Working-class Perspective Research Articles

Working-Class Women and the Progressive Era Development of Public Administration: The Case of Margaret Bondfield

Using a case study of British trade union organizer Margaret Bondfield, this article begins the task of adding a working class perspective to accounts of women’s participation in Progressive era urban reform and expansion of public policy while also showing how international networks of support among trade union women undergirded American reform efforts. The narrative expands the consideration of intersectionality and positionality in analyzing women’s role in developing public administration.

“Millennials as working class”: El Rey Network and the politics of race, class, and gender

ABSTRACT This article examines how the El Rey Network departs distinctively from other competing Latinx television channels catered to the young bicultural and bilingual millennials. The cable network’s emphasis on working-class masculinity aims to appeal to the Latino millennials who increasingly identify themselves as the new working class. The deployment of a working-class perspective into its original programing, branding, and aesthetics aspires to offer a televisual space where Latinos can redefine the boundaries of their masculinity stemming from the feminization of labor and economic inequalities under the forces of capitalism. Despite El Rey’s desire to provide more visibility and presence of Latino male bodies on television, it adheres to narrow conceptions of machismo that do not speak to the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and generational differences that shape the millennial Latinx identity formation. Therefore, the case study of El Rey illustrates how the Latinx television industry has not evolved much as it presents to be. The article also contributes to the ongoing discussion about Latinx television’s efforts to construct a cohesive discourse of Latinidad and the complex meanings of race, class, and gender informing the politics of Latino representation.

“She Moves Through Deep Corridors”: Mobility and Settler Colonialism in Sharon Doubiago’s Proletarian Eco-Epic Hard Country

This article analyzes Sharon Doubiago’s American long poem Hard Country (1982) from the joined perspectives of ecocriticism and mobility studies. It argues that Hard Country is a proletarian eco-epic that rethinks human-nature relations from a working-class perspective shaped by different kinds of (im)mobility. In my analysis, I show how the text revises the American epic tradition by foregrounding working-class people’s desire for meaningful relationships to place in light of histories of environmental injustice and displacement. Doubiago’s text promotes traditional place-based notions of belonging, but it also challenges ideas about what kind of sense of place can be environmentally suggestive. In doing so, it allows for the emergence of a proletarian “ecopoetics of mobility” (Gerhardt) that emphasizes the bodily experiences of Doubiago’s mobile narrator as well as U.S.-American histories and cultures of mobility. Among these cultures of mobility, settler colonialism stands out as a system of violent domination and form of environmental injustice (Whyte) that calls into question working-class people’s desire to move or settle on dispossessed indigenous lands. As such, settler colonialism poses a challenge to Doubiago’s proletarian ecopoetics of mobility, which must engage with the fact that white working-class people in the United States have always been perpetrators as well as victims of both environmental and mobility injustice.

Возможна ли социология для трудящихся классов сегодня?

Татьяна Степановна Лыткина – кандидат социологических наук, старший научный сотрудник, Институт социально-экономических и энергетических проблем Севера Коми НЦ УрО РАН. Адрес: 167982, Сыктывкар, ул. Коммунистическая, д. 26. Е-mail: tlytkina@yandex.ru
 Светлана Сергеевна Ярошенко – кандидат социологических наук, доцент, кафедра сравнительной социологии, факультет социологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет. Адрес: 191124, Санкт-Петербург, ул. Смольного, д. 1/3. Е-mail: svetayaroshenko@gmail.com
 Цитирование: Лыткина Т.С., Ярошенко С.С. (2019) Возможна ли социология для трудящихся классов сегодня? // Мир России. Т. 28. № 1. С. 101–123. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2019-28-1-101-123
 В статье анализируются возможности приращения социологического знания о росте социального неравенства через изучение трудящихся и прежде всего рабочего класса, вынужденного продавать рабочую силу в условиях снижения статуса. Через обращение к истории социологической мысли рассматривается значимость категории социального класса для становления социологии как науки. Данный тезис также проводится через анализ особенностей развития российской социологии в дореволюционный и советский периоды. Выделяется не только отличительная черта российской социологии – противостояние власти и ученых, – но и доказываются маловероятность эволюции общества без социологии и проблематичность развития социологии без общества и знания о его классообразующих механизмах. Настоящее состояние российской социологии характеризуется как инволюционное, связанное с замыканием социологов на своих интересах и противоречиях. В то время как в условиях глобализации рынка идет поиск компромисса между разными классами и требуется новое обращение к рабочему классу, российские социологи предпочитают творить социологию, пренебрегая интересами рабочих. Доказывается, что исследование текущих процессов в обществе исходя из перспектив рабочего класса способствует сокращению противоречий и может быть полезно как при реконструкции устаревших теорий, так и в разработке новых подходов. Это требует не только объединения усилий социологов в продвижении внутренней критики, но и развития публичной социологии, способствующей диалогу с обществом и лучшему пониманию происходящего.

Socio-demographic determinants of physical activity (PA): A working class perspective

Physical activity (PA) has been confirmed by a dozen of studies to be an effective treatment for many diseases. Unfortunately, the habit of regularly engaging in it is rare among Africans, especially those caught in the web of time-consuming sedentary jobs. To contribute to a remedy of this problem, this study identifies relevant socio-demographic factors that determine engagement in PA by workers. A cross-sectional quantitative research technique was employed in this study. Participants were workers in Koforidua Township in Ghana. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from 686 volunteer participants. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis was used to present results. Findings show that education, gender, marital status, alternative employment, whether or not one currently has or previously had a chronic disease, and the sector of a person’s employment are some of the determinants of PA. All socio-demographic determinants account for 96.3% of the total variation, indicating a strong fit of the OLS model. While education and some other variables promote engagement in PA, age, income, and alternative employment do otherwise. Improving individuals’ education, especially physical education, is recommended as a step towards enabling workers to inculcate the habit of regularly participating in PA.

Book review: Gentrification: A Working-Class Perspective

Book review: Gentrification: A Working-Class Perspective

Book Review: Kirsteen Paton Gentrification: A Working Class Perspective

Book Review: Kirsteen Paton <i>Gentrification: A Working Class Perspective</i>

Book Review: Gentrification: A Working Class Perspective

Book Review: Gentrification: A Working Class Perspective

Kirsteen Paton: Gentrification: a working-class perspective

Among urban scholars there is much debate about the consequences of gentrification, in particular about the question whether gentrification displaces the original and less affluent residents. Kirsteen Paton’s book Gentrification: A Working-Class Perspective critically engages with this debate, arguing that displacement has been too narrowly focused on eviction and forced physical movement. Reworking Hackworth’s definition of gentrification as the creation of urban space for the more affluent user, she aims to show how gentrification also seeks to create the affluent user and thus results in cultural displacement as well as various types of physical displacement. Gentrification is a way to manage and discipline rather than displace low-income residents, Paton argues. The book is ambitious in promising nothing less than ‘a new sociological perspective on gentrification’ (p. 5). Paton weaves together literatures on hegemony, class analysis, gentrification and neoliberal economic restructuring. Through an empirical investigation of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, Paton aims to demonstrate how gentrification is as much a consensual strategy as it is coercive. The book offers stimulating critiques of various literatures and is rich in ideas. Her empirical work is a case study of the regeneration of Partick, Glasgow, which is a ‘predominantly ‘‘white’’ working-class’ and now gentrifying neighbourhood with the motto Industria dilat or ‘we are enriched by industry’ (p. 61). Paton gathered the ‘locational narratives’ that describe ‘people’s residential biographical stories of how and where they live’ (p. 54) of 49 people (previously) living in Partick. In four chapters, which are preceded by an elaborate theoretical chapter, she stages her interviewees in an exploration of various themes among which class and place, consumer citizenship, othering and displacement. Paton’s most thought-provoking conclusion, in my reading, is that ‘gentrification is not always a zero-sum game for working-class residents, who at times rework gentrification processes, on their own terms for their own gains’ (blurb). This insight is detailed in a

The Search for a Mass Ecological Constituency

A core requirement for addressing the ecological crisis will be to reverse the expansionist thrust, which is inherent in capitalism. I explore the political conditions for achieving such a reversal, asking specifically on what basis a vast popular movement inspired by this goal may emerge. Because the drive to economic accumulation arises from the class interest of capital, a coherent and effective opposition to it must reflect a class position opposed to capital. In this sense, environmentalism is a class issue. After noting earlier theoretical expressions of this insight, I review (focusing on the US case) key expressions of explicit working-class environmentalism. How can such awareness be extended and amplified? Recognizing the diversity of constituencies that a working-class perspective must embody, I examine environmentalist dimensions of the demands associated with particular sectors (notably, the anti-racist and the feminist movements). It becomes apparent that whereas the legitimacy of such demands has attained wide formal acceptance, the related challenge to concentrated economic power continues to be marginalized and even stigmatized. An important prop to such stigmatization in the United States is the persistent credence accorded, in public discourse, to pseudo-scientific denials of the environmental crisis. But a more insidious obstacle to anti-capitalist mobilization is the contention, on the part of self-proclaimed anti-“catastrophists,” that although radical social change is desirable, advocating it as part of an ecological agenda is counterproductive to the near-term task of promoting environmental reforms within the capitalist setting. I argue, on the contrary, that theorizing and organizing for a socialist alternative is necessary not only for long-term purposes, but also as a basis for identifying immediate steps to be taken. I suggest that a basis for reconciling urgent practical measures with society-wide transformation may be found in the tradition of struggles for worker control.

Student types as reflection of class habitus: An application of Bourdieu’s scholastic fallacy

Have college students become careerists rather than intellectuals? Are working-class students to blame for grade inflation, grade-grubbing, and the downscaling of the university’s noble mission of educating the whole person? These assertions, although somewhat buried in a mass of facts and findings, are present in almost every research study on college student ‘orientations’ produced since the 1970s. This article critically examines these assertions from a working-class perspective, pointing out the ways ‘intellectualism’ and ‘academicism’ have been culturally constructed to favor middle-class behavior and actions, arguing instead that anxiety over the economic value of a college degree reflects awareness of intense changes in the occupational structure and has little to do with increased materialism or anti-intellectualism.

Mass Incarceration and Working Class Interests

Since the early 1980s mass incarceration has become a critical fixture on the U.S. social landscape. Prison and jail populations have increased almost fivefold since 1980 with similar increments in the ranks of those under parole and probation. Historically many labor analysts and unions have regarded incarcerated people as an aberrant sector of the working class. Labels such as “lumpen proletariat,” “criminals,” and the “undeserving poor” have often been applied. In some instances, people doing poorly paid production work while incarcerated have been categorized as “scabs” who undermine hard won union gains. Such thinking is at odds with current realities, if it ever was appropriate. The recent patterns of criminalization have led to the imprisonment of significant swaths of working class people of color, largely the targets of the War on Drugs or anti-immigrant repression. Despite the fact that this racialized roundup now holds millions of workers captive, the process remains largely outside the scope of those concerned with labor and working class organization. Old stereotypes still keep “ex-convicts” and “felons” at the margins of labor organization and analysis. This article argues that unions and labor-oriented organizations need to oppose mass incarceration and adopt new strategies to incorporate a broad working class perspective in their approach to the criminal justice system. The author emphasizes that such an approach would compel unions to act in the interests of the broad working class, which at time may even be in conflict with the immediate interests of their members.

Work and Class in the Box Store University: Autobiographies of Working-Class Academics

The autobiographies of working-class academics look at the American university from a working-class perspective that critiques the practices of American universities, especially their unreasonable hierarchies, their denigration of teachers and teaching, and their labor practices. Focusing on two of the seven collections of essays by academics from working-class backgrounds—Ryan and Sackrey’s Strangers in Paradise (1984) and Janet Zandy’s Liberating Memory (1995)—we can trace the alienation of working-class academics and the increasing extent to which this alienation becomes part of an explicit opposition to the corporate university’s labor practices. As the university becomes dominated by flexible labor patterns with parallels to those initiated by companies such as Wal Mart, “working-class academic” now refers not only to academics with working-class backgrounds, but also to those in the new white collar working class that includes part-time faculty. Autobiographical essays by part-time faculty such as those in Michael Dubson’s collection Ghosts in the Classroom (2001) are part of the effort to end the exploitation of academic labor.

Looking at the Latin “Freak”: Audience Reception of John Leguizamo's Culturally Intimate Humor

In addition to his variegated acting roles, John Leguizamo has written and starred in four one-man Broadway plays to date. In these performances, Leguizamo engages in a great deal of Latino culturally intimate humor that targets the foibles and folkways of the New York City Latino culture he grew up in. In this paper, I perform content analyses of two of his one-man shows, Mambo Mouth and Freak, and then scrutinize the responses of 196 college students who watched the same performances. Latino respondents were more familiar with Leguizamo's work and expressed significantly more appreciation for Leguizamo's comedy than non-Latino respondents. They were also more likely to appreciate Leguizamo's representations of Latino life. In contradiction to my hypothesis, a very substantial majority of both Latino and non-Latino viewers thought that Leguizamo portrayed Latinos in a negative fashion. While Latino respondents were not as likely as non-Latinos to use harsh descriptives, the inability of respondents to see past the dominant cultural stereotypes of Latinos is attributed to the fact that Leguizamo exudes a working-class perspective, the overall lack of Latino visibility in popular culture, and the inherently problematic nature of culturally intimate humor.

Judi Bari and ‘the feminization of Earth First!’: the convergence of class, gender and radical environmentalism

This paper addresses feminist materialism as political practice through a case study of IWW-Earth First! Local 1, the late Judi Bari's organization of a radical ecology/timber workers' union in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California. Rejecting the Earth First! mythology of timber workers as ‘enemies’ of nature, Bari sought to unite workers and environmentalists in pursuit of sustainable forestry practices against the devastating approaches favoured by multinational logging corporations. In so doing, she brought a working-class feminist perspective to the radical ecology of Earth First! Bari's work provided a significant instance of community organizing in opposition to the masculinist, exclusionary practices and misanthropic posturing of Earth First!'s self-proclaimed ‘eco-warriors’ and ‘rednecks for nature’. What is perhaps most interesting about the development of Local 1 is the articulation of feminist, environmentalist and labour discourses through a series of political actions.

A Working Class Critique of Criminological Theory

The absence of a thoroughly developed, working class critique of criminological theory has resulted in bias in the creation of knowledge regarding crime and deviance. Much as feminist writings illuminated the unique problems related to gender, and works by those discussing racial and ethnic minorities highlighted the special concerns related to race and ethnicity, a working class perspective can expose the particular issues having to do with class. A brief discussion will be presented dealing with the portrayal of working class people in the media, and the complicity of academia in allowing working class stereotypes to persist. A sketch of a working class perspective will then be developed, and it will be used to critique fourteen of the major criminological theories today in terms of their relative sensitivities and considerations of the class factor in crime and justice issues. The final section places each of the fourteen theories on a continuum from those that do not consider the working class experience at all to those that give the working class experience full consideration.

Promoting a labor perspective in the American mass media: unions and radio in the CIO era, 1936-56

Corporate interests have dominated American radio since the late 1920s, using a commercialized medium to sell business products and ideology. For several decades, organized labor challenged business control of the radio. Unable to compete with business in other areas of the mass media, radio, with its potential for reaching a large audience, held promise for a labor movement hoping to contest business domination of political discourse. This article explores the relationship between organized labor and radio broadcasting from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. During the early part of this period, unions engaged in a fierce struggle for access to radio and began challenging the coverage of labor in the mass media. In the post-Second World War era, organized labor launched an aggressive campaign to utilize radio to promote a working-class political perspective. By the early 1950s, labor's voice was more widely heard on the airwaves than ever before. Organized labor offered at least a modest check on corporate America's command of the mass media.

Putting Your Body on the Line: A Meditation on ?Hostile Environment? Sexual Harassment in Working-Class Perspective

Listening to Anita Hill's testimony about pubic hairs on Coke cans and Long Dong Silver, I was immediately sure that she was telling the truth. When friends said, But it's all so goofy. Who would really say things like that? I replied that the goofiness of the stories was exactly what made me sure of their credibility. I had experienced such hostile environment sexual harassment, and that's how it was: unsettling but oblique, causing one to pause, confused and disbelieving, thereby insulating the perpetrator from direct counterattack. That he was only joking or making an innocent observation or engaging in collegial horseplay, are all defenses that the harasser calculatedly wants to keep available to himself should his target make a fuss. My own experience of such harassment occurred in 1978 and 1979, when I worked for the United States Postal Service as a letter-sorting machine operator. On this job, we spent perhaps forty-five minutes of every working hour keying (machine-sorting letters) and perhaps fifteen minutes (removing the sorted letters from the machine's bins and placing them in trays for delivery to local post offices). Keying was done at the front of the machine, where one was part of a long line of workers, with many people around; sweeping was done at the back of the huge machine, where one was out of sight, in relative isolation. Frequently, when women went to the back to sweep, we would find hand drawings of penises-some erect, some not-or other such offerings waiting for us on the ledges of the machine, left there by the male coworkers who had been sweeping just before us. The drawings weren't signed, nor were they addressed to anyone in particular; they were just there, unsettling, confusing, and conveying a hostility that was impossible to ignore. Still, how and whether to respond to them was not, to any of us, obvious. We didn't want to come across as prudes or as unsophisticated-certainly we'd seen things like this before-and, more important, we didn't want our male coworkers thinking we were crybabies who were thrown by little things (no pun intended). So we never mentioned the drawings-none of us. We just threw them under the machine or in the trash and went on about our business. No one ever told a supervisor (which would have been disloyal tattling on a fellow worker), no one ever told the union (actually, a shop steward was among our leading suspects), no one even much talked about it.

The Cuban health care system and factors currently undermining it

This paper explores the dynamics of health and health care in Cuba during a period of severe crisis by placing it within its economic, social, and political context using a comparative historical approach. It outlines Cuban achievements in health care as a consequence of the socialist transformations since 1959, noting the full commitment by the Cuban state, the planned economy, mass participation, and a self-critical, working class perspective as crucial factors. The roles of two external factors, the U.S. economic embargo and the Council of Mutual Economic Cooperation (CMEA), are explored in shaping the Cuban society and economy, including its health care system. It is argued that the former has hindered health efforts in Cuba. The role of the latter is more complex. While the CMEA was an important source for economic growth, Cuban relations with the Soviet bloc had a damaging effect on the development of socialism in Cuba. The adoption of the Soviet model of economic development fostered bureaucracy and demoralization of Cuban workers. As such, it contributed to two internal factors that have undermined further social progress including in health care: low productivity of labor and the growth of bureaucracy. While the health care system is still consistently supported by public policy and its structure is sound, economic crisis undermines its material and moral foundations and threatens its achievements. The future of the current Cuban health care system is intertwined with the potentials for its socialist development.

Folklore as Politics in Great Britain: Working-Class Critiques of Upper-Class Strike Breakers in the 1926 General Strike

Believing their privileged existence and their world be threatened by the 1926 British General Strike, upper-class volunteers came out as strikebreakers and transformed a potential working-class revolution into a nine-day May festival. Their behavior was reminiscent of larks, rags, fancy dress, and leg-pulls-traditional university and Society play genres also used raise charity funds, criticize others, or to cloak serious purposes or ideas. Because of the apparently playful nature of the volunteers' conduct, however, most scholars have ignored the political import of such activities. Individual and media commentary from a working-class perspective, however, reveals a complex reading of the volunteers' performance and a critique of their misappropriation of traditional forms defeat the strike and narrow the definition of Englishness. [folklore, Great Britain, festival, politics, humor]