies of Empire: the case of Constance Maynard (1849–1935)

Although a devout Evangelical, living in an era that largely predated the dissemination of sexological discourses of female same-sex desire, Constance Maynard (1849–1935), the prominent Victorian educational reformer, pursued a series of same-sex relationships. This essay focuses on Maynard's relationship with the Anglo-Irish Marion Wakefield (1876–1956), exploring the role of Maynard's erotic imagination in the constitution, contestation, and consolidation of the imagined geographies of imperialist discourse. Maynard's erotic positioning of her lover in diverse imperial landscapes reveals the ostensibly ‘private’ discourses of the erotic imagination to be profoundly implicated in the ‘public’ discourses of empire. At the same time, the domestic settings in which these landscapes were imagined and in which the women's illicit desires were enacted, pose a challenge to the gendered spatial dichotomies—private/public, domestic/imperial, and home/away—of both imperialist discourse and the historiography of empire.     

Land,conflict, and political process: the case of the Lacandon Community,Chiapas, Mexico (1972–2012)

This contribution analyses how indigenous land disputes have taken place within a political process and the political responses to land tenure disputes. It does so by analysing the case of the Comunidad Zona Lacandona (Lacandon Community; Chiapas, Mexico) and the land tenure disputes in which it has been involved during the period 1972–2012. The paper argues that the Lacandon Community (LC) has a micro-corporatist relationship with the state and that its creation has brought its beneficiaries (comuneros) into an ongoing dynamic of conflict and cooperation with the state, fellow landed communities, social and non-governmental organisations and guerrillas. By analysing its relationship with the state and the 40-year long conflict, the paper presents the way in which the LC has defended its land rights within institutional channels as well as by means of contentious action. The essay also shows how conflict has been dealt with within a political process and contributes to the theoretical understanding of the categories of micro-corporatism and political process as they are employed in those cases where indigenous peoples enter into conflict over land. Data for this paper comes from interviews, agrarian archives, public information requests, newspaper articles and ethnographies on the case study and the region.     

Colonial sedentarisation and subjugation: The case of the Banjaras of Berar 1850–1900

The Banjaras were a mobile community of central India. Portage of goods and services was their primary occupation. This brought them in contact with a whole spectrum of population from the plains to the hills. It also generated tremendous diversity within the Banjara society in terms of language, customs, beliefs and practices. It developed in them a rather casual, unorthodox and open attitude towards religion, family, and women. Many of the practices which were prohibited in the mainstream orthodox Hindu and Muslim society were freely practised in the Banjara Community. Practices such as courtship and pre‐marital sex; late marriage; widow re‐marriage and so on, were common social practices much to the suspicion of religious orthodoxy and the colonial state. Since the colonial state was ever suspicious and fearful of the moving people, the Banjaras became the target of colonial wrath. The main aim of the colonial state was to coerce the Banjaras to sedentirise into settled agriculture. The entire colonial police, bureaucracy and legal institution was organized to monitor and force the Banjaras to abandon their traditional lifestyle. This resulted not only in their cultural loss but also in their demographic decline. The Banjaras became the worst victims of colonial persecution and oppression. The famine cycle of 1890s hit the Banjaras the hardest. Even the mainstream Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy joined the colonial state in Banjara persecution. But the Banjaras struggled and resisted all attempts to exterminate their society and culture.     

Between tradition and modernity: Bulgarian women during the development of modern statehood and society, 1878–1945

Abstract

The paper attempts to draw the general outlines of women's input in the establishment of the modern Bulgarian state and society in the period 1878–1945. Set against the background of traditional roles and attitudes that were prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century, women's contributions include active participation in the nation's economy and labor force, disproportionately significant representation among the educated élite, nationally and internationally recognized achievements in the arts, and the establishment and promotion of Bulgarian feminism. The paper suggests that a detailed study of the public role played by women will achieve a more accurate understanding of the modernization process in the Balkans since women have tended to act in a trend-setting manner. Furthermore, Bulgarian feminism is viewed as an example of the existence of elements of a civil society in the region.     

‘In the case of a woman’ or ‘the headache’: married women’s nationality and Canada’s Citizenship Act at home and Europe, 1946–50

In addition to making Canadian nationality independent of British subjecthood, the 1946 Canadian Citizenship Act made women’s nationality independent of marriage, but did not repatriate women who married aliens before 1 January 1947, when the act became law. This article examines the lobby to repatriate the women, most of them married to European allied soldiers and living in Canada or Europe, and wider contexts involved. Scrutinizing the citizenship claims made by and for ‘ordinary’ but racially privileged white women in a dominion that was both a receiving nation on the cusp of renewed immigration and a neo-colonial state vis-a-vis Indigenous peoples, it acknowledges the woman’s heartfelt sentiments and assesses the lobby against the continuing disabilities imposed on status-Indian women who ‘married out.’ The delayed reform of 1950, which fell short of automatic repatriation, and the absence of feminists from a lobby related to a long-identified feminist issue, are also addressed, as are topics in need of further research.     

Peasants,proletarianization and the articulation of modes of production: The case of sugar cane cutters in northern Peru, 1940–69

This article examines the transformation of the labour market for sugar cane cutters in an area of Northern Peru between 1940 and the onset of the Agrarian Reform in 1969. The system of enganche (debt bondage) is described for one large sugar estate and is identified as a historically specific stage in the development of the labour market. This system disappeared in the 1960s, owing to a combination of population growth in the highlands, heavy rural‐urban migration, unionization of field labour and technical change in cane harvesting. The evidence presented suggests that the concept of the articulation of different modes of production is a more useful framework for analysis than that provided by Lewis‐type models of dualism.     

Organizing the neglected worker: the Women's Trade Union League in New York and Boston, 1930–1950

From 1930 to 1950, the New York and Boston Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) chapters focused on organizing poorly paid female service employees, many of them African American or Hispanic, whom the AFL and CIO largely neglected. Scholars who studied the WTUL generally confined their work to the period before 1920. Drawing on new primary sources, this article challenges previous characterizations of the WTUL as moribund after 1920, revealing the WTUL's vitality and innovative organizing methods. The WTUL maintained that New Deal protective legislation would prove largely unenforceable if workers remained unorganized. The article examines how the WTUL combined energetic organizing and legislative lobbying on behalf of laundry workers, domestic servants, cafeteria workers, hotel chambermaids, textile workers, and teachers, considered among the most difficult workers to organize.     

Value,price, and simple commodity production: The case of the Zapotec stoneworkers∗

The concepts of ‘commodity’ and of ‘simple commodity production’ in the work of Marx and his interpreters are examined as a necessary departure point for the analysis of value and price in a Mexican peasant‐artisan stoneworking industry. The labour theory of value, which posits a close relationship between market price and average embodied labour cost of commodities in a peasant‐artisan economy, is applied to the stone‐working industry and is shown to have explanatory power in both the qualitative and quantitative sense. This analysis leads to the conclusion that the labour theory is a necessary tool for discerning and approximating the fundamental role of the labour process, as well as the structure of production relations, in determining the nature and conduct of exchange activities in a peasant‐artisan commodity/market economy.     

Union voucher at the sickbed of French unionism? The CFDT union confederation and the AXA experiment, 1981–1993

In the 1980s, to address financial difficulties, the CFDT (a French reformist union) proposed an original solution – the union voucher – aimed at broadening its membership base and generating new resources. It affords unions with funding from a company, which annually distributes vouchers to employees, who can remit the voucher (or not) to unions of their choice. This mechanism is based both on company financing and the individual choices of employees. In the early 1990s, the insurance company AXA experimented with and then adopted this solution. This article traces the history of the union voucher and assesses the union’s experience.     

Filipino Elite Women and Public Health in the American Colonial Era, 1906–1940

This article is the first step in the process of writing Filipino elite women into the history of public health by focusing on those who were not health practitioners (not doctors, nurses or midwives), but who were heavily involved in the campaign against infant mortality in the American colonial period. It argues that Filipino elite women fulfilled the extremely important role of administrators of organizations that addressed infant care and maternal and child health, in the distribution of milk and the dissemination of information about maternal and children's health. Using hitherto unused sources from the archives of La Protección de la Infancia, the periodicals of the National Federation of Women's Clubs, and colonial records, this study reveals how the public health movement in the Philippines was gendered, and analyzes the contributions made by Filipino elite women that have to date not yet been acknowledged in the scholarship.     

Organized labor and government in the Wilson Era; 1913–1921: Some conclusions

This article draws on empirical evidence from a trade union in the centre of Athens to explore the impact of a politically active membership and its dialectical relationship with union renewal. The examined union is considered as an exemplar for the Greek accounts of unionism in the sense that it has achieved considerable collective bargaining gains and it has organized successful membership mobilization stories. It is argued in the analysis that the success of this union stems from a strategy of making rank-and-file activists the very fabric of union's organizing and mobilization activities. Further, trust issues between leaders, activists and ordinary members are significant in the increase of the likelihood of collective action.