It's a Working Man's Town: Male Working Class Culture

Abstract

In a valuable addition to debate on nature of contemporary working-class culture, Thomas Dunk examines ordinary weekend pursuits of working-class males in his home town of Thunder Bay, Ontario. He shows that function and meaning of gender, ethnicity, popular leisure activities, and common-sense knowledge are intimately linked with way an individual's experience is structured by class. After reviewing principal theoretical problems relating to study of working-class culture and consciousness, Dunk provides a detailed ethnographic analysis of the Boys - male working-class subjects of this study. Male working-class culture, he argues, contains both seeds of a radical response to social inequality and a defensive reaction against alternative social practices and ideas.