Mike, people -- Sorry for the delay in posting.
Here (below Mike's message) is a description of the field of labor studies. It
was written by my friend and colleague Joe Berry who at the age of 55 is doing
a PhD in Labor Studies at the Union Institute in Cincinatti. In the US, Labor
studies is not a field where a PhD is traditionally offered. (people who have
labor education positions have PhDs in other things, like political science,
history, sociology, adult education or, like me, education). At the Union
Institute ("union" as in "united," not labor union -- it's one of the schools
that came out of the Antioch combined graduate programs) you put together your
own committee out of people in the field. If your field is not one where you
can look up the definition in the book, then one of the first tasks for the
committee is to credibly define the field. Here is that definition of the field
of Labor Studies. It's holds up pretty well with others I've read -- for
example, in tenure and promotion documents.
Also -- about ISCRAT vs AERA. I'm assuming that there will be more Activity
Theory represented there. I've been to AERA a couple of times; the sessions
having to do with work were disappointing. Many of the other sessions were
celebratory, or critical in a way that didn't lead to action. My experience of
education is that it involves conflict; it is not smooth sailing. Activity
Theory affords the study of conflict -- contesting, incongruent, mutually
cancelling systems, etc. More on this later, if people want to pick this up.
Here is the piece about Labor Studies/theoretical underpinning and leading
practices. The UALE website is www.uale.org.
Thanks -- Helena
Mike Cole wrote:
> Helena-- There is so much blather around about "school to work" transitions
> and vocational education changes, and schooling moving into the workplace,
> it would be fascinating, if you time to cross post, or if you have something
> we could put on the xmca page, about the theoretical underpinnings and
> leadings practices of UALE.
>
> Why is ISCRAT a more interesting venue than AERA for this? Are you concerns
> representated at AERA?
> mike
Definition of the field: Labor Studies
Joe T. Berry
Labor Studies the field of study of working people, and especially their
collective organizations, in the context of their social, political-economic,
and cultural environment. Labor Studies (LS) is also defined by how it is used:
what is taught, to whom and for what reason. Labor Education (LED) is both the
parent of labor studies and the main reason for LS’ actual existence as a
field.
History
LS today springs from two sources. One is worker and labor education and the
other is industrial and labor relations. The heritage of worker and labor
education places labor studies in the realm of adult education, rather than
primarily in social science research, and also in the history of extension
education with practical service goals (much like agricultural extension)
rather than as a “pure” academic research field. This worker and labor
education legacy values the development of the worker-intellectual and the
informed activist. These people have been the most respected practitioners and
teachers in labor studies as well, with or without academic degrees. This
tradition draws from many sources of adult education: partisan political
education by labor and socialist parties, liberal and technical worker
education including both the workers’ summer schools and trade apprenticeships,
and education for social action (also called popular education) embodied in
the practice of institutions like Highlander Folk School and Brookwood Labor
College, among others. The context of this education has been to serve the
all-round needs of workers and their organizations, especially unions. This
definition is now contested, as the pressures for academic respectability, as
well as the older political debates, have impinged upon the more recent
university and college based labor studies and labor education programs.
The second source of LS is as a part of the field of Industrial and Labor
Relations (IR/LR). This has always been an uneasy marriage. IR/LR, since its
inception early in the 20th century with the Webbs in Britain, John Commons at
Wisconsin, and, later, the secession of the institutional economists from the
American Economics Association, has struggled with certain inherent
contradictions. Would it be a field of study that both facilitated and
advocated for the practice of collective bargaining as the best method of
industrial dispute resolution? This implied, among other functions, the
sympathetic study of unions and other worker organizations, as well as the
practical consultation with unions that could strengthen them in a society in
which they and the collective bargaining process were only partially accepted.
Alternatively, and with greater influence recently, would IR/LR be a field that
studied conditions and terms of employment (such as human resource management)
and work in general with no particular preference for collective bargaining at
all? This debate continues, heightened especially by the relative weakening of
unions over the past three to four decades.
The Theoretical Problem of Labor Studies
However, even within the former “pro-union” vision of the IR/LR field, much
less the latter, LS has never been totally comfortable. One of the key
historical assumptions of the IR/LR field, along with the evolution of US labor
law, has been that the best argument for the legalization of unions and for the
legal support for collective bargaining is that greater labor peace will ensue
as a result. The related assumption has been that such conflict, although
inherent to our capitalist system, should be minimized and managed for the
interests of both labor and capital, and for the society as a whole. This
assumption of long-term joint interest in workplace peace, in the context of
the present overall economic system, leaves labor studies, by whatever name, in
a problematic position.
The basic assumption of labor studies as an interdisciplinary field of study,
like area studies, ethnic studies, or women’s studies, is that these people
(in this case workers) and their history, relationships, actions,
organizations, lives, group interests, and place in the world overall, are of
importance and worthy of study and support in their own right. Just as
African-American studies is not merely the study of relations between
African-Americans and the white majority (the old “race relations” paradigm),
labor studies is more than just the relations between organized workers and
their employers (labor or industrial relations), though in both cases these are
major aspects of the respective fields.
The outcomes of these definitional debates will be largely decided, in
practice, by the development of the labor and working class movement in general
and the union movement in particular. What education and research the movement
chooses to support directly, to politically demand from the state, and the
strength of these decisions, will be the main determinants of where LS goes in
the future.
Labor Studies and Research
Labor Studies research includes using the tools available to study any groups
of people. Labor Studies draws upon the methods available to all the social
sciences, but also the disciplines of the arts and the humanities. The major
subfields of LS are labor history, political economy and labor, organizing,
labor law, collective bargaining (including contract administration), labor
education, union administration and functioning, labor arts and culture,
relevant research methods, race and ethnicity (and immigration) and labor,
gender and labor, comparative labor movements and global labor issues, labor
and politics, work organization, health and safety, and the contemporary labor
movement, including current issues for labor. All of these have somewhat
independent research and pedagogical traditions. Degree programs in the field
draw from the above areas, not necessarily including all of them, with
concentrations on a few. Neither the titles of the subfields nor the
concentrations have been codified into a canon, but the above represents a
distillation from the various degree programs and the subject categories of
articles in the leading journal, Labor Studies Journal, since its inception in
1977.
A Moment of Opportunity
Historically, there appears to be a present moment of opportunity. Partly in
response to the uneasiness of LS as a part of IR/LR, partly because it seems
possible politically to be more explicit about class as a category, there has
been a recent effort to stake out a new, and highly interdisciplinary, field
calling itself Working Class Studies and broadening beyond the study of unions
and their relationships with employers and governments. This initiative has
placed renewed emphasis on looking at all aspects of working class life and
culture and recovering some of the older traditions of liberal and radical
worker education. The greater openness and militancy of the New Voice
leadership of the AFL-CIO has also influenced the discussion, as has the birth
of two new journals, New Labor Forum and Working USA. This nascent Working
Class Studies effort now has a regular national conference, a few institutes
and groups (one here in Chicago) and has sparked the formation of new
professional associations (and subgroups in older ones), such as the Labor and
Working Class History Association.
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