> I would even say it has used left sociology and psychology in reverse
over the years >including the current book possibly) in "industrial
psychology"
>
hah! ehrenreich loves to slam mainstream social sciences. entire sections deal with the way in which social science actually legitimates the stereotypes of a bigoted and apathetic working class. she also points out, as i'm sure you know, that, in the lit,working-class =white male and poor= black female. white women and black men didn't seem to exist. this is changing a bit, but the lack of class analysis is appalling. most texts on 'race, class, and gender' often required in core courses in college present class as about 'how it feels to be working class' and rarely offer structural analyses to place such literature in context. analyses of gender, race, and ethnicity, on the other hand, are more likely to explore structural theories of gender, racial, ethnic oppression. see that forward doug sent from the chronicle of higher ed. it's altogether too true.
eric, my biggest fan twitbuoy, beck wrote:
>Jeez. Have you been peering at my bookshelf?
flattery will get you everywhere.....even if you don't want to go. ;-)
> The hidden injuries, meaning
>they are hidden from both the injured and the injurors(?).
S&C wanted to get away from an extreme structuralism that left individuals/agency behind in much marxist scholarship at the time. they wanted to ask how biography and history intersected, how 'culture and character' intersected--which is the tradition sennett works out of. he went to harvard where talcott parsons had reigned, so he was profoundly influenced by parsonian sociology but also part of the marxist inspired upsurge against the domination of parson's sociology at harvard and in the discipline as a whole [parsons=the tradition of concern w/ order that angela was complaining about in her post].
he was also trying to reframe the tradition of community studies which had largely focused on the mass society thesis: alienation and social problems resulted from the massive transformations assoc. w/ industrialization and urbanization. this urban anthropology generally operated with some biases about what constituted normalcy and order, of course, but they set about to examine the impact of mass society on older communities w/ ostensibly premodern traditions, practices.
so, the injuries that had been the focus of research had been 'social problems' sociology's task was to show how the problems weren't located in individual psychological defects but in the very structure of society and social processes. however, the prob. w/ that approach is that individuals recede from the picture and are portrayed as dupes of the system which operates behind their backs. S&C explore the personal, psychic injuries but they are quite clear about the "sources of injury" particularly in chap. 3.
they also wanted to get away from a simplistic analysis of false consciousness which also posits the individual as a social dupe, particularly in the capitalist conspiracy theories in which capitalists are monolithically powerful in their ability to manipulate everything. while surely capitalists collude to ensure that they maintain their power, these assertions rely on two-dimensional conceptions of power: some people have power and others don't. such a view plagues marxist scholarship as many have pointed out. Steven Luke's, _Power, A Radical View_ and his student, John Gaventa's _Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley_ provide an overview of the debates.
that said, i'd point out that butler's work, following foucault and lacan among others , is an attempt to offer a more complicated and multi-dimensional theory of power.
as for -hidden injuries- perhaps this is what chris burford means when he says he spys a dialectical analysis. S&C show how the endless pursuit of badges of ability in the face of relentless indignities is 'useful' to capitalist society: "we do not mean that men and women are ignorant of the fact that class conditions limit their freedom--it is palpable from the interviews that they do know this. rather, the use of badges of ability or of sacrifices is to divert men from challenging the limits on their freedom by convincing them that they must *first* become legitimate, must achieve dignity on class society's terms, in order to have the right to challenge the terms themselves." [152-3]
"most of the ppl in this book are not..at that point of despair where revolt is kindled. on the contrary, they get by from day to day with a sense of balance, with a certain distance from the problems of class and class consciousness....[but] people never lose consciousness OF society. what humans do is create new patterns ...which deaden or distance the impact of [society] .... throughout this book we have treated personal consciousness as something other than a storage locker or receptacle for information; consciousness, we think, is an active human power. ...we hope to show how this defense is more complicated than simply 'shutting out' a bad society, more than an escape through willfully ignoring what is happening outside the self. we want to show how this defense works--and how 'successful' it is--by looking at a peculiar kind of alienation"
>Okay, I'll stop
>debasing their arguments now.
god, i love it when a man engages in self-deprecating humor. you and max just get me every single time.
>But it's an excellent read, even outside the
>pedantic purposes I have arrogantly raised.
oh, you're doing it again. be still my heart.
>I kept thinking while I was reading it that we need an updated version, a
>late-90s, Internet-era version. Sounds like Kelley has the ideas and
>background. I nominate her.
i'm speechless. <as if> now you've truly won my heart. okay, seriously:
firstly, eric, you know i have to write that single and 30 something at the millennium book first. and you must help me with it, tho clearly i would never demand that you stay single just to help write this book. oh, sure, altogether too banal and typical but you know it'll sell and we can do a little structural analysis which is sorely lacking from most such books.
okay, i'll be really serious now: i would never write such a book because today's academic climate would mean i'd get chewed up and spit out.
it was the
>Great Unwashed who joined labor unions and communist parties and did all
>those other lefty things. Now its the wc who opposes affirmative action and
>free immigration and such.
oh hell. you know i was once asked to give a spiel on affirmative action. why? because as a woman this man thought i would support it, but because i was from a working class background then he figured i must obviously oppose it. HELLO? knock-knock, anybody home? yeahsureright buddy, i tell everyone in our weekly staff meeting that, while i support aff. action in practice, in principle i don't because it's a bandaid on gangrene and this is the conclusion you draw as to why i might think this? grrrrowl.
kelley snitgirlish today