If you do an internet search for “working class historian,” you will get a list of links to sites about the history of working class people and scholars researching in that field. The moniker “working class history” covers a wide variety of topics all related to events and practices involving the laboring class. In previous times, historians further broke their fields down more strictly by theme. Some covered working class people’s struggles with their employers. This was “labor history.” Then, there were social and cultural historians who were interested in the habits and mores of the working class who focused on their lives outside of work. ”Working class history” is an umbrella that allows historians to delve into both — recognizing that these issues tend to bleed together and human beings don’t compartmentalize the different aspects of their lives the way historians do (interestingly a strong division between personal and professional lives is generally a marker of the middle class — making it ironic and inappropriate then to approach working class subjects in that manner).
However, even this broader approach to the subject matter continues in professional historians’ tradition of defining their work and identity by the same. What they are is limned by what they study. Rarely do historians define their work in other ways. Occasionally, some will inject their politics into their titles. Thus, you get “feminist historians” and “Marxist scholars.” Funnily, it almost never works the other way. I’ve yet to find a professional who identifies him- or herself as a “reactionary historian,” although there most certainly are some. Generally, however, historians avoid putting too much of themselves in their labels. The idea behind that is that their work is born out of a largely objective standard leading to one truth that holds for all or that the person of the historian is irrelevant to the story. I know, it’s laughable, but it’s true.
The other funny is that American historians are practically obsessed with the notion of class (and race and gender). That’s why there’s such a thing as working class history. They dedicate a whole field to what these workers and their families undertook. Also, cultural and social historians love to write about “highbrow” society and its devotees and the rise of the middle class as well. You can’t avoid the subject of class in American histories. Of course, that’s other people. It’s important to talk about their class. Historians just don’t much talk about their own classes. These they ignore, and it’s the height of idiocy to do it. To quote John Lennon: ”And you think you’re so clever and classless and free.” As much as scholars love to delude themselves that their class is irrelevant and does not touch their work, they are monumentally wrong. Which is another reason I’ve chosen to reject bourgeois professional history. I really am not one of them, and after a brief foray into their domain, I don’t want to be. So, if you want to be a working class historian, well then just follow me.
m[-_-]