Working-class Values Research Articles

More is Better: Mass Consumption, Gender, and Class Identity in Postwar America

"around here, the working class is the middle class" —suburban worker, 1960 1 At a series of conferences in the mid-1950s, the nation's leading designers of appliances, automobiles, and other mass-produced goods debated the social and cultural consequences of working-class prosperity in the decade following World War II. One invited panelist reportedly "shocked and intrigued" the mostly male group of Madison Avenue sophisticates. 2 The participant who caused such a stir was Miss Esther Foley, home service editor of True Story, a confessional-style magazine aimed at wage-earners' wives and published by Macfadden Publications since 1919. Foley abandoned the usual abstract or statistical profiles of the "average" mass-market consumer. Instead, she used slides to bring these designers directly into an unfamiliar world—the kitchens and living rooms of her "ten million" working-class women readers. 3 What "shocked and intrigued" designers was the material evidence of working-class women's purchasing power. The debate centered on "rosebuds," the flowery flourishes that appeared everywhere. Why, the mystified designers demanded to know, did Foley's women readers insist on buying silverware decorated with rosebuds? Rosebuds represented a sentimental, ornamental aesthetic associated with working-class taste. In designers' scheme of economic mobility [End Page 581] leading to cultural uplift, postwar prosperity should have brought an end to rosebuds. As more and more of these women moved into the middle-income groups, they would trade rosebuds for silverware of a simpler aesthetic preferred by designers and other upper-middle class tastemakers. Instead, these wives of wage earners demanded their rosebuds. Foley told designers that she "did not want 'her' people to be ignored or slighted . . . [nor] their motives . . . misunderstood." She argued that "motivation research" could help designers understand that these women rejected "severe sterile purity" in silverware because it did not embody the "hopes, dreams . . . and despairs" of their increasingly comfortable but still distinctively working-class lives. 4 In other words, working-class women's preference for shiny ornamental rosebuds was not about bad taste, fashion, or status-seeking but about social identity. In fact, designers' dream of economic mobility leading to cultural uplift had been turned on its head. Not only was silverware with rosebuds evidence of a persisting working class in a supposedly classless middle-class society, but through the mechanism of mass production this ethos actually drove the standards for shiny appliances, automobiles, and other goods that permeated mainstream culture. This study offers a reconsideration of postwar class relations by exploring the significant influence of working-class women's distinctive values, as expressed in taste, on American social life and culture. 5 By World War II, class had come to be synonymous with the "collar line," yet historians have shown that, along with income and occupation, patterns of education, sociability, and style of life also have played a role in class formation and identity. 6 The new postwar working class that was the subject of debate in this public discourse referred to white "blue-collar" wage earners and their families, a predominantly northern industrial workforce that included the children and grandchildren of European immigrants for whom ethnicity had become a class marker. 7 An increasing number of these blue-collar workers now had middle-class pocketbooks that allowed them to live in suburban "mass-produced domestic comfort" and participate in the white identity defined by that racially homogenous environment. 8 But, these blue-collar men and women nevertheless often retained their distinctive class values, lifestyles, and tastes. 9 Above all, an ethos I call "more is better" defined working-class taste. This ethos represented the preservation of working-class values now given new expression in big cars [End Page 582] and shiny refrigerators. That style, with its boldness and bulk, stood in contrast to a "less is more" aesthetic of simplicity favored by upper-middle class tastemakers. 10 By identifying the persistence of working-class taste...

Children's Strikes, Parents' Rights: Paterson and Five Points

While Karen Calvert's book, Children in the House, deals with middle-class play, there is very little work devoted to children's toys and games in a working-class context. This paper uses the toy assemblages from two working-class sites to begin a discussion of working-class play and the struggle nineteenth-century working-class parents waged to impart their own values to their children. Because marbles were the predominant toy recovered from both sites, the nature of the game is discussed, and its relationship to working-class values is considered.

‘The extreme end of a spectrum of violence’: physical abuse, hegemony and resistance in British residential care

While researching the history of traditional child care institutions – children's homes, orphanages, industrial schools and reformatories – the author was impressed by the similarities of regimen across the spectrum of traditional care. Underpinning all forms of care was a severe discipline which often became abusive. Sexual abuse was also reasonably common. There were differences but it is the similarities which are stressed in this article, which seeks reasons for the perceived sameness. Children in care came mostly from the same deprived social background, and no matter what the intentions of the carers, traditional care involved a confrontation with cherished working class values which many of the children were bound to resist. Resistance was met by severe staff reaction; hence the violent undercurrent. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

CONTESTATION IN MODERN ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

This article analyses the fandom of supporters from four professional English football clubs organized into Independent Supporters Associations (ISAs), and the extent to which these groups contest the rapidly changing culture of modern football. Broadly linking schools of fandom to class, it argues that ISAs combine certain `traditional' working class values with agenda developed by the Football Supporters Association, and contest some key dominant principles of modern commercial football. It concludes that, ironically, the new political economy of the modern English game can offer greater opportunities for fans of smaller clubs to contribute to decision-making processes.

Imposters in the Sacred Grove: Working Class Women in the Academe

The authors of this paper take a critical approach within ethnographic narrative to explore issues of power, class and agency in their experiences as working class women in the academe. After first revealing their working class roots through personal narratives, they employ Clance's Impostor Phenomenon to explore and discuss their experiences as working-class women within the Scared Grove of the academe. Results seem to indicate a dichotomy between their working class values and the expectations of university academics. Results also reveal that men faculty are their current allies, indicating that, for these three working class women in the academe, class is more of an issue than gender. The researchers conclude that they are negotiating the impostor phenomenon while accepting their outsider status. Suggestions for further research are included.

Is imposing risk awareness cultural imperialism?

Epidemiology is the main supplier of “bases of action” for preventive medicine and health promotion. Epidemiology and epidemiologists therefore have a responsibility not only for the quality and soundness of the risk estimates they deliver and for the way they are interpreted and used, but also for their consequences. In the industrialised world, the value of, and fascination with health is greater than ever, and the revelation from epidemiological research of new hazards and risks, conveyed to the public by the media, has become almost an every-day phenomenon. This “risk epidemic” in the modern media is paralleled in professional medical journals. It is in general endorsed by health promoters as a necessary foundation for increased health awareness and a desirable impetus for people to take responsibility for their own health through behavioural changes. Epidemiologists and health promoters, however, have in general not taken the possible side effects of increased risk awareness seriously enough. By increasing anxiety regarding disease, accidents and other adverse events, the risk epidemic enhances both health care dependence and health care consumption. More profoundly, and perhaps even more seriously, it changes the way people think about health, disease and death — and ultimately and at least potentially, their perspective on life more generally. The message from the odds ratios from epidemiological research advocates a rationalistic, individualistic, prospective life perspective where maximising control and minimising uncertainty is seen as a superior goal. The inconsistency between applying an expanded health concept, comprising elements of coping, self-realisation and psycho-physical functioning, and imposing intolerance to risk and uncertainty, is regularly overlooked. Acceptance and tolerance of risk and uncertainty, which are inherent elements of human life, is a prerequisite for coping and self-realisation. A further shift away from traditional working-class values like sociability, sharing, conviviality and tolerance can not be imposed without unwanted side effects on culture and human interaction. The moral and coercive crusade for increased risk awareness and purity in life style can too readily take on the form of cultural imperialism towards conformity. Epidemiologists and the health care movement in general have a mandate to fight disease and premature death; they have no explicit mandate to change culture.

A qualitative investigation of responses to televised alcohol advertisements

February 1992 saw the introduction of new rules governing alcohol advertising in New Zealand. Prior to this date there had been limited alcohol advertising on television, with only sponsorship and corporate advertising permitted (Casswell et al., 1989). The new rules allowed for alcohol brand advertising to be shown after 9 p.m., and this resulted in a fourfold increase in televised alcohol advertising in the two-year period between 1991 and 1993 (Casswell et al., 1994). The changes were introduced with the stipulation that they would be reviewed after two years. To assist in this review process, a series of research projects was undertaken, which included complementary qualitative and quantitative studies with similar age groups, plus content analyses. The qualitative research was undertaken to understand more fully how individuals of different ages and ethnic groups were responding to televised alcohol advertisements in this environment of greatly increased exposure to such advertisements. The effects of alcohol advertising are difficult to assess, and therefore it is appropriate to use a range of methodologies to examine the topic. Methodologies used by other researchers have included econometric analyses (Lee and Tremblay, 1992; Grabowski, 1976; McGuiness, 1980; Duffy, 1987, 1991; Franke and Wilcox, 1987; Selvanathan, 1989), comparing countries with and without alcohol advertising bans (Saffer, 1991), examining the effect of short-term temporary bans (Smart and Cutler, 1976; Ogborne and Smart, 1980), crosssectional surveys (Strickland, 1982, 1983; Atkin et al., 1984; Atkin and Block, 1984), one longitudinal study (Connolly et al., 1994), experimental studies (Brown, 1978; McCarty and Ewing, 1983; Kohn et al., 1984; Kohn and Smart, 1984, 1987; Sobell et al., 1986; Wilks et al., 1992), and content analyses (Finn and Strickland, 1982; Atkin, 1987). Few studies have been reported that have qualitatively examined responses to televised alcohol advertisements. One exception was a qualitative study in Scotland (Aitken et al., 1988a; Aitken, 1989), which, as with the current study, was undertaken in association with a quantitative study (Aitken et al., 1988b). They focused on youngsters 10-16 years old and noted that at that time there had been few accounts of the child's view of alcohol advertising. They found that by the age of 14, children perceived lager and beer commercials as promoting macho-masculinity, sociability, and working-class values. These findings were also consistent with research they had done on children's perceptions of the imagery in cigarette advertisements (Aitken et al., 1985). Previous alcohol advertising research in New Zealand had been undertaken following the introduction of the corporate and sponsorship advertising in 1987. This research involved surveys of boys 9-14 years old (Wyllie et al., 1989) and of men 15-30 years old (Wyllie et al., 1991). The surveys included a number of open-ended questions that allowed the respondents to describe their response to each of two advertisements in their own words. This advertising was found to be popular with the boys and young men, and, despite ostensibly not advertising beer, it did have strong association with the promotion of beer. This advertising was perceived to be communicating a tough, active, outdoors type of imagery. One of the advertisements was set in pioneering times and featured strong, rugged men who managed to stop a wagon from falling off a narrow bridge. The other featured rugby players in training, including close-up shots of tackles. A concern with this type of imagery in sports sponsorship advertising was cited as part of the motivation for a policy change, in the belief that the inclusion of brand advertising would result in less emphasis on this type of macho masculinity. In attempting to understand the possible effects of alcohol advertising, it is useful to consider the theoretical perspectives that attempt to explain the ways in which advertising might have an influence. …

Inner-city realities: Democracy within difference, theory, and practice

Critical theorists in education have described the end of the twentieth century as a period of "democratic decline," an age seemingly content with an "illusion of education" (McLaren, 1994). In no place is this more true than in America 's inner-city schools. Having taught in and conducted critical ethnography in such schools (Kanpol, 1992a; Yeo, 1995), we have been forced to the ugly conclusion that Kozol ' s descriptions in Savage Inequalities (1991) are frightfully on target. It is perhaps justifiable, then, that the mood of many critical theorists is one of increasing despair. Even within that normally avuncular spirit, there really seems to be no hope for inner-city schools, no way for them to begin to match their more affluent contestors for cultural capital, despite the multicultural, diversity, and "school choice" panaceas that have gripped higher education and now teachers in our public schools. Critical theorists in education have done well theorizing over the pitfalls of urban schools in general (Fine, 1991) and the reproduction of both workingclass values (Bowles and Gintis, 1976; Willis, 1977; Anyon, 1980) and race, class, and gender disparities in particular (Apple, 1986; McLaren, 1994; Weiler, 1987). However, seemingly lost within this particular literature is a push to seriously (and pragmatically) understand how one may support democratic values within ostensibly dead-end urban schools.

Television Alcohol Commercials and Under-age Drinking

Research in Scotland has shown that television alcohol commercials become increasingly salient and attractive over the years 10 to 14. By the age of 14 children perceive lager and beer commercials as promoting macho-masculinity, sociability and working-class values. The research also showed consistent differences between under-age drinkers and non-drinkers of the same age. Drinkers tend to be more adept at recognizing and identifying brand imagery. This suggests they tend to pay more attention to alcohol commercials. Drinkers also tend to be more appreciative of alcohol commercials. This suggests they tend to get more pleasure out of them. In other words, television alcohol commercials are reinforcing under-age drinking. This paper suggests that although other influences such as increasing age and peer group drinking are probably more important, claims that advertising does not promote or reinforce under-age drinking are questionable.

TEN-TO SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD'S PERCEPTIONS OF ADVERTISEMENTS FOR ALCOHOLIC DRINKS

Groups of children discussed a number of issues concerning advertising, including advertisements they liked and disliked. The findings suggest that advertisements for alcoholic drinks become increasingly salient and attractive over the years 10 to 14. For example, although 10-year-olds rarely mentioned advertisements for alcoholic drinks when talking about favourite television commercials, the older children tended to do so almost immediately. There were also consistent developmental trends in their descriptions of liked and disliked qualities of advertisements and of the symbolism in commercials for alcoholic drinks. Whereas the 10-year-olds' comments tended to be tied to what is specifically shown in commercials, the older children tended to go beyond this and alluded to much more complex imagery, much in the same way that adults do. For example, the 14- and 16-year-olds tended to see larger and beer commercials as promoting masculinity, sociability and working-class values. These findings indicate that advertising campaigns for alcoholic drinks aimed at older teenagers and young adults present qualities which younger teenagers find attractive. We suggest it is no longer tenable for advertisers to absolve themselves of any responsibility by saying that advertisements for alcoholic drinks are targeted only at adults.

Labor Vacates the Bush: The Eclipse of Working Class Values in Victoria's Western District

The federal electorate of Wannon, which covers most of that part of rural Victoria known as the 'Western District', is popularly perceived as the heartland of entrenched landed conservatism, having provided Australian politics with Malcolm Fraser, its most patrician Prime Minister since Stanley Bruce (at least), and a Prime Minister, moreover, consistently portrayed as an archetypal product of that exceptionally inegalitarian and mannered environment.1 There is a deal to be said for such a view. Life in Victoria's Western District is more than ?

Workers' Education: A Confrontation at Ruskin College

In 1908, the content and values of higher education and their bearing on the needs of working-class students were debated at Ruskin College, Oxford University. In this debate, working-class students had a chance to express their ideas. Lord Curzon, representing the Oxford faculty, argued that higher education embodied a great national heritage and enabled students to acquire upper-class manners and values. Albert Mansbridge, supported by liberal dons in the Workers' Educational Association, argued for a university education aimed primarily at the development of intellectual capacity. He repudiated the idea that higher education should be suited to the interests of working-class students or that traditional Oxford education would estrange the working-class student from his class. Radical working-class students charged the Workers' Educational Association with failure to recognize the relationship between education and social class. They asserted that traditional Oxford education reflected only the experience of the higher social classes, that the values of the upper classes were portrayed as correct, and that working-class values were ignored. Such an education would indeed estrange the working-class student from his class.

'Working-Class Authoritarianism': A Reply to Miller and Riessman

^ N AUTHOR may consider himself fortunate to find his writ> ings getting as careful scrutiny as has Chapter IV of Political w XMan, that dealing with 'Working-Class Authoritarianism'. (I know of at least a -half-dozen critiques of it, some of which have already appeared in print.) Progress in the social sciences can only advance if scholars are willing to take the iime to examine in depth the evidence presented to justify conclusions, as well as to replicate what others have done. The article by Messrs. Miller and Riessman represents a good example of such critical re-evaluation. I would wish that some of my English left-socialist critics would be as careful in their reading. (One prominent one criticized me for discussing Communist authoritarianism while ignoring the authoritarianism in the structure of large tradeunions. He acknowledged later in private correspondence that he had managed to overlook a 46-page chapter on trade-union oligarchy and dictatorship.) In reading through Miller and Riessman, I find much to agree with, since in fact, as they indicate, they agree with much in my original analysis. To a considerable degree, the differences between us strike me as a matter of emphasis rather than of major substance. In other contexts they have written much about working-class values and behaviour. Here, while acknowledging that 'workers possess a number of traits which have authoritarian potential', they decry the fact that Chapter IV does not allude to various more positively valued characteristics of the working class, that this chapter seems biased against the workers and favourable to the middle classes. My answer to this must be that I cannot cover everything in one chapter: that this chapter is devoted to accounting for some of the factors which are related to the disproportionate working-class support under specific circumstances for what I consider to be an unquestionably authoritarian movement, the Communist Party. (In a forthcoming book, Leo Srole sharply criticizes Reinhard Bendix and myself for exhibiting what in his

Social Class and the Allocation of Parental Responsibilities

The purpose of this paper is to trace the effects of middle- and working-class parents' ideologies of child rearing upon the division, between mother and father, of responsibilities for the support and constraint of the children. Our previous research has shown decidedly different emphases in middleand working-class parents' values for their children. According to these studies, the dominant motif of middle-class parents' values is that the child develop his own standards of conduct: desirable behavior consists essentially in the child's acting according to the dictates of his own principles. By contrast, the dominant motif of working-class parents' values is that the child's actions be reputable: desirable behavior consists essentially in his not transgressing parental proscriptions (7). Faced with the decision of whether or not to punish a child's misbehavior, middle-class parents look to the child's motives and feelings. Working-class parents look, instead, to the act itself; their attention is focused on the direct consequences of misbehavior (8). The middle-class child is more apt to be punished for loss of self-control, the working-class child for disobedience. We assume that inherent in parents' standards for their children are conceptions of their own responsibilities as parents. Specifically, it seems to us that middle-class values imply a parental obligation to be sensitive to the child's thoughts and feelings; working-class values imply a parental obligation to make clear to the child what rules are to be obeyed. We should therefore expect the ratio of support to constraint in parents' handling of their children to be higher in middle- than in working-class families. Bronfenbrenner's recent review of the past 25 years' research on parent-child relationships strengthens this expectation: Over the entire . . . period studied, parent-child relationships in the middle class are consistently reported as more acceptant and equalitarian, while those in the working class are oriented toward maintaining order and obedience. Within this context, the middle class has shown a shift away from emotional control toward freer expression