Jose A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalen, eds., A Social History of Spanish Labour. New Perspectives on Class, Politics and Gender.
Shubert, Adrian
Jose A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalen, eds., A Social History of
Spanish Labour. New Perspectives on Class, Politics and Gender (New
York: Berghahn Books 2007)
A COLLECTION OF this sort is long overdue. Modern Spain, and
especially anything that is not the Spanish Civil War, is one of the
great unknowns of European history as it is done in North America.
Stranded in a no person's land between the paucity of Spain
specialists in Canadian and US universities, on the one hand, and the
lack of interest among historians in Spain in publishing their work in
English, on the other, very few books or articles on the social or
cultural history of Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries see the light
of day. This volume, edited by labour historians from two different
generations, provides English-speaking readers with a sampler of the
work in the field over the last two decades.
The editors have chosen the articles to be representative of the
social history of labour done since 1990 when, according to the editors,
"there was a significant change in the direction" of the
field, away from institutional and political history in favour of
"specific problems and processes involving the formation and
evolution of class." (8) At the same time, there were new academic
organizations and new journals. Key among the latter was Historia
Social, where Piqueras and Sanz Rozalen have leading roles and where
eight of the fourteen articles originally appeared (In the interests of
full disclosure, I must mention that I have been on the journal's
advisory board since its launch in 1988).
The editors understand representativeness in a number of ways.
Methodologically, they approach their subjects through the lenses of
class formation, gender, culture, and politics. Thematically, they
address both newer concerns as well as such "classic subjects"
as standards of living. Chronologically, the articles cover the 18th,
19th, and 20th centuries. Only one article deals with the Spanish Civil
War, a good decision as this is the period non-specialists are likely to
know about, while there are six about the little-known 19th century and
two on the Franco period, which has become the subject of a burgeoning
literature in recent years. Geographically, they deal with various parts
of Spain, rural as well as urban, although given the numerical
importance of agricultural labour until well into the 20th century and
its prominence in labour organization and labour protest there is less
on rural Spain than one would expect. The total absence of Andalucia,
which does not even have an entry in the index, is hard to explain.
Finally, there are articles devoted to specific occupations:
laundresses, sandal makers, and miners (3 articles).
The fact that the editors were able to pick and choose from a vast
field of previously published pieces means that there is less disparity
in quality than is often the case with edited collections. The book
begins with two think pieces: Manuel Perez Ledesma's article on the
working class as a cultural creation and Pilar Perez Fuentes'
methodological considerations on women in the workplace in the 19th and
20th centuries.
Perez Ledesma admits that the debates about the nature of the
working class, with the exception of the work of Patrick Joyce, were
well known in Spain but that the theoretical positions had been little
integrated into actual studies. He examines the changes in vocabulary
used to describe social realities: the meanings of the word
"people," the introduction of "exploitation" as a
moral term, and the use of rituals and symbols to make working people
into a "historical subject," the working class. He concludes
that this process, by which "sectors as diverse as agricultural day
labourers, craftsmen in traditional professions, miners and a small
number of industrial workers" came to accept that what united them
was more significant than what divided them, began in the last twenty
years of the 19th century.
Perez Fuentes starts from the position that industrialization in
Western Europe always meant the creation of "a new regulatory and
symbolic framework... by means of which new female and male identities
were developed which were considerably different from those in
pre-industrial societies," (44) but that the actual nature of the
transformation varied greatly among societies. She devotes much
attention to censuses, and particularly to the way their changing
construction, in other European countries as well as in Spain, suggested
"a universal and mythical absence of all [workplace]
activity." (49) More useful as sources, in large part because they
permit a more sophisticated understanding of immediate contexts and how
these connected with family strategies, are the municipal registers.
The remaining articles are monographic treatments of the questions
raised in the two opening pieces and they are arranged in chronological
order, starting with Carmen Sarasfia's stud), of laundresses from
the 18th to the 20th centuries and concluding with Jose Babiano's
reflections on the Franco dictatorship's so-called "vertical
unions."
All the articles were originally published in Spanish and had to be
translated for this volume. The translation is generally acceptable but
does stumble at times. In the introduction alone, for example, we read
about "non resident lecturers," (6) profesores no numerarios
in Spanish, a phrase which means nothing in English and should have been
translated as "contract faculty, and about "associate
workers" (8) of the First International, probably a translation of
obreros asociados which should be rendered as "members."
ADRIAN SHUBERT
York University
