>I think the exchange between Yoshie and Wojtek raises, but only in a
>preliminary fashion, some serious issues for exploration. I have trouble
>with on-line exchanges after a while as >s become >>s become >>>s etc. I'm
>simply editing this exchange to date to make it easier to return to it.
>
>Yoshie: Wojtek's framing of the 'real question' comes very close to
>saying that sexism, homophobia, etc. might be 'functional' to
>'working-class solidarity.' His framing casts the working-class in
>implicitely straight male terms as well.
>
>Wojtek: Well, solidarity has its dark sides too (cf. male bonding). There
>is a tradeoff between what you can do as an individual and what power you
>have as a group.
Surely, but male bonding isn't an instance of _working-class solidarity_ (though it may very well be a solidarity of some kind--perhaps even with a distorted class content, which could be a subject of empirical and theoretical examination).
I also think that male bonding tends to create a _cross-class_ solidarity among men, instead of working-class solidarity. (I am thinking of the sexual harassment case at a Mitsubishi plant that made news a couple of years ago, for instance.) Male bonding rituals are used to create a military culture as well, to induce soldiers from the working class to identify with their superiors (the and ruling class).
>Yoshie: Besides, whatever 'anti-individualist' or 'collectivist' norms may
>have prevailed among peasants, enforcement of sex/gender norms in
>factories isn't a matter of peasant 'attitudes' carried over to the
>urban/industrial environment.
>
>Wojtek: It might be a ritualistic behavior that long lost its utility,
>like for example, hunting or fishing. Hence I posed it as a question to
>what degree it is ritualistic and to what degree it still maintains
>solidarity.
Can hunting or fishing be truly compared to the enforcement of sex/gender norms at work places? To me this analogy doesn't sound particularly illuminating, in that the enforcement of sex/gender norms isn't a hobby that only a minority take up once in a while.
>What interests me is an empirical explanation of the phenomenon at hand,
>rather than casting it in normative terms.
Ask a wrong question, you only get a wrong answer, I say. Asking if X is _functional_ to Y already implies a certain theoretical framework, which isn't simply a matter of the empirical. Asking if the enforcement of sex/gender norms is _functional/necessary_ to working-class solidarity seems to imply an answer as to who is the working class and what working-class solidarity is.
>Carrol: I would imagine a good deal of spontaneous workers' culture (and
>not just blue-collar workers) (a) Is mostly a way to "get through the day"
>(Doug has discussed this recently) and (b) has its dark side, as any
>culture developed in direct subordination to capital would, no doubt. Part
>of the task of marxists, etc. is to help sort out the usable from the
>destructive.
I may or may not agree with Carrol on the above; I have to hear something more specific. I hope that discussion will continue on this.
Yoshie