@inbook{982d24eea1b34000a0504079217eedb0,
title = "Labor and Class in the GAPE: Fruitful Opposition and the Specter of the Middle Class",
abstract = "The chapter reviews two thematic oppositions that characterize much of the debate within GAPE historiography dealing with labor and class: cynicism versus celebration, and continuity versus transition. It uses these oppositions to frame a discussion of the relevant literature, while also relating them to historiographical trends of varying vintage, including: the “new history of capitalism”; the transnational turn in labor history; renewed attention to violent resistance; environmental labor histories; race as a formative force in postbellum “free labor” regimes; and women{\textquoteright}s histories. It then more closely examines the way that the “middle class” has been an almost constant subject of this literature{\textquoteright}s corpus, while paradoxically escaping adequate scrutiny or analytical justification. It concludes by urging a return to examining labor and class in the GAPE—in all the dimensions suggested by the richness of the literature—with greater attention to the middling sorts{\textquoteright} place within a binary power structure of capitalism.",
author = "Huyssen, {David Nicholas}",
year = "2017",
month = feb,
day = "17",
language = "English",
isbn = "1118913965",
series = "Wiley-Blackwell Companions to American History",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
pages = "229--242",
editor = "Christopher Nichols and Nancy Unger",
booktitle = "A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era",
address = "United States",
}