Class is not dead! Many people are actively using working class heritage as a resource to reflect on the past, reassess the present, and plan for the future. At the beginning of the 21st century there is a growing tendency for the heritage of working class people to be interpreted and presented to the public in museums and heritage sites. Working class communities and organizations are also playing an active role in creating a memory of their own past. In this proposed volume we aim to theorize and document this phenomenon as an under-represented form of cultural heritage.
Drawing on new scholarship in heritage studies, social memory, the public history of labour, and new working class studies, this volume will highlight the heritage of working people, communities and organizations. We particularly urge community and labour movement activists, and scholars committed to civic engagement who are working closely with working class communities or organizations, to submit abstracts.
Studies for this volume can include interpretation of working class communities, working life, industrial heritage or working class culture. Museum and other forms of formal and informal presentation of the working class, as well as places to remember and celebrate the labour movement, are also important topics. Articles dealing with intangible forms of labour heritage including music, art, skills, workplace experiences, oral histories, celebrations and festivals are encouraged. We particularly welcome contributions from those – be they academics, trade unionists or working class community activists – who explicitly mount challenges to the received wisdom of the representation of 'heritage' as belonging to the elite, and who foreground working class experience and self-representation. Articles that can place these themes in explicit comparative and international perspective are also most welcome.
Word length: 5000-6000 inclusive of bibliography.
The Editors of the volume are Laurajane Smith and Gary Campbell (University of York, UK: LS18@york.ac.uk) and Paul Shackel (University of Maryland US: pshackel@anth.umd.edu).
The volume has an advanced contract from Routledge as part of their new Key Issues in Cultural Heritage series (http://www.routledge.com/books/series/Key_Issues_in_Cultural_Heritage), which is under the General Editorship of William Logan and Laurajane Smith, and is publishing cutting edge and innovative work in heritage studies.
Bill Barry
Director of Labor Studies
The Community College of Baltimore County
7200 Sollers Point Road
Dundalk, MD 21222
(443) 840-3563
(443) 840-3482 (FAX)
http://student.ccbcmd.edu/~wbarry
"Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves."
Eugene V. Debs (December 18, 1905)