Labor Studies
Convenor:
Nelson Lichtenstein, History, at ext. 4822 or e-mail
nelson@history.ucsb.edu
The study of capital and labor, of employment and income,
of unions and managers, of poverty and wealth, and of
the racial, gendered, ethnic, and linguistic character
of the working-class, both domestic and global, has
hardly been absent from the scholarship and teaching
ofUCSB faculty. But much of this has been institutionally
invisible and intellectually fragmented. One might well
take this as an indication of great success: since the
study of class, work, and labor is now embedded within
so many disciplines, it has become an unproblematic
part of the intellectual landscape. But this is just
the problem, and the formation of an interdisciplinary
research focus group has helped more than a dozen faculty
members and an equal number of grad students compare,
recast, and sharpen their understanding of a laborite
universe whose ideological and social foundations are
sometimes taken for granted.
The convener of the group is Nelson Lichtenstein, History,
frequently in tandem with Mary Furner, History, Richard
Flacks, Sociology, and Eileen Boris, Women's Studies.
Among the faculty and graduate students who have participated
in the group are Richard Sullivan, grad Sociology, Chris
McAuley, Black Studies, Ralph AmbrusterSandoval, Chicano
Studies, Zaragosa Vargas, History, John Baranski, grad
History, and Chris Newfield, English.
The group actually got started before it was officially
recognized and funded by the IHC. Our first speaker,
in March 2002, was Paul Buhle, Brown, who lectured on
Hollywood during the Black List era. This was followed
during August 2002, by a major conference, "Justice
at Work: A Conference Honoring David Brody." Although
funding for this conference, well described in the "report"
found in the current issue of International Labor and
Working Class History, was not funded by the IHC or
the Research Focus Group, the community of interest
and intellect which the Focus Group had begun to crystallize
here at UCSB proved important to the possibility and
success of that conference. The Focus Group had but
two discussion meetings during the 2002-2003 academic
year, (in part because the cqnvener was busy organizing
the capitalism and its culture conference) but we did
co-sponsor the April 7 talk by Keith Breckenridge, University
of Natal, "The Rise and Fall of the South Aftican
Bureau of Proof: Total Information in the Making of
Apartheid," and we sponsored the May 15, 2003 talk
by Leon Fink, University of Illinois, Chicago, whose
new book, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community
in the Nuevo New South has just appeared.
We have ambitious plans for next year. At meeting held
May 22 an interdisciplinary group offaculty, overlapping
about 80 percent with Focus Group participants, began
planning work to establish a Labor Studies program here
at UCSB. This will involve, for undergraduates, construction
of a core labor studies sequence, and for graduate students,
a Ph.D. emphasis or certificate in Sociology, History,
Chicano Studies, and perhaps other disciplines. The
first step in setting up the program will take place
when we hold a joint History-Sociology graduate reading
seminar during fall quarter 2003, most likely led by
Richard Flacks and Nelson Lichtenstein. This for-credit
graduate student/faculty seminar will do the historiographical,
methodological, and curricular work necessary to put
the Labor Studies Program in place.
Among the outside speakers we hope to bring to the seminar
and/or to the core urtdergraduate course (spring 2004)
are Nancy McLean, Northwestern, who is writing a book
about the post-Sixties construction of American work
rights; Ruth Milkman, UCLA, director of the Institute
for Labor and Employment and a noted expert on California
labor; Michael Honey, Univ. of Washington, an historian
oflabor and the civil rights movement; and Gordon Lafer,
University of Oregon, who will talk about the dialectics
of academic labor. With funds from the UC Institute
for Labor and Employment we have hired a part time staffer
for the nascent Labor Studies program, but programming
monies are non-existent, which is why we need mc Focus
Group status for the next academic year. After that
we hope to have a more secure and permanent source of
funding.
Calendar of Events:
Thomas
Frank October 7 "Class War and Culture War"
Michael
Denning October 28 "Language of Class in Global
Setting"
Nancy McCleen, LA Times labor reporter, November or
February
Christopher Phelps, "C.L.R. James on Race and Capitalism"
January 10, 2005
Michael Honey, "Martin Luther King from Seminary
to Socialism" February 4, 2005
Mike Davis, "Class in the New California, Keynote
Speaker, Southwest Labor Studies Conference, May 7,
2005
Sponsorship by The Center for the Study of Work, Labor,
and Democracy.
