Research Focus and Critical Assessment
Herbert Gutman focused on the history of workers and slaves in the United States.
Gutman is considered one of the co-founders and primary proponents of the "new labor history," a school of thought which believes ordinary people have not received the proper amount of attention from historians. He developed a critique of the "Commons school" of labor history which focused on markets and minimize other factors such as technological or cultural changes and working people themselves.
Gutman has also been criticized for his quasi-Marxist theoretical leanings. It is clear that Gutman at one time may have been an academic Marxist. But by the late 1950s, Gutman had moved away from Marxism. Instead, Gutman retained "what he called 'a really good set of questions' that Marx had inspired (e.g., what were workers, not just leaders, doing on a day-to-day basis?). These questions reshaped labor history and also appealed to students of Afro-American history."
Gutman was often criticized for overemphasizing the experiences of working people and blacks as historical agents, and "sometimes summarily dismissed as a 'romantic' and lacking in sophisticated 'theory'…".
Gutman is best known for two major studies of slavery in America: Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of "Time on the Cross" (1975) and The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (1976).
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