Working Class Research Articles

Open-Air Music in Warsaw Between the World Wars

Abstract The aim of the paper is to situate the most important open-air venues where music was performed on the map of interwar Warsaw. This includes venues in city parks, restaurant tea gardens, streets and squares where mass celebrations and demonstrations took place, as well as the courtyards of tenement houses frequented by street players and singers. In addition to live music, that coming from the radio, gramophone records, as well as megaphones installed in parks and streets has been taken into account. On the basis of press reports, taken mainly from the Kurier Warszawski (Warsaw's largest daily newspaper), as well as works of fiction and diaries, the repertoire of works performed in the open air has been reconstructed. The organisers and performers of concerts, open-air shows, and street marches during which music was performed have also been listed. The material is divided into contexts connected with the everyday life of Warsaw's bourgeoisie and working class (during which music, functioning independently or as part of theatrical, cabaret and film performances, functioned as entertainment) and those belonging to the official-public or ceremonial sphere (celebrations of religious and national holidays, military parades, spontaneous demonstrations of supporters of various political groups). Special emphasis has been placed on recreating the social and political context of the latter type of events, which highlight the role of interwar Warsaw as the capital of the state.

Racialized Housing and Proletarization Policies as Internal Socialist Contradictions: Roma Relocations Between 1975-1989 in Baia Mare, Romania

Abstract The emergence of the ghetto as an urban social formation is regularly conveyed as a specific neoliberal capitalist product. Based on interviews with inhabitants and policymakers and archival data covering more than two decades, this article brings another dimension to the debates on ghetto formation. It traces the urban spatial politics of managing and containing Roma communities in the Romanian NW city of Baia Mare from the late 1970s until 1989. To this aim, it uncovers the debates and decisions regarding the last stages of socialist urban systematization focused on Hatvan, a Roma neighbourhood, and the subsequent relocation projects. Initially, the socialist administration aimed to assimilate the Roma population into the working class. However, a peculiar segregationist policy followed the failed experiment of expropriation and rehousing into low-quality apartments. In the early 1980s, authorities relocated most Roma in the newly built Vasile Alecsandri district to four new specifically designed apartment buildings nearby. The four blocks on Arieșului Street lacked central heating to prevent the accumulation of arrears – a materialization of the decade-long austerity policies. Other urban Roma were funnelled there as well, thus revealing the racialization policies assembled at the local level. . Just before 1990, Arieșului was abandoned, and many people decided to relocate in what became Craica, a ghetto that is still in existence today.

MACHINE LEARNING APPROACH FOR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL EXPERTISE

When conducting scientific and technical expertise, it is necessary to analyze the texts of reports on scientific research work. The analysis is carried out in order to determine whether the research being conducted belongs to the class of scientific research and development work in the field of IT. The main purpose of this study is to improve algorithms for analyzing text documents during scientific and technical expertise. To achieve this goal, the tasks of binary classification of documents provided by companies using machine learning technologies are considered. As a result of the study, a comparative analysis was carried out and the most effective machine learning algorithms were identified. The proposed algorithms will be used in a system that automates the process of checking documents submitted to taxpayers by the tax office.

Airplane Parts and Covid Masks: Labour Commuters of North-Western Romania Between Central and Eastern European “Re-Industrialisation” and the Global Market

Abstract This article aims to uncover two main features of ‘re-industrialisation’ in Central and Eastern Europe: the reconfiguration of the economic geography in Northwest Romania and the multiple ways in which the Romanian working class is being integrated into the new economy. Post-socialist shifts towards a low-skilled, flexible, and generally insecure economy have underlined the need for cheap, easily disposable labour, and the emergence of the new economic geography has changed the accumulation of capital in the region and the patterns of labour mobility. Despite massive migration, many have continued to work in the region or have combined migration periods with work close to home. This study explores the different mobilities individuals engage in and seeks to understand why some workers choose to stay and live in the region and how the available opportunities for workers aiming to stay in the region influence their prospects. This study traces the patterns of labour commuting and how this is structured by individuals’ strategies and motivations, as well as the social relationships that support this work. The article analyses labour commuting to two major industrial hubs in the region: one which manufactures aerospace components, and one that produces medical textiles. Both companies are foreign-owned and concentrate a significant proportion of the region’s workforce. The micro-dynamics revealed will contribute to understanding the patterns of work in the specific form of re-industrialisation in contemporary Romania.

Unpacking the Class Struggle in Emily Dickinson’s Because I Could Not Stop for Death: A Marxist Analysis

This research paper explores a Marxist analysis of Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death. This research takes a qualitative approach, which will involve a close reading of Dickinson’s poem to identify instances that reflect Marxist ideology. Drawing on the concepts of exploitation, alienation, and class-consciousness, this paper demonstrates how the poem can be read as a critique of the capitalist system, which serves the interests of the ruling elite at the expense of the proletariat. The poem’s central metaphor of Death as the controlling force behind the journey underscores the coercive and suppressive nature of the bourgeois regime. The imagery of the sights and sounds encountered enroute likewise symbolizes the exploitation of the working class for the benefit of the capitalist class. Ultimately, the speaker’s final realization of the ongoing struggle and the need for revolutionary struggle highlights the Marxist ideals of revolutionary consciousness as a vital component of class resistance. While this paper is limited in scope and depth, it offers a unique perspective on the significance of one of Dickinson’s most famous poems as a social critique of the dominant political and economic structure of its time.

Historical evolution of intergenerational class mobility and educational effects in urban Argentina: 1960–2017

The Argentinean case –given an early modernization and the singularity of its reversal of development- is instructive about the role of education on intergenerational class mobility. We propose a wide historical analysis of time variations in intergenerational class mobility and the role of education over different periods in urban Argentina –specifically in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, from 1960 to 2017. This is the first time a long-term social mobility study has been conducted in Argentina. We analyse intergenerational social mobility according to EGP class scheme, using absolute rates, log-linear models, and long-term counterfactual analysis. Results show a social fluidity process for men but not for women. The counterfactual analysis exhibits that most social fluidity among men was due to a reduction in the direct class origin-class destination effect. No evidence of effects of educational expansion or educational equalization is observed. This presence of moderate social fluidity has not been linked to a modernization process which expands vertical upward mobility. Instead, it took place in a context of deindustrialization and the decline of the skilled working class.

What Today's Working Class Wants from Political Leaders

The exit of the working class from the Democratic Party is a long saga that began in the late 1960s and culminated in Donald Trump's takeover of the Republican Party with themes that resonated among working class voters. During this period, Democrats along with center-left parties through Western democracies who have encountered similar difficulties have struggled to understand the sources of working-class disaffection and to craft remedies for it. Two recent studies from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPT) have shed new light on these issues.

DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY AND DIGITAL WORKING CLASS STUDIES: NEW CONCEPTS

The study primarily addressed the phenomenon of "digital humanities", which emerged because of the increasing interest of the humanities in the relationship between digitalization and society. With the shift of digitalization and sociology's interests and subjects to the digital field, "digital sociology" has become possible to talk about as a sub-discipline. Digital labour studies, on the other hand, are generally built on discussions of digital labour. However, in the study, the idea that digital sociology and digital labour studies have many common interests is suggested. The main purpose of the study is to define the phenomenon of digital sociology as a sub-discipline of digital humanities and to create a dialogue between digital sociology and digital labour studies. To achieve this goal, process analysis based on secondary source data is used methodically. Neoliberal fatigue, insecurity of will, fear of missing out, absenteeism, presentism, unemployed growth, Kaizen, cyber hedonism, digital nomadism, cyber Balkanization and non-cooperation were determined as the concepts to be examined in this review process. The work is divided into three titles. Under the first title, the concepts of digital humanities, digital sociology and digital labour studies were discussed. After this discussion, a critical position was determined. The second part of the study is devoted to the examination of the aforementioned concepts. In the third and last part of the study, a general evaluation of the study was made, and suggestions were made to the researchers in the field.

Beyond Fragmentation: Challenges of the World of Work in the Face of Ongoing Productive Restructuring

This article seeks to establish a debate about the contradiction in the current situation of the world of work: the objective force of working class, including the absolute and relative growth of the number of jobs around the world, in parallel with its fragmentation and the development of new modalities and divisions in the world of work, such as the most recent case of uberization. In this sense, it resumes the debates of “end of work”, the fragmentation in the neoliberal period, the inflection promoted in 2008, during the financial crisis, in order to develop the analysis of what we call a new productive restructuring, which has been taking place in the current period and needs to be mainly analyzed if we want to understand the trends in the world of work and its challenges.

Erasing “Knowable Communities”: From Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to Brassed Off

The paper discusses cinematic representations of working class communities in British cinema from the pre-war documentary movement to (post-)Thatcher feature films chronicling the decline of traditional industries. A particular focus is given to contrasting Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Mark Herman’s Brassed Off. The former title serves as a model example of British New Wave cinema, marking the “discovery” of the working class with its “knowable communities” that revealed them to the general public. The latter film provides an apt illustration of the impact and consequences of Thatcherism on the very same communities. The paper elaborates on selected narrative and visual motifs, investigating the ways in which British filmmakers have striven to depict social changes in British society over the consecutive decades.

Assessing damage and predicting future risks: A study of the Schilling Titan 4 manipulator on work class ROVs in offshore oil and gas industry

This article undertakes a comprehensive investigation of the damage incurred by the Schilling-manufactured Titan 4 seven-function manipulator during the period of 2017–2022. This particular manipulator stands as the most widely employed equipment on work class remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) globally. The article delves into a detailed discussion of ROVs in general, with a specific focus on those belonging to the work class category. Furthermore, the manipulator is dissected into its constituent elements, as delineated by the manufacturer, and each individual component is subjected to separate evaluation. The damages that were encountered are described in detail, along with the corresponding repair processes.To quantify the likelihood of future damage to the various manipulator elements over the subsequent five-year period, the obtained damage results are inputted into the Geogebra program. This enables the calculation of the probability of damage occurrence for each individual component.The research findings are ultimately summarized and juxtaposed with the real-life experiences of ROV operators, which are captured through a meticulously designed questionnaire. The questionnaire is carefully constructed to elicit valuable insights from the operators regarding the most common faults or defects observed in the Titan 4 manipulator.It is important to note that this manipulator-focused investigation is based on the author's first-hand experience as a ROV Supervisor in the offshore oil and gas industry. The combination of practical expertise and the empirical data gathered from the questionnaire responses ensures a comprehensive and well-rounded examination of the Titan 4 manipulator and its associated operational challenges.

The stubborn persistence of working-class protest in Turkey in an age of authoritarian neoliberalism

ABSTRACT Under authoritarian neoliberalism, Turkey has seen the number of legal strikes plummet since the mid-1990s. Alongside deepening authoritarianism, the AKP government banned nearly all legal strikes in the 2010s. How have working-class protests fared against this bleak backdrop? Have workers become pliant victims of a repressive regime of accumulation? Or is there evidence of fight left in the Turkish working class? This article addresses these questions through protest event analysis (PEA) of an original dataset of working-class protests between 2015 and 2019. Workers are found to have managed to maintain a significant protest performance despite the increasingly authoritarian environment.

“In Women’s Hands”

Eugenics had popular appeal and expressions in early 20th-century Denmark. This article tells two stories of what eugenics looked like ‘in the hands’ of bourgeois Danish women as they promoted ‘racial hygiene’ through cultural production. The first story highlights the eugenic feminism of nationally acclaimed women’s rights advocate Thit Jensen through a reading of her play The Stork (1929). The second tells of the Copenhagen Housewife Association’s engagement with new media technology and race science through their eugenics radio Listener Group (1934). Read through a lens that pays especially close attention to race and class, I argue that this work identifies them as significant proponents of eugenic ideology and as contributors to the targeting of the poor and working class in the name of ‘racial hygiene’ – a decidedly racist project.

Hygienic assessment of sanitary and epidemiological well-being in modern urban educational institutions

Introduction. The restructuring of general education has led to the problem of overcrowding of schools, which in turn has caused the formation of a number of hygiene problems. Despite the active material and technical equipment of urban schools, the relevance of maintaining safe teaching conditions remains in general education. 
 Materials and methods. The assessment of sanitary and epidemiological well-being in ten urban educational institutions was carried out according to the methodology of the Federal State Educational Institution ROSHUMZ-34-2016 “Algorithm for determining the level of sanitary and epidemiological 
 well-being of an educational institution”. The intensification of the educational process was assessed according to the Federal Law ROSHUMZ-16-2015 “Hygienic assessment of the intensity of students’ learning activities”. 
 Results. The leading factors that worsen the sanitary and epidemiological state of urban educational institutions were non-compliant with the hygienic requirements of the school environment and its premises, material and technical equipment, microclimate, lighting and the mode of management of training. The duration of extracurricular activities exceeded the standards by 1.8 times. In urban schools, the intensity of the educational process (class 3.1) was formed due to intellectual, sensory loads, monotony and the mode of academic work (class 3.1). It is necessary to regulate the volume of the academic load and introduce methods that allow quantifying the intensification of the educational process by analyzing the intensity of educational work. 
 Limitations. The study on the assessment of the sanitary and epidemiological well-being in urban educational institutions was limited by the fact that the sample was represented by 10 urban schools, which does not allow them to be fully extrapolated to the total population of urban students. At the same time, the new type of schools included in the research with a design capacity of 1300 people could improve the indicators of sanitary and epidemiological safety, since modern newly built schools had good and new equipment, whereas in cities there are schools of the old type, where the learning conditions, the material and technical fund can be much worse. 
 Conclusion. The data obtained emphasize the urgency of the need for continuous monitoring of educating conditions and the management of the educational process, taking into account modern risks that contribute to reducing the sanitary and epidemiological well-being in urban schools.

Between Breaking Bad and Big Brother: Social Class and Television Preferences in Croatia

This article addresses TV preferences as a marker of class divisions both as a type of embodied cultural capital and as a pattern of consumption within the local and global cultural structure in Croatia. Data analysis is extracted from the survey ‘Social Stratification in Croatia: Structural and Subjective Aspects’, conducted on a nationally probabilistic sample of adult Croatian citizens. Factor analysis discovered two main dimensions of television preferences: reality spectacle and foreign fiction preferences, which were recognised as indicators of localised and globalised culture preferences. Further analysis established that these factors are also structured along the class positions of the respondents. Using multiple regression analysis, data suggest the conclusion that the working class prefers TV content in the domestic language and heavy on popular entertainment programming (soap operas, talent, and reality shows). However, the dominant class repudiate ‘lowbrow’ TV content, which highlights class divisions in the cultural field. The analysis sheds light not only on how class positions structure these preferences but also on the important role of age, gender, and music taste play in the formation of television preferences.

The Legacy of Clóvis Moura: A Marxist Critique of Race in Brazil

Clóvis Moura (1925–2003) was a working class intellectual who immersed himself in the study of Brazilian history and contemporary reality, producing historiographical and theoretical works of great importance. Moura’s primordial contribution was to identify the nature of the capitalist mode of production in Brazil that combined slavery and the elaboration of a particular ideology of racism in the transition to wage labor. Moura identified the conservative character of the Brazilian bourgeoisie that had been forged in the colonial path and which, after the abolition of slavery, articulated and implemented an Aryanization policy, with far-reaching consequences for the evolution of the Brazilian social formation in the twentieth century. Moura provided rigorous critiques of the ideologues of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, at the same time as he illuminated the struggles of the descendants of African slaves at the margins of a developing capitalist economy. His contributions remain fundamental to the analysis of the contemporary Brazilian reality.

WHAT TODAY’S WORKING CLASS WANTS FROM POLITICAL LEADERS

The exit of the working class from the Democratic Party is a long saga that began in the late 1960s and culminated in Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party with themes that resonated among working class voters. During this period, Democrats along with center-left parties through Western democracies who have encountered similar difficulties have struggled to understand the sources of working-class disaffection and to craft remedies for it. Two recent studies from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPT) have shed new light on these issues.

Dinamika Konflik antara Masyarakat Buruh dengan Pengusaha

This research explores the dynamics of conflict that occur between workers and factory entrepreneurs in Kedungrejo Village, Muncar District, using the perspective of Karl Marx's conflict icon theory. Fish factories are one of the main economic sectors in this area, and conflicts between fish factory workers and entrepreneurs have a significant impact on the social and economic life of local communities. Karl Marx's conflict theory is used as an analytical framework to understand the root of the problem, the resources being contested, and the role of social class in this conflict. This research includes participatory observation methods, interviews, and document analysis to explore the perspectives of fish factory workers and entrepreneurs. The research results show that the conflict in Kedungrejo Village is related to economic inequality and control of production resources. Workers experience exploitation, low wages and unsafe working conditions, while fish factory entrepreneurs try to maximize their profits. This conflict reflects the conflict between the working class who seek to protect their economic rights and entrepreneurs who prioritize their profits. In the perspective of Karl Marx's conflict theory, this conflict is the result of a structural conflict between the working class (proletariat) and the owners of capital (capitalists). These conflicts reflect fundamental inequalities in the distribution of wealth and power. This research proposes the need for more inclusive and fair solutions in overcoming this conflict, such as collective bargaining, stricter labor regulations, and building awareness of the working class to increase their bargaining power in negotiations with fish factory entrepreneurs. Thus, this research provides insight into the dynamics of conflict between workers and fish factory entrepreneurs in the context of the Kedungrejo Village community, as well as its implications from the perspective of Karl Marx's conflict theory.

‘Water, asylum, metamorphosis, freak show’: flourishing through streaming karaoke play in China

ABSTRACT Karaoke has long been understood as an imitative musical practice, popular among the working class in western society. While scholars have noticed the communicative significance of karaoke in generating interpretive creativity and social interaction, they also point out the tendency of offline karaoke practices to strengthen cultural rules and social hierarchies. For this reason, this paper examines vibrant Chinese streaming karaoke practices and explores how Chinese streaming karaoke, as the originator of cultural and social enclave, offers hope for resistance against cultural censorship and social restriction. Through the lens of the theoretical concepts of tactics, affect and human flourishing, the analysis reveals that the karaoke enclave generates an affective field for vernacular creativities that foster personal wellbeing and social publicness in everyday life, through four playful tactics: to ‘water’ the vibrancy of life, to build ‘asylum’ so as to seek more intensified experiential connections and connect with total strangers, to ‘morph’ into unknown spontaneity and set up non-monetary values, and to perform ‘freak show’ to voice political affect and resonate with the most unlikely of people. The emancipatory power of streaming karaoke play, lies in the interdependence and interconnection of those tactics and they as a whole contribute to the human flourishing.

Social Welfare Policy in Post-Transition Chile: Social Democratic or Neoliberal?

Chile’s massive 2019 protests indicate a pronounced discrepancy between the country’s alleged establishment of social democracy and the public’s perception of pervasive inequity. To understand this discrepancy, this analysis evaluates the extent to which Chilean social welfare policy conforms to social democratic norms of promoting solidarity, equity, and universalism. Analysis of poverty reduction, pension, health care, and education policy demonstrates that Chile’s center-left governments succeeded in mitigating some of the more extreme elements of the social welfare policies inherited from the Pinochet regime. However, they failed to reverse their underlying logic, which reinforces stratification and inequity and undermines incentives for the cultivation of solidarity among the working and middle classes. As a result, social welfare policy in Chile continues to resemble the neoliberal welfare regime implemented by the Pinochet dictatorship while the establishment of a social democratic welfare regime remains an aspiration for present and future leftist governments to realize.