East European Labourers in an American Mill Town, 1890-1940: The Deferential-Proletarian-Privatized Workers?

Abstract

Using the Lockwoodian typology of deferential, proletarian, and privatized working-class consciousness, this social-historical analysis reconstructs and compares the kinds of social representations held by East European workers of the immigrant and native-born generations in an American mill town in the period 1890-1940. Exemplifying and extending the newer literature on class consciousness and social imagery, the paper shows (1) how and which influences of a micro- and macroscopic nature shaped the social meaning-systems of East European workers; and (2) how and under which circumstances their images of the social order formed complex, fragmented, and multivalent configurations.