CULTURES OF SOLIDARITY: CONSCIOUSNESS AND ACTION AMONG CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN WORKERS

• Main Author: FANTASIA, RICHARD PETER
• Language: ENG
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 1982
• Subjects: Labor relations
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8229546

Previous sociological studies of class consciousness have employed survey methodology to evaluate the attitudes expressed by a sample of respondents. This approach fails to consider the dynamic, collective quality of the phenomenon, whose expression may be manifested in a variety of cultural practices. My approach treats class consciousness as "cultures of solidarity," which are expressed within and are shaped by the oppositional context of the class relationship. In order to illustrate my approach I offer two case studies of collective actions by workers. The first analyzes the creation of a "culture of solidarity" in a steel casting plant. The dynamics of two wildcat strikes indicate that class consciousness is highly episodic and emerges during the course of the collective action. Its sustenance is based on the ability of workers to organize further activity, rather than on the level of ideology achieved. The second case documents a "culture of solidarity" forged by workers in response to management's sustained attempt to break their union. Workers, and the community which is formed through the strike, engage in militant activities, create institutional structures to maintain their collective solidarity, and develop alternative values and conceptions in the context of this emergent "culture of solidarity." Based on the empirical research, it is suggested that class consciousness (as ideation) is not a precondition for militant activity; but rather that it is in the context of militant activity that class conscious ideas and practices emerge, are given coherence, and are negotiated collectively. Conversely, class consciousness had not been destroyed by expunging the ideas held by workers, but by controlling or ending activity, or the context in which ideas are cultivated and nourished.