David Roediger - Research

Research

Roediger's research interests primarily concern race and class in the United States, although he has also written on radicalism in American history and politics.

Roediger's book The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class has had a significant impact on the study of race in the U.S. In the work, Roediger argued that whiteness is a historical phenomenon in that many different ethnicities now considered "white" in the United States were not initially perceived as such. Irish Americans, for example, were not considered "white" until the idea of white shifted to an identity that contrasted themselves with black slaves. Roediger claims that the social construction of the concept of a white race in the United States was a conscious effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves. By the 18th century, he says, "white" had become well-established as a racial term.

In 1989, Roediger and historian Philip Foner co-authored Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day, a book that provides a highly detailed account of the movement to shorten the working day in the United States. The work broke new ground by combining labor history with a study of culture and the nature of work. The book also extended the history of the eight hour day movement to colonial times. The authors argued that debate over the length of the work-day or work-week has been the central issue of the American labor movement during periods of high growth.

Roediger is currently researching the interrelation between labor management and the formation of racial identities in the U.S.