The question that springs to mind at the start of this brief résumé of my career is, how did I come to be employed by the British Economic and Social Research Council, when my research training seemed so much against it? Memory is at best a fallible guide, but, as I remember, 1965 saw the appearance of The World We Have Lost, by Peter Laslett, which sought to describe the structure of English society before the Industrial Revolution. I had known Laslett as a lecturer in the Cambridge History Faculty who gave a course of general lectures on the history of political thought in the ancient world; he was also more generally known as the man who had researched the late-seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke. But here he was, writing a different kind of book altogether, with a first chapter called “The Passing of the Patriarchal Household: Parents and Children, Masters and Servants,” and further chapters on such topics as whether the peasants really starved. What was this political analyst up to? Not to anything good, or so I was told in a leading article in the Times Literary Supplement for 9 December 1965. In a scabrous attack entitled “The Book of Numbers,” E. P. Thompson (for it was he, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity that was generally assumed by the authors of leading articles) did everything to undermine Laslett’s version of the new history. “It is to be hoped that the cause will survive Mr Laslett’s advocacy,” he concluded. He succeeded with me; I let the book pass me by on the other side.

Like many other social science historians, since the late 1980s I have reflected on how postmodernist thinkers like Foucault and Derrida are useful for historians. In 1995 I taught a graduate course on the history of social history, and I looked back on the origins of the field through the eyes of my students who were intrigued with postmodernism. I realized that time has crept up on me. I barely noticed that this field that we developed over the years is no longer young but has come of age and is now part of the accepted canon, one of many subdisciplines. Indeed, my students thought of social science history in much the same way that social science historians viewed traditional political history, a field whose assumptions and perspectives should be critically analyzed, challenged, and revised. These students helped me to see postmodernist criticisms in a new light, not as a sharp break from social science history but rather as emerging at least in part from long-term developments within the field itself. The contributors to the debate on these pages see postmodernism in this way. In various ways, they contend that these challenges, poststructuralist and otherwise, can help us to see within social science history contradictions and tensions that result in both strengths and weaknesses. We can learn from postmodernism without accepting it uncritically; we can reevaluate materialist social history in light of new challenges without rejecting social science history's benefits.

Since at least the nineteenth century, scholars and politicians alike have recognized the fundamental connection between memory and the nation. While political elites invented and propagated legitimating traditions, historians objectified the nation as a unitary entity with a linear descent. At the same time, critics like Ernest Renan pointed out that forgetting—that is, forgetting alternative possible stories and alternate possible identifications—is at the heart of national self-understanding, while Nietzsche bemoaned the proliferation of “monumental” history. World War I seemed to many good enough reason to abandon nationalist chauvinism, but for others a myth of the war experience “provided the nation with a new depth of religious feeling, putting at its disposal ever-present saints and martyrs, places of worship, and a heritage to emulate” (Mosse 1990: 7). And the anemic internationalism of the 1920s was just that—inter-nationalism rather than postnationalism, based on a nebulous and misunderstood notion of “self-determination”—where the burning memory of stabs in the back and imposed settlements fanned old antipathies to new heights. Memory has long been the handmaiden of nationalist zeal, history its high counsel. Even those like Nietzsche and Renan who worried about it understood its centrality.

This issue brings together economists, sociologists, and historians in the study of migration and labor markets. The editors of the journal have turned the authors into unwitting collaborators, and in that sense these articles stand on their own. But one of the pleasures of being involved in the editorial process of an interdisciplinary journal is the opportunity it provides for drawing meaningful connections in the scholarship of diverse fields. We linked these separate contributions because together they help reconstruct the social and economic systems that channeled human migration. Each author makes important contributions to his respective field. Combined, their efforts illustrate what can be gained through the interdisciplinary nature of social science methodology.

Historians have long acknowledged that London, because of its enormous size and rapidly growing demand for labor, acted as a powerful magnet for migrants from throughout southern England. However, while there is a large literature documenting the flow of migrants to London, there have been surprisingly few attempts to determine the consequences of this migration for southern labor markets. This article attempts to redress the imbalance in the literature by examining the influence of London on agricultural labor markets during the nineteenth century. In particular, the article examines the effect of distance from London on wage rates in southern England at various points in time, and the effect of labor market conditions in London on short-run changes in agricultural wage rates.

Even under the increasingly more open conditions of glasnost and after, the October Revolution has proven difficult for Western, Soviet, and post-Soviet historians to reconceptualize. In this essay I shall examine the reasons behind this difficulty and suggest where a reconceptualization of October might fruitfully be sought. Rethinking October from the perspective of recent research into the construction of historical or collective memory, I will argue, affords unique insights into exactly why October has proven so enduring. Focusing on the October Revolution as the crucial element in the primarily Bolshevik efforts to establish and enshrine the legitimacy of the new Soviet state during the first decade after October 1917 problematizes the event in a way that traditional approaches, deeply implicated in this issue of (il)legitimacy, are unable to do.

As other contributors to this roundtable suggest, the practices of social and labor history as we have known them have been in methodological and epistemological turmoil for some time. The dominant paradigms that guided much of the work of social historians in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s have been thrown into question by poststructuralism and by the emergence of new analytical perspectives on gender, race, and ethnicities. Attention to culture and to the meanings that historical subjects imposed on the habits of everyday life, as well as to the constitutive power of language and cultural practices, have now become a central aspect of much historical work that has sought to analyze the operations of gender, race, and ethnicities as the subjects of social history and the history of working people in particular.

Population growth has always been a politically loaded object of inquiry. From the debate sparked by Malthus’s classic Essay to the still present apocalyptic warnings about overpopulation or the declining birth rate, demographers and statisticians have worked in troubled waters, where progressively more sophisticated quantitative techniques have sometimes gone hand in hand with dubious social philosophy. In her recent survey of post-1930 American demography, Susan Greenhalgh (1996: 30–31) argued that the institutionalization and professionalization of this field as an academic discipline required scholars to draw “sharp boundaries between themselves and activists,” such as those involved in the promotion of objectives like birth control, eugenics, or immigration restriction. A detailed inquiry into the origins of the Population Association of America (PAA) has shown that up to the 1930s the study of population attracted more activists than social scientists and that the two types could coexist quite happily within the same organization (Hodgson 1991). Greenhalgh added (1996), however, that despite the efforts expanded in its quest for scientific status, this field of study has remained quite open to ideological influence, fundamentally Eurocentric and devoid of reflexivity. The polemic that stirred the French Institut national d’études démographiques in the early 1990s shows that the demarcation lines can easily get blurred and that the simultaneously cognitive and political dimensions of population study can reappear with utmost clarity (Le Bras 1991).

One person, one vote. With this principle, the Court permanently changed representation in the United States. Equal population requirements changed the face of legislative redistricting in the 1960s, when the Supreme Court applied it to congressional districts in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), and to state legislatures in Reynolds v. Sims, 84 S. Ct. 1362 (1964). Equality in district population was valued not only as instrumental to other goals but also for itself, as Justice Black explained in Wesberry: “As nearly as practicable one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s. . . . To say that a vote is worth more in one district than another would . . . run counter to our fundamental ideas of democratic government.”

As Justice Brennan made clear, the Court based its decision in large part on a particular understanding of the historical meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and of article 1, section 2, of the Constitution. And as widely accepted as this principle has come to be, it has been subject to severe historical criticism, criticism that has never been resolved. For example, Berger (1977) claims that malapportionment was historically present and accepted before and during the creation of the Fourteenth Amendment and hence that the equal protection clause could not have implied the equal population principle (from chapter 5): “Certainly there was no disclosure that such intrusion [on apportionment] was contemplated; there is in fact striking evidence that malapportionment was an accepted practice.”

In his 1936 essay on Nikolai Leskov—”The Storyteller”—Walter Benjamin (1969) lamented the destruction of collective memory that was taking place with the passage from community to society. In the transformed structure of modern life, claimed Benjamin, our ability to exchange experiences has diminished, and along with it, a collective sense of meaning. While tradition collapses under the irresistible force of the development of economic production, human perception also appears to be affected and penetrated by a logic of rationalization. This logic tends to annul more than past traditions and their meaning as vehicles for communal understanding; it also undermines the capacity for experience in general. In the modern world of machines and automatons, Benjamin feared, tradition was irreparably lost. With it there also vanished the remnants of collective dreams and aspirations that in the past had formed the humus of people’s redemptive path toward a meaningful and fulfilled life.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the spread of railroad and telegraph networks in the United States and Europe, the introduction of steamships on transatlantic routes, and the laying of transatlantic telegraph cables initiated a period of pronounced economic integration within and between countries (Williamson 1996; Thomas 1954; Chandler 1977; Perloffet al. 1965; James 1978). This period was also characterized by a rapid pace of growth and pronounced international convergence in standards of living among the countries of western Europe, North America, and Australia (Maddison 1991). Jeffrey Williamson (1996) has recently argued that the increasing integration of factor markets, especially labor markets, in this era was a crucial factor in the pace of international convergence.

A sense of crisis and uncertainty seems pervasive among many social historians and historical sociologists who have studied the relationship between economic disadvantage and protest politics. Within the last five or so years, edited volumes and special issues of journals have encouraged scholars to “bring class back in,” to explore what some worry is the “end of labor history,” or to “rethink working-class history” in the wake of postmodernism, the turn to discursive and cultural analysis, and the growing number of scholars whose substantive interests involve issues of race and gender.

Even those who celebrate the rich diversity of subject matters explored by contemporary labor and working-class historians are worried about scholars jumping ship because “engaged history, in possession at least of the conceit of making a difference, has moved elsewhere, to other subject areas,” to quote Ira Katznelson (1994: 7). I myself have chosen to take a “leave of absence” from studying the mutual constitution of gender and class.

In 1876, there was a huge commemoration of the centennial of American independence. The year was marked in many ways, by many groups, in many parts of the country. The central event, though, was a grand International Exhibition in Philadelphia, four years in the making. Planners first met in 1872 in Independence Hall and spoke at length about the sacredness of the venue: “It is altogether fit and wise that we should take our first step and utter our first words in this hall. There sat John Hancock, presiding over that immortal body. There came Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Sherman, and Livingston presenting the sacred declaration. There lies the broken and silent bell, which at the word proclaimed liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof” (USCC 1873: 24-25). The theme was taken up by many others in many different ways. Images of the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Washington, and Franklin were scattered throughout centennial ceremonies, buildings, poems, histories, and other documents. The revolution was used as a touchstone in talk about the exhibition and as a rich source of national symbolism.

Recently, scholars have devoted significant attention to race relations in the history of the U.S. labor movement. This research has explored the militancy of African American workers, examined how racism divided particular organizing drives, and documented white workers’ efforts to preserve racial privilege. Much of this work has also emphasized workers’ agency but has obscured the racial implications of labor market characteristics (for exceptions see Maloney 1995; Sugrue 1996). This article argues that racial conflict during the 1919 steel organizing drive resulted from the development of split labor markets, which constrained workers’ opportunities to exercise agency based on class position but encouraged workers to exercise agency in terms of their racial interests. In 1919, the sources of workers’ empowerment diverged along racial lines.

Studies of decision making on the modern Supreme Court have drawn on readily available empirical data to explore the details of how the Court conducts its business (Segal and Spaeth 1993; Spaeth 1995). Sadly, however, such empirical studies have not been plentiful for periods of the Court’s history before the appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Some discussion has occurred dating from the chief justiceship of William Howard Taft beginning in 1910, but these studies have limited scope (Bowen and Scheb 1993; Leavitt 1970; Pritchett 1948; Renstrom 1972; Slotnick 1979; Tate and Handberg 1991). The result is a plethora of studies concerning the modern Court and a dearth of systematic information on earlier Courts (Aliotta 1988; Brenner and Spaeth 1995; Epstein and Kobylka 1992; George and Epstein 1992; Handberg 1976; Schubert 1965, 1974; Segal 1984; Tate 1981; Ulmer 1970). The picture we do have concerning earlier Courts is largely drawn from biographical or doctrinal studies. While both of these enterprises are immensely useful, they lack the systematic quality of an empirical analysis that considers all cases (not just the important ones) and all justices (not just the intellectual or social leaders). We seek to create an empirical context out of which those outstanding justices and decisions arose. Our study allows confirmation of findings of previous studies of individuals and doctrine and provides a more complete picture of the Court during a tumultuous time in its history.

For social historians and historical sociologists working in the interdisciplinary fields of ethnic studies and women's studies, the challenges posed by poststructuralism are neither purely intellectual matters nor disciplinary quibbles. Rather, a concern with “rescuing political economy” from being washed away by the tide of poststructuralism is impelled by larger political commitments that transcend the academy.

Unlike mainstream disciplines, these fields historically have been connected to social movements dedicated to empowering people marginalized by reason of race, class, and/or gender. Poststructuralism has become a thorny issue in these fields: Many social science- and political economy-oriented scholars have come to feel, whether justifiably or not, that these fields are being “taken over” by literary, film, and cultural studies scholars.

Given the importance of draft animals—horses, mules, and oxen—in the development of the American economy, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to their contribution. Moreover, this is not, in most cases, attributable to a lack of empirical evidence; the vast majority of the work on draft animals to date is found in oral history and folklore literature. While this literature delighted in presenting the sentiments and personal stories of a few rather than attempting to provide a broader perspective, it does provide valuable historical information. Not surprisingly, however, the sentiments of a few, perhaps sometimes embellished, occasionally led to conclusions that are not consistent with predictions. For example, recent evidence supports the superiority of mules over horses and oxen in southern agricultural production, which refutes the notion that southerners used the mule for cultural reasons (Garrett 1990; Kauffman 1993). As Rockoff (1991: 243) states, “One of the main functions of the economic historian, from the point of view of economics, is to examine the foundation of these myths.”

Sociologists, demographers, and historians of the last few decades have pieced together a dramatically new understanding of the meaning of past migrations. The old story held that industry pulled recently dispossessed rural people to the city, where—along with deskilled artisans—they became part of a growing urban industrial proletariat. For migrants from rural areas, the process was thought to be catastrophic, requiring a total and often impossible adjustment to an urban world that was different in just about every imaginable way. Recent scholars have distanced themselves from this framework.

The subject of this panel recently reminded me of a joke my father told me when I was eight or nine years old, “the 1929 knee-slapper.” It seems a traveling salesman was hopelessly lost in the countryside. After hours of driving around, he pulled up to a farmhouse and greeted the farmer. Hesitantly, the salesman asked the farmer, “Where does this road go?” The farmer rather adamantly replied, “This road don't go nowhere. This road stays right here.“

I imagine a philosopher spending hours trying to figure out the deeper meaning of the farmer's answer. Where is “right here“? What or who is in motion, and what is the real message to the harried and hurried salesman, confused by unmarked roads in the countryside, all of which “lead” somewhere without going anywhere? Is the farmer asserting a collective or individual sense of ownership of the roadway, or merely projecting his disdain at the linear logic of a representative of market capitalism?

At a ceremony held in 1986 to install a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., alongside those of other national heroes in the U.S. Capitol, former King associate Vincent Harding reminded the audience that King himself probably would have joined the demonstrators outside the Capitol protesting American policy in Central America (Thelen 1987: 436). Harding’s comment captures the tension between commemoration and dissent, or, better, between state-sponsored remembrance and state-targeted opposition that is the subject of this essay.