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The practice of labor history is marked by a curious ambivalence toward the comparative approach. In method and style, labor historians tend toward the unique and the local, if not the microscopic; in interpretation and conceptualization, however, they routinely work with models that are highly general and at least implicitly comparative. Thus they write, more often than not, about a single occupation or workers in a particular town or, in a somewhat older style, about a particular industrial or political organization or, in an even older historiographical tradition that is still surprisingly vital among labor historians, about individual labor leaders. But when they get around to explaining what they have found in their detailed studies, they speak in broad terms about the general trajectory of labor in America, in Britain or wherever and, still more surprisingly, in terms that distinguish one or the other of these national experiences from the pattern presumed to obtain in industrial society in general. There is thus a sharp disjuncture between the very broad interpretive framework and the rather narrow research strategy typically employed by labor historians. This is both troubling and encouraging. It suggests, on the one hand, that theory and research are even less well integrated in this field than in other areas of historical study. But, on the other hand, it also indicates the existence of a diffuse yet powerful impulse toward comparative analysis in labor history. If this impulse has yet to produce research equal to the task of genuine comparison, it does at least hold out the hope that those interested in the historical study of labor would be receptive to a serious effort at comparison. Before discussing what such an effort might entail, it might be helpful to discuss in a bit more detail the contradictory relationship that seems to exist between labor history and the comparative method. The curious thing in this regard is that the form in which the concern for comparative analysis comes out is in the obsession with the uniqueness of each nation's labor history. The classic case, of course, is the United States, where labor * An earlier version of this article was presented to the meeting of the American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, Corvallis, Oregon, 13-16 August, 1992.1 would like to thank the panelists at that meeting-Charles Bcrgquist, David Brody and Elizabeth Perryfor their helpful comments.
The practice of labor history is marked by a curious ambivalence toward the comparative approach. In method and style, labor historians tend toward the unique and the local, if not the microscopic; in interpretation and conceptualization, however, they routinely work with models that are highly general and at least implicitly comparative. Thus they write, more often than not, about a single occupation or workers in a particular town or, in a somewhat older style, about a particular industrial or political organization or, in an even older historiographical tradition that is still surprisingly vital among labor historians, about individual labor leaders. But when they get around to explaining what they have found in their detailed studies, they speak in broad terms about the general trajectory of labor in America, in Britain or wherever and, still more surprisingly, in terms that distinguish one or the other of these national experiences from the pattern presumed to obtain in industrial society in general. There is thus a sharp disjuncture between the very broad interpretive framework and the rather narrow research strategy typically employed by labor historians. This is both troubling and encouraging. It suggests, on the one hand, that theory and research are even less well integrated in this field than in other areas of historical study. But, on the other hand, it also indicates the existence of a diffuse yet powerful impulse toward comparative analysis in labor history. If this impulse has yet to produce research equal to the task of genuine comparison, it does at least hold out the hope that those interested in the historical study of labor would be receptive to a serious effort at comparison. Before discussing what such an effort might entail, it might be helpful to discuss in a bit more detail the contradictory relationship that seems to exist between labor history and the comparative method. The curious thing in this regard is that the form in which the concern for comparative analysis comes out is in the obsession with the uniqueness of each nation's labor history. The classic case, of course, is the United States, where labor * An earlier version of this article was presented to the meeting of the American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, Corvallis, Oregon, 13-16 August, 1992.1 would like to thank the panelists at that meeting-Charles Bcrgquist, David Brody and Elizabeth Perryfor their helpful comments.
Some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. Epistemology is about knowing the difference. Donna Haraway1 At one extreme [scholars of culture] have seen a resistance to theory, an anti-intellectual dismissal of new methods and approaches.... At the other extreme, they have seen a reificationof theory into a 'magic bullet' that can itself position scholars outside the oppressions and exploitations of history. The tragedy of this debate—as is often the case in such moments of antagonism—is that each side misses what the other has to offer. George Lipsitz2 This essay interprets major methodological trends in the history of the movement known as "American Studies," and argues for a particular current approach—a focus on the ways cultural traditions are contested within a framework of struggles for hegemony—which is informed by that history and represents one major trend in the present context. Theories of cultural hegemony highlight how ideas, attitudes, and cultural practices legitimating unequal power relationships come to be accepted as common sense, and how the nature of such common sense is continually renegotiated in specified pragmatic situations involving conflict over cultural and sociopolitical resources. I argue that the most useful approaches to hegemony stress the limits of dominant culture (without ignoring its disproportionate power) and highlight how a variety of culturally plural subcultures engage in such renegotiation as part of complex, often informal, processes of building hegemonic and counterhegemonic coalitions.
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