Frontiers of Labor: Comparative Histories of the United States and Australia, Edited by Greg Patmore and Shelton Stromquist (2018) Chicago and Springfield, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 375 pages. ISBN: 978-0-252-08345-7

The task that confronts all of us is to reach an “understanding” of the chaos that is the real world. How are we to make sense of that which happens? What factors, or what scholars describe as parameters, are at work, which explain whatever it is that piques our interest? How can we be confident in the explanations that we develop in trying to explain real world phenomena? Scholars in the physical sciences have developed a very successful technique to overcome such fears: controlled experiments and replication. Parameters are selected and applied in a controlled experiment, which produces a result. This experiment is repeated again and again to determine if the same result will occur. After numerous ‘successful’ tests, scholars maintain that there is no basis for rejecting propositions so derived. Every time we turn on a light, a controlled experiment, further confirmation is given to the theoretical insights associated with electricity. Our confidence in electricity is such that if the light did not go on, we would say that the light bulb needs to be replaced or the equipment is faulty. Controlled experiments and replication are not luxuries available to those who work in the social sciences. In seeking to make sense of whatever it is that interests us, we are not even sure what parameters are at work; with most social science scholarship seeking to discover what they may be and whether or not they help to explain the phenomenon in question. Moreover, scholars in the social sciences cannot replicate the same set of events at another time or another place to test a hypothesis based on insights gleaned from one observation. Some social science scholars have attempted to get around this problem by comparative studies. As the title to Greg Patmore and Shelton Stromquist’s edited volume Frontiers Of Labor: Comparative Histories of the United States and Australia indicates, comparisons can be conducted between nations which, it is claimed, have similar characteristics and provide a ‘legitimate’ basis for comparison. This volume reveals three different ways in which the respective authors approached this problem, which centre on their approach to the issue or handling of parameters. The first is to engage in meta-analysis, which translates into more complex issues, where attempts are made to engage with national parameters in attempting to understand the phenomena in question. Such attempts quickly disintegrated into a more or less sophisticated highlighting of different factors at work in both nations and an attempt to dance around the dialectic of common and uncommon variables while maintaining the usefulness of comparative research. This is also associated with a downplaying or ignoring of other variables that do not fit the comparative narrative. There are four chapters on World War I and the role of radical and working class organizations, which opposed the war in both nations and conscription. America quickly legislated conscription following its entry into the war; while there were two unsuccessful attempts by referenda in Australia. The accounts of Australian developments ignore the role of the Catholic Church and Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne in opposing conscription following the April 1916 Irish uprising. Jennie Jeppesen contrasts the coercive use of convict labour in Virginia between 1614 and 1788 with a kinder incentive-based approach in Australia from 1788 to 1853. In two and a half centuries, it might be reasonable to expect there would be differences! In doing so, she makes no mention of America’s use of slavery as a demonstration effect in determining its treatment of American convicts in comparison to Australia. The second is to conduct cross-national comparisons on more narrowly based issues where specific …