Urban Revolt

Ethnic Politics in the Nineteenth-century Chicago Labor Movement

Author: Eric L. Hirsch
ISBN: 0520065859

Urban Revolt is a careful, incisive reexamination of the most highly mobilized urban revolutionary force in American history--the late nineteenth-century Chicago labor movement. By documenting the importance of ethnic origins in accounting for political choice, Eric L. Hirsch completely reconceptualizes the dynamics of urban social movements.Hirsch links the industrialization of Chicago to the development and maintenance of an ethnically segmented labor market. Urbanization, he argues, fostered ethnic enclaves whose inhabitants were channeled into particular kinds of jobs and excluded from others. Hirsch then demonstrates the political implications of emergent ethnic identities and communities.In the late nineteenth century, Chicagoans of German background--denied economic power by Anglo-Americans' control of craft unions and excluded from political influence by Irish-dominated political machines--formulated radical critiques of the status quo and devised innovative political strategie

Publisher: University of California Press
Publish Date: 1990

Subjects: History / United States / General, Social Science / Sociology / Urban

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Raza Recource Centro (Location: Wall C, Shelf 1)