{"title":"Entin, J. (2023). Living Labor: Fiction, Film, and Precarious Work. University of Michigan Press","authors":"Tracy Floreani","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8423","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"1993 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139160355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Schennum, Jill (2023) As Goes Bethlehem: Steelworkers and the Restructuring of an Industrial Working Class. Vanderbilt University Press","authors":"Chris Walley","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8429","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"495 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139160823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What it means to have a working-class identity in the UK today is constantly under tension and debate. From socio-economic proxies used by large organisations as determinants of disadvantage to POLAR data, self identification and other metrics, academic literature has largely disagreed how to measure working class as an identity over the last 20 years. This paper draws on the findings from two parts of an EdD thesis which looked to understand the experiences of working-class professional services staff in UK Higher Education. Here, it presents the findings of the literature review which discovered the multiple ways in which working class identities are determined for the purposes of research recruitment in academic papers. In the subsequent part of this paper, empirical data from interviews with working class staff in UK Higher Education looks at the facets which participants considered defined them as having a working-class identity. Moving away from traditional conceptualisation of a working-class identity as solely connected to the means of production, it suggests that a working-class identity is inherently connected to many factors in 2023, predominantly to economic disadvantage but also by occupation, social mobility discourse, and access to goods technology and entertainment. Furthermore, it finds that there are implicit features of a working-class identity shared across the study which include access to facilitating networks, narratives of luck, and being underappreciated and undervalued. This interplay between the convergence of habitus and lived experience suggests that working-class people in UK universities are subject to a lamination of field, an intersection of multiple temporalities
{"title":"What does it mean to be working class? Exploring the definition of a social class identity through the eyes of working-class professional services and administrative staff in Russell Group universities","authors":"Jess Pilgrim-Brown","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8401","url":null,"abstract":"What it means to have a working-class identity in the UK today is constantly under tension and debate. From socio-economic proxies used by large organisations as determinants of disadvantage to POLAR data, self identification and other metrics, academic literature has largely disagreed how to measure working class as an identity over the last 20 years. This paper draws on the findings from two parts of an EdD thesis which looked to understand the experiences of working-class professional services staff in UK Higher Education. Here, it presents the findings of the literature review which discovered the multiple ways in which working class identities are determined for the purposes of research recruitment in academic papers. In the subsequent part of this paper, empirical data from interviews with working class staff in UK Higher Education looks at the facets which participants considered defined them as having a working-class identity. Moving away from traditional conceptualisation of a working-class identity as solely connected to the means of production, it suggests that a working-class identity is inherently connected to many factors in 2023, predominantly to economic disadvantage but also by occupation, social mobility discourse, and access to goods technology and entertainment. Furthermore, it finds that there are implicit features of a working-class identity shared across the study which include access to facilitating networks, narratives of luck, and being underappreciated and undervalued. This interplay between the convergence of habitus and lived experience suggests that working-class people in UK universities are subject to a lamination of field, an intersection of multiple temporalities","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"251 1‐2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139161122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J.D. Vance does not become Senator Vance without the success of Hillbilly Elegy, his best-selling memoir (and later, film) about growing up in, and getting out of, rural Appalachia. Initially praised by media critics for its ability to challenge middle-class assumptions about the “white working class,” the book assuaged both liberal anxiety and conservative outrage by providing demographically appropriate explanations for the election of Donald Trump. However, the book, feature film and subsequent political campaign are also part of a much larger, lucrative culture industry built upon the commodification and fetishization of the white working class, one driven by middle-class tastes and prejudices. This was most apparent in the promotion of the book and film by the so-called liberal media establishment, represented by the New York Times, The New Yorker, Netflix, Imagine Entertainment, HarperCollins, and Harpo Productions, to name a few. However, the reinforcement of the false binary between liberal and conservative media obscured how the corporate media system helped elect a candidate who will work most certainly against the interests of actual working people, further alienating them from each other and a shared labor platform more generally. Examining Hillbilly Elegy through the five filters of the Propaganda Model will help to explain the ideological and material effects of the corporate media’s agenda upon the growing class divide.
{"title":"Middletown Lives through Middle-Class Eyes: Hillbilly Elegy and the Problem with the “Liberal Media”","authors":"Sharon Zechowski","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8397","url":null,"abstract":"J.D. Vance does not become Senator Vance without the success of Hillbilly Elegy, his best-selling memoir (and later, film) about growing up in, and getting out of, rural Appalachia. Initially praised by media critics for its ability to challenge middle-class assumptions about the “white working class,” the book assuaged both liberal anxiety and conservative outrage by providing demographically appropriate explanations for the election of Donald Trump. However, the book, feature film and subsequent political campaign are also part of a much larger, lucrative culture industry built upon the commodification and fetishization of the white working class, one driven by middle-class tastes and prejudices. This was most apparent in the promotion of the book and film by the so-called liberal media establishment, represented by the New York Times, The New Yorker, Netflix, Imagine Entertainment, HarperCollins, and Harpo Productions, to name a few. However, the reinforcement of the false binary between liberal and conservative media obscured how the corporate media system helped elect a candidate who will work most certainly against the interests of actual working people, further alienating them from each other and a shared labor platform more generally. Examining Hillbilly Elegy through the five filters of the Propaganda Model will help to explain the ideological and material effects of the corporate media’s agenda upon the growing class divide.","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"2000 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139160089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lawrence M. Eppard, Kayla Dalhouse, Erik Nelson, Jenna Robbins
This piece discusses the growing empirical evidence that the communities where American children spend their formative years—not just the households they are raised in but where those households are located—matter for their prospects of success in subsequent stages of their lives. The authors explore the various community characteristics—including social capital, family structure, school quality, and income—associated with educational attainment, health, teen pregnancy, social mobility, violence, crime victimization, and more.
{"title":"Community Inequalities and Children’s Life Chances in the United States","authors":"Lawrence M. Eppard, Kayla Dalhouse, Erik Nelson, Jenna Robbins","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8409","url":null,"abstract":"This piece discusses the growing empirical evidence that the communities where American children spend their formative years—not just the households they are raised in but where those households are located—matter for their prospects of success in subsequent stages of their lives. The authors explore the various community characteristics—including social capital, family structure, school quality, and income—associated with educational attainment, health, teen pregnancy, social mobility, violence, crime victimization, and more.","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"2012 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139160290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay is a scholarly personal narrative about transit work, especially the operation of omnibuses, horse cars, trolleys, and trams in New York City in the nineteenth century. The culminating event is the trolley strike of 1895, the longest in New York history, and the theme is the need for solidarity between transit workers and the riding public, and thus for what is now is called union “Bargaining for the Public Good.” In this essay, the author speaks as both a transit worker and an historian.
{"title":"The Man with a Million Names: A Personal Essay on Transit Work","authors":"F. Naiden","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8405","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is a scholarly personal narrative about transit work, especially the operation of omnibuses, horse cars, trolleys, and trams in New York City in the nineteenth century. The culminating event is the trolley strike of 1895, the longest in New York history, and the theme is the need for solidarity between transit workers and the riding public, and thus for what is now is called union “Bargaining for the Public Good.” In this essay, the author speaks as both a transit worker and an historian.","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"372 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139160676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deeren, R.S. (2023) Enough to Lose. Wayne State University Press","authors":"Jim Daniels","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8431","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"1989 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139160470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cowie, Jefferson (2022) Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. Basic Books","authors":"Scott Henkel","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8425","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"2015 17","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139159929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Motorcycle on my mind","authors":"Ian C Smith","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i2.8411","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"2013 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139160210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}