Download or read book Ladies of Labor Girls of Adventure written by Nan Enstad and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the twentieth century, labor leaders in women's unions routinely chastised their members for their ceaseless pursuit of fashion, avid reading of dime novels, and "affected" ways, including aristocratic airs and accents. Indeed, working women in America were eagerly participating in the burgeoning consumer culture available to them. While the leading activists, organizers, and radicals feared that consumerist tendencies made working women seem frivolous and dissuaded them from political action, these women, in fact, went on strike in very large numbers during the period, proving themselves to be politically active, astute, and effective. In Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure, historian Nan Enstad explores the complex relationship between consumer culture and political activism for late nineteenth- and twentieth-century working women. While consumerism did not make women into radicals, it helped shape their culture and their identities as both workers and political actors. Examining material ranging from early dime novels about ordinary women who inherit wealth or marry millionaires, to inexpensive, ready-to-wear clothing that allowed them to both deny and resist mistreatment in the workplace, Enstad analyzes how working women wove popular narratives and fashions into their developing sense of themselves as "ladies." She then provides a detailed examination of how this notion of "ladyhood" affected the great New York shirtwaist strike of 1909-1910. From the women's grievances, to the walkout of over 20,000 workers, to their style of picketing, Enstad shows how consumer culture was a central theme in this key event of labor strife. Finally, Enstad turns to the motion picture genre of female adventure serials, popular after 1912, which imbued "ladyhood" with heroines' strength, independence, and daring.
Download or read book Work and Labor in American Popular Culture written by Jason Russell and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Crisis and decline in the working class were frequent themes in American popular culture during the 1970s. In contrast, more positive narratives about America's managerial and professional class appeared during the 1980s. Focusing on these two key decades, this book explores how portrayals of social class and associated work and labor issues including gender and race appeared in specific films, television shows, and music. Comparing and contrasting how forms of popular media portrayed both unionized and non-unionized workers, the book discusses how workers' perceptions of themselves were in turn shaped by messages conveyed through media. The book opens with an introduction which outlines the historical context of the immediate post-war period and the heightened social, political, and economic tension of the Cold War era. Three substantial chapters then explore film, television and music in turn, looking at key works including Star Wars, Coming Home, 9 to 5, Good Times, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the music of Bruce Springsteen and rap artists. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, the book is principally situated within wider labor and working-class research, and the relatively new history of capitalism historical sub-field. This book is vital reading for anyone interested in issues around labor and work in the media, labor history, and popular culture history during two key decades in modern American history"--
Download or read book Work and Labor in American Popular Culture written by Jason Russell and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-05 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crisis and decline in the working class were frequent themes in American popular culture during the 1970s. In contrast, more positive narratives about America’s managerial and professional class appeared during the 1980s. Focusing on these two key decades, this book explores how portrayals of social class and associated work and labor issues including gender and race appeared in specific films, television shows, and music. Comparing and contrasting how forms of popular media portrayed both unionized and non-unionized workers, the book discusses how workers’ perceptions of themselves were in turn shaped by messages conveyed through media. The book opens with an introduction which outlines the historical context of the immediate post-war period and the heightened social, political, and economic tension of the Cold War era. Three substantial chapters then explore film, television, and music in turn, looking at key works including Star Wars, Coming Home, 9 to 5, Good Times, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the music of Bruce Springsteen and rap artists. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, the book is principally situated within wider labor and working-class history research, and the relatively new history of capitalism historical sub-field. This book is vital reading for anyone interested in issues around labor and work in the media, labor history, and popular culture history during two key decades in modern American history.
Download or read book Work Recreation and Culture written by Martin H. Blatt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume focus on the role of women in the work force. They explore how organized sports, social associations of all kinds and the educational system faced by the children of worker were profoundly linked to work place and community activism. They examine why radical labor organizations that could win major strikes often could not sustain themselves as permanent institutions. Finally, the essays argue that simultaneous leadership changes in management and labor in the auto industry were less the result of internal conflicts than needed structural adjustments to changing economic and political realities. Interwoven into all of the essays is the intricate dynamic between immigrant and native-born, between different immigrant waves and the groups, and between workers at different skill levels. Work, Recreation, and Culture enriches and expands the established labor narratives.
Download or read book Hands written by Janet Zandy and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In linking forms of cultural expression to labour, occupational injuries and deaths, this title centres what is usualyy decentred - the complex culture of working class people.
Download or read book The Cultural Front written by Michael Denning and published by Verso. This book was released on 1998 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As garment workers, longshoremen, autoworkers, sharecroppers and clerks took to the streets, striking and organizing unions in the midst of the Depression, artists, writers and filmmakers joined the insurgent social movement by creating a cultural front. Disney cartoonists walked picket lines, and Billie Holiday sand 'Strange Fruit' at the left-wing cabaret, Café Society. Duke Ellington produced a radical musical, Jump for Joy, New York garment workers staged the legendary Broadway revue Pins and Needles, and Orson Welles and his Mercury players took their labor operas and anti-fascist Shakespeare to Hollywood and made Citizen Kane. A major reassessment of US cultural history, The Cultural Front is a vivid mural of this extraordinary upheaval which reshaped American culture in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Work and Labor in Early America written by Stephen Innes and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1988 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten leading scholars of early American social history here examine the nature of work and labor in America from 1614 to 1820. The authors scrutinize work diaries, private and public records, and travelers' accounts. Subjects include farmers, farmwives, ur
Download or read book Rainbow at Midnight written by George Lipsitz and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rainbow at Midnight details the origins and evolution of working-class strategies for independence during and after World War II. Arguing that the 1940s may well have been the most revolutionary decade in U.S. history, George Lipsitz combines popular culture, politics, economics, and history to show how war mobilization transformed the working class and how that transformation brought issues of race, gender, and democracy to the forefront of American political culture. This book is a substantially revised and expanded work developed from the author's heralded 1981 Class and Culture in Cold War America.
Download or read book Work Culture and Society in Industrializing America written by Herbert George Gutman and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 1976 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "These essays in American working-class and social history, in the words of their author "all share a common theme -- a concern to explain the beliefs and behavior of American working people in the several decades that saw this nation transformed into a powerful industrial capitalist society." The subjects range widely-from the Lowell, Massachusetts, mill girls to the patterns of violence in scattered railroad strikes prior to 1877 to the neglected role black coal miners played in the formative years of the UMW to the difficulties encountered by capitalists in imposing decisions upon workers. In his discussions of each of these, Gutman offers penetrating new interpretations of the significance of class and race, religion and ideology in the American labor movement."--Provided by publisher
Download or read book The Voice of the People written by Jonathan Rees and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2004-01-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first all-primary source reader in labor history published in nearly one hundred years, The Voice of the People presents excerpts from fifty-four primary sources to blend labor history’s traditional focus on the growth of a union movement with windows into all aspects of workers lives—their workplaces, their unions, their home lives and their culture—the engaging selections mirroring the great diversity of the American workforce from the colonial era to the present. Arranged into four parts, each of which begins with an original overview of the corresponding period in American history, this unique compilation of edited documents—each of which is preceded by a contextual introduction—offers students the opportunity to explore for themselves how specific events as well as general trends in American labor history affected real people, whether farm laborers, slaves, servants, mill hands, prostitutes, assembly-line workers, office temps, fast-food employees, or union leaders. While its organization and diverse range make it an excellent companion to Harlan Davidson’s popular Labor in America,* The Voice of the People can also stand alone or be used as an engaging supplement for any course in labor or United States history.
Download or read book The Working Class and Its Culture written by Neil L. Shumsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 5 "THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS CULTURE’ of the American Cities; series. This collection brings together more than 200 scholarly articles pertaining to the history and development of urban life in the United States during the past two centuries. Volume 5 contains articles that are closely related but which concentrate specifically on the changing nature of work in American cities during the past two centuries. While they obviously concern the development of the industrial and post-industrial economies, they also recognize that economic transformations are intimately related to cultural change and that economic and cultural change are inseparable and must be considered together. At the same time, taken as a group, the articles reveal differences in experience between black and white Americans, men and women, and native and foreign-born Americans, necessitating that each of these groups be considered separately. The selections also investigate and illuminate questions about the relationships among these different groups and the kinds of actions they have taken to achieve their goals—political protests, boycotts, strikes, and so on.
Download or read book Union free America written by Lawrence Richards and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stimulating study of how antiunionism has shaped the hearts and minds of American workers
Download or read book The American Work Ethic and the Changing Work Force written by Herbert Applebaum and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1998-06-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major force in American society, the work ethic has played a pivotal role in U.S. history, affecting cultural, social, and economic institutions. But what is the American work ethic? Not only has it changed from one era to another, but it varies with race, gender, and occupation. Considering such diverse groups as Colonial craftsmen, slaves, 19th century women, and 20th century factory workers, this book provides a history of the American work ethic from Colonial times to the present. Tracing both continuities and differences, the book is divided into sections on the Colonial era, the 19th century and the 20th century and includes chapters on both major occupational groups, such as farmers, factory workers, laborers, and gender, racial, and ethnic minorities. This approach, which covers all major groups in U.S. history, enables the reader to discern how the work ethic applied to different occupational and ethnic groups over time. The book subjects the work ethic to an analysis based on historical, sociological, economic, and anthropological perspectives and provides an analysis of current thinking about how the work ethic applied to various groups and classes in different historical periods.
Download or read book The Right and Labor in America written by Nelson Lichtenstein and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legislative attack on public sector unionism that gave rise to the uproar in Wisconsin and other union strongholds in 2011 was not just a reaction to the contemporary economic difficulties faced by the government. Rather, it was the result of a longstanding political and ideological hostility to the very idea of trade unionism put forward by a conservative movement whose roots go as far back as the Haymarket Riot of 1886. The controversy in Madison and other state capitals reveals that labor's status and power has always been at the core of American conservatism, today as well as a century ago. The Right and Labor in America explores the multifaceted history and range of conservative hostility toward unionism, opening the door to a fascinating set of individuals, movements, and institutions that help explain why, in much of the popular imagination, union leaders are always "bosses" and trade union organizers are nothing short of "thugs." The contributors to this volume explore conservative thought about unions, in particular the ideological impulses, rhetorical strategies, and political efforts that conservatives have deployed to challenge unions as a force in U.S. economic and political life over the century. Among the many contemporary books on American parties, personalities, and elections that try to explain why political disputes are so divisive, this collection of original and innovative essays is essential reading.
Download or read book Television at Work written by Kit Hughes and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores how work, television, and waged labor come to have meaning in our everyday lives. However, it is not an analysis of workplace sitcoms or quality dramas. Instead, it explores the forgotten history of how American private sector workplaces used television in the twentieth century. In traces how, at the hands of employers, television physically and psychically managed workers and attempted to make work meaningful under the sign of capitalism. It also shows how the so-called domestic medium helped businesses shape labor relations and information architectures foundational to the twinned rise of the technologically mediated corporation and a globalizing information economy. Among other things, business and industry built extensive private television networks to distribute live and taped programming, leased satellite time for global 'meetings' and program distribution, created complex CCTV data search and retrieval systems, encouraged the use of videotape for worker self-evaluation, used video cassettes for training distributed workforces, and wired cantinas for employee entertainment. Television at work describes the myriad ways the medium served business' attempts to shape employees' relationships to their labor and the workplace in order to secure industrial efficiency, support corporate expansion, and inculcate preferred ideological orientations. narrowcasting, immediacy, time-shifting, flow, Post-Fordism, labor, audience labor, video, satellite, CCTV"--
Download or read book Authentic Fakes written by David Chidester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-04-18 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authentic Fakes explores the religious dimensions of American popular culture in unexpected places: baseball, the Human Genome Project, Coca-Cola, rock 'n' roll, the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the charisma of Jim Jones, Tupperware, and the free market, to name a few. Chidester travels through the cultural landscape and discovers the role that fakery—in the guise of frauds, charlatans, inventions, and simulations—plays in creating religious experience. His book is at once an incisive analysis of the relationship between religion and popular culture and a celebration of the myriad ways in which invention can stimulate the religious imagination. Moving beyond American borders, Chidester considers the religion of McDonald’s and Disney, the discourse of W.E.B. Du Bois and the American movement in Southern Africa, the messianic promise of Nelson Mandela’s 1990 tour to America, and more. He also looks at the creative possibilities of the Internet in such phenomena as Discordianism, the Holy Order of the Cheeseburger, and a range of similar inventions. Arguing throughout that religious fakes can do authentic religious work, and that American popular culture is the space of that creative labor, Chidester looks toward a future "pregnant with the possibilities of new kinds of authenticity."
Download or read book Slavery Race in American Popular Culture written by William L. Van Deburg and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning more than three centuries, from the colonial era to the present, Van Deburg's overview analyzes the works of American historians, dramatists, novelists, poets, lyricists, and filmmakers -- and exposes, through those artists' often disquieting perceptions, the cultural underpinnings of American current racial attitudes and divisions. Crucial to Van Deburg's analysis is his contrast of black and white attitudes toward the Afro-American slave experience. There has, in fact, been a persistent dichotomy between the two races' literary, historical, and theatrical representations of slavery. If white culture-makers have stressed the "unmanning" of the slaves and encouraged such steteotypes as the Noble Savage and the comic minstrel to justify the blacks' subordination, Afro-Americans have emphasized a counter self-image that celebrates the slaves' creativity, dignity, pride, and assertiveness. ISBN 0-299-09634-3 (pbk.) : $12.50.
