Governing Labor in Modernizing Texas

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Amberg
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Real Problem ◽  
Labor Management ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Class Participation ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Ideological Debate ◽  
The Status

The United States is a country in which the working classes are not well organized to participate in politics and the workplace. Four theoretical approaches encompass most explanations. They are culture and identity theories, convergence theories, centerperiphery theories, and institutional theories. Focusing on one specific case, the state of Texas, this article suggests that each approach can contribute to a political construction approach to the labor field that can better explain the patterns of organization. In Texas today working-class participation is very low, but 30 years ago union membership and voting were increasing; 100 years ago Texas was a fount of populism. A focus on the specific historical contexts of labor-management relations enables us to penetrate the contemporary post-facto image of Texas as one member of a category of conservative or nonunion states in contrast to liberal or union-friendly states. That binary image elides the actual more complex and diverse histories of labor struggles that constitute each side of this symbolic opposition. This article demonstrates that there is a real problem to investigate and suggests how we should think about it. What will become clear is that Texas is not exceptional when it comes to the status of workers in the polity. The specific historical pathways to the present suggest the significance of political struggles and ideological debate for the creation of a working class with influence and power.

scholarly journals Mystified Consciousness: Rethinking the Rise of the Far Right with Marx and Lacan

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 236-248
Author(s):  
Claudia Leeb
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The United States ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Unconscious Fantasy

Abstract This paper brings core concepts coined by Karl Marx in conversation with Jacques Lacan to analyse some of the mechanisms that have mystified subjects’ consciousness, and contributed to a scenario where the (white) working-classes in the United States and elsewhere turned to the far right that further undermines their existence, instead of uniting with the raced and gendered working class to overthrow capitalism. It explains that the money fetish, which we find at the centre of the American Dream of wholeness (on earth), serves as the unconscious fantasy object petit a to deal with the desires and fears subjects fundamental non-wholeness creates, which have been heightened by the insecurities of neoliberal capitalism and exploited by the far right. It also shows how religion offers the illusion of wholeness in the sky, which produces subjects who endure rather than rebel against their suffering. Finally, it explains how the far-right brands the sexed and raced working-classes as inferior to uphold the illusion of the white working-class subjects as whole, which further undermines the creation of a revolutionary proletariat.

The White Working Class and the 2016 Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Carnes ◽  
Noam Lupu
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Long Term Trend

Academics and political pundits alike attribute rising support for right-wing political options across advanced democracies to the working classes. In the United States, authors claim that the white working class offered unprecedented and crucial support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. But what is the evidence for this claim? We examine all of the available academic survey data gathered around the election, along with a number of surveys from prior elections. We test four common claims about the white working class in 2016: (1) that most Trump voters were white working-class Americans; (2) that most white working-class voters supported Trump; (3) that unusually large numbers of white working-class voters switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016; and (4) that white working-class voters were pivotal to Trump’s victory in several swing states. We find that three of the four are not supported by the available data, and the other lacks crucial context that casts doubt on the idea that Trump uniquely appealed to working-class Americans. White working-class Americans have been supporting Republican presidential candidates at higher rates in recent elections, but that process long predates 2016, and narratives that center on Trump’s alleged appeal obscure this important long-term trend.

scholarly journals Climate Change Resilience Strategies for the Building Sector: Examining Existing Domains of Resilience Utilized by Design Professionals

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2888 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas B. Rajkovich ◽  
Yasmein Okour
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Professional Community ◽  
The United States ◽  
Concept Development ◽  
Building Sector ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Climate Change Resilience

Recently, climate change resilience efforts in the building sector have increased. Previous studies have examined the theoretical frameworks that have shaped the concept development of resilience. However, little is known about the theoretical approaches adopted by building professionals in their climate change resilience work. A literature review identified climate change resilience across four academic domains: ecology, engineering, disaster risk reduction, and the social sciences. To better understand how resilience is defined in the building sector, we examined eighteen climate change resilience documents developed to provide guidance to building sector professionals in the United States. Our analysis of these documents helps to understand how professionals are framing and possibly incorporating these strategies in their work, though we did not measure the adoption rate of each of the documents. We find that resilience is mostly a discourse on bouncing-back, preserving the status quo, and/or developing emergency responses to major hazards. Fewer documents incorporated an ecological or social science-based logic. This highlights the challenges of translating resilience from four academic domains into building strategies for the professional community. In closing, we discuss how competing conceptions of resilience may impact the implementation and effectiveness of climate change resilience strategies in the built environment.

Frontiers of Labor

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
General Proposition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War

Australia and the United States have long been recognized as fertile fields for comparative history. Both the United States and the Australian colonies were “frontier societies” with considerable natural resources and without a feudal heritage. Despite their similarities, the histories of Australia and the United States are also marked by striking divergences, notably in the composition of their working classes, their labor relations, and their politics. The essays in this volume break new ground in comparative and transnational history. Together they offer considerable evidence to support the general proposition that despite similarities in the development of their economies and in fabric of their democratic institutions, the labor histories of Australia and the United States manifest notable differences. The essays in this volume make significant contributions to understanding the comparative aspects of Australian and US labor history in five areas specifically. They examine the divergent impact of the Great War on the fortunes of labor and socialist movements, the history of coerced labor, patterns of ethnic and class identification, the forms of working-class collective action and institution building, and struggles over trade union democracy and the viability of independent working-class politics. Additionally, several essays explore the ways in which radical labor and political activists from both countries developed transnational ties that cross-fertilized their respective trade union and political cultures.

Multicultural Assessment of Personality and Psychopathology in the United States: Still Art, Not Yet Science, and Controversial

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Dana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Therapeutic Assessment ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
The Status ◽  
Training Research ◽  
Multicultural Assessment ◽  
Personality Description

This paper describes the status of multicultural assessment training, research, and practice in the United States. Racism, politicization of issues, and demands for equity in assessment of psychopathology and personality description have created a climate of controversy. Some sources of bias provide an introduction to major assessment issues including service delivery, moderator variables, modifications of standard tests, development of culture-specific tests, personality theory and cultural/racial identity description, cultural formulations for psychiatric diagnosis, and use of findings, particularly in therapeutic assessment. An assessment-intervention model summarizes this paper and suggests dimensions that compel practitioners to ask questions meriting research attention and providing avenues for developments of culturally competent practice.

Middle-Class Victorian Street Arabs: Modern Re-creations of the Baker Street Irregulars

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Street Children ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Upward Shift

In three of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories there are brief appearances of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of ‘street Arabs’ who help Holmes with his investigations. These children have been re-imagined in modern children's literature in at least twenty-seven texts in a variety of media and with writers from both Britain and the United States. All these modern stories show a marked upward shift in the class of the Irregulars away from the lower working class of Conan-Doyle's originals. The shift occurs through attributing middle-class origins to the leaders of the Irregulars, through raising the class of the Irregulars in general, and through giving the children life environments more comfortable, safe, and financially secure than would have been possible for late-Victorian street children. Because of the variety in texts and writers, it is argued that this shift is not a result of the conscious political or ideological positions of individual writers, but rather reflects common unconscious narrative choices. The class-shift is examined in relation to the various pressures of conventions in children's literature, concepts of audience, and common concepts of class in society.

Varied Responses to Human-Induced Seismicity in the City of Azle, Texas

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Sarmistha R. Majumdar
Keyword(s):  
State Government ◽  
Induced Seismicity ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Prior History ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Regulatory Policies ◽  
The Status

Fracking has helped to usher in an era of energy abundance in the United States. This advanced drilling procedure has helped the nation to attain the status of the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the world, but some of its negative externalities, such as human-induced seismicity, can no longer be ignored. The occurrence of earthquakes in communities located at proximity to disposal wells with no prior history of seismicity has shocked residents and have caused damages to properties. It has evoked individuals’ resentment against the practice of injection of fracking’s wastewater under pressure into underground disposal wells. Though the oil and gas companies have denied the existence of a link between such a practice and earthquakes and the local and state governments have delayed their responses to the unforeseen seismic events, the issue has gained in prominence among researchers, affected community residents, and the media. This case study has offered a glimpse into the varied responses of stakeholders to human-induced seismicity in a small city in the state of Texas. It is evident from this case study that although individuals’ complaints and protests from a small community may not be successful in bringing about statewide changes in regulatory policies on disposal of fracking’s wastewater, they can add to the public pressure on the state government to do something to address the problem in a state that supports fracking.

Clyde Warrior, 1939–1968

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Hale
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Older Men ◽  
The United States ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Poor People's Campaign ◽  
Organizational Leader ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Older Men And Women

To identify Clyde Warrior as an intellectual subverts prevailing notions of intellectualism. We often think of intellectuals as older men and women whose major contributions are revealed late in life, once the passions of youth have been tempered by experience. Warrior was not this. People frequently imagine intellectuals as existing in isolation, insulated from the demands of regular folk. Warrior was not this either. He was a Ponca, born on the reservation and raised with the influence of his grandparents and community. He was also a renowned singer and powwow fancy dancer, as well as a college student, an organizational leader, a husband, and father of two daughters. Warrior’s political consciousness grew out of the deep connections he maintained to his rural Ponca roots, but he took care to educate himself about the problems affecting Native Americans across the United States as well as colonized peoples globally. As an Oklahoman, he was attuned to race relations in the South and empathized with the struggles of Africans and African Americans. His approach to indigenous political struggles was shaped and informed, for example, by his early and active participation with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign.

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