The Making of a classic of historiography: Conditions of possibility of 'The making of the English Working Class'

Abstract

This article will try to shed light on some of the factors that conditioned the production The Making of the Working Class. The first section will give some clues as to the formation of Thompson ́s habitus whose most characteristic features were already present at the time of writing The Making. Second, we present some characteristics of the situation in which the work was written especially in urgent political situation that help to explain it and in the time of the Thompson ́s path in which our author conceived it. In the third section, the field of the possible is rebuilt as it was perceived by Thompson in order to address the problem of social class, both in the field of social sciences and in British historiography. Finally we present an approach that is the combination of these three elements and the guide of the production of the work.