:Making a Living: Work and the Environment in the United States

Abstract

This book brings labor and environmental history together in six chronological case studies spanning the 1830s through the 1970s. In that sense, it is perfect for the undergraduate classroom. The text succeeds on two levels. First, it continues an important theoretical discussion amongst environmental historians about the place of class and labor within their subfield of American history. Second, it provides readers new to both labor and environmental history with a succinct introduction to the ways in which American workers across divisions of race, class, and gender used ideas of nature, physical labor within the natural world, and outdoor recreation to negotiate, buffer, and resist the transition from rural to urban life, from preindustrial to industrial labor. As Chad Montrie explains in an excellent introduction, environmental historians have begun to integrate labor history into their work on three fronts: the use of class as a category of analysis in examining “traditional” environmental history subjects, such as the conservation movement; union participation in campaigns for public health, pollution control, wildlife conservation, and other protections; and a theoretical exploration of work as a fundamental human connection to nature. Labor historians, however, have thus far failed to integrate workers' relationships with nature into their histories. This book attempts to fill that gap.