The reimagined community: The making and unmaking of a local working class in Jay/Livermore Falls, Maine, 1900-1988.
Item
-
Title
-
The reimagined community: The making and unmaking of a local working class in Jay/Livermore Falls, Maine, 1900-1988.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9908299
-
identifier
-
9908299
-
Creator
-
Carbonella, August.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Gerald M. Sider
-
Date
-
1998
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Anthropology, Cultural | History, United States | Geography | Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations
-
Abstract
-
This study explores the shifting political and cultural contexts for working class action in the paper making community of Jay/Livermore Falls, Maine over the course of the 20{dollar}\rm\sp{lcub}th{rcub}{dollar} century. Specifically, it looks at the ways in which the defeat of a regionally organized labor culture during a protracted strike in 1921 set the groundwork for the construction of a localist culture dominated by the management of International Paper Company, the major employer in the community. For the next sixty years, localism became both an expression and structuring force of the fundamental relationships and orientations of local paper workers and their families. In the course of another protracted strike in 1987-1988, however, the paper makers transgressed the boundaries of the localist culture through the enactment of political and cultural practices that temporarily inscribed a new supra-local political community and transgressed the jurisdictional boundaries of contemporary unionism.;The central argument of this study is that the emphasis on a homologous relationship between class and community found in much of the social history and historical anthropology literature on class formation is misleading. Based on the evidence of the shifting temporal and spatial matrices of working class culture presented here, I argue that the study of working class formation should take into account the historically contingent relationship of both local and supra-local aspects of class belonging in order to adequately understand historical change.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
