abstract

Abstract

As Christopher Johnson rightly argues in the introduction to this collection of essays, de-industrialization is not a recent phenomenon. It has attracted much interest among historians, but that interest has focused primarily on its economic causes and consequences. The social, cultural, and political aspects of de-industrialization have attracted less attention – perhaps because our discipline is more concerned with the formation of social relationships and social movements and less with their disappearance. Do the close ties between social historians and social movements play a role here? Does their involvement blind them to the process of decline? Significantly, the most famous and impressive analysis of an anti-de-industrialization movement sheds little light on that aspect; it was the radical resistance to the parallel process of industrialization that captured the author's imagination.