Through the Looking Glass of Culture: An Essay on the New Labour History and Working-Class Culture in Recent Canadian Historical Writing

This is an analysis of the concept of working-class culture as applied by some practitioners of the new labour history in Canada. The article begins with a comparison of the approach of traditional labour history to that of the "new" labour history and asserts that there are significant differences in philosophy and lesser differences in methodology. A brief examination of the concept of working-class culture and how it is to be utilized by historians follows. The validity of using such a general framework is questioned in a close examination of recent major works of the new labour history genre. A conclusion is offered that these works show that the application of general principles is a tricky business because, although factual evidence appears at times to support the idea that working-class culture was an important determinant, at other times it does not. The article concludes by questioning the assumption that there is any "best" way of approaching the study of social history; that to assert that history must be studied "from the bottom up" is as predeterministic as the notion that it should be studied "from the top down." Prejudice and a priori assumption plagues all historians.