New Perspectives on Labour History
New Perspectives on Labour History

An Interview with Marcel van der Linden

Summary/Abstract: Marcel van der Linden was research director of the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) until 2014, and is now Senior Researcher at the Institute as well as Professor of Social Movement History at the University of Amsterdam. He is also President of the International Social History Association and chair of the Editorial Committee of International Review of Social History. He has published widely on various aspects of left-wing intellectual history (e.g. Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: A Survey of Critical Theories and Debates since 1917), social movements and labour history. He is a chief advocate of global labour history, a new paradigm in the writing of labour history, which has been taken over by several labour historians. This paradigm is less well-known in Eastern Europe where labour history became a stepchild after the change of regimes and it is only recently that there has been a growing interest in this field among social historians. In the interview I asked Marcel to introduce this paradigm and tell us something more about the social and political implications of a global labour history.

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