Class Labor Conflicts, and Possible Workers' Solutions
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Free Inquiry In Creative Sociology Volume 30 No. 2 November 2002 119 VOLUNTARY SERFDOM: AN IDEOLOGICAL JOURNEY INTO DUAL CLASS LABOR CONFLICTS, AND POSSIBLE WORKERS' SOLUTIONS Ralph G. O'Sullivan, Chillicothe, IL ABSTRACT This article identifies my paradigm shift toward greater acceptance of conflict and alienation sociologies from Marx and from Seeman. Having never been a follower of their sets of ideas, ample evidence has been found in recreational and sociological literatures, and at work, to support the contention that they are more important that I had previously thought. This conclusion is derived from reviewing a variety of novels, poems, a travelogue, sociological findings on dual- and antagonistic-class structures, data about alienation, and putting a theoretical twist to Merton's goals-means model of adaptation. Nothing like division of labor. view" (Harris 1968 572), which consisted of {Harriett Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's field observations and conversations with my Cabin, 1984) fellow workers. This method is in agreement with the ernie tradition in socio-cultural an INTRODUC"nON thropology wherein testimony is acquired I have hardly been a great fan of certain from a speaker who uses the voice of the "I" elements of conflict and alienation sociolo or the first-person singular. However, since gies because I never really felt deprived. the orator is often untrained in contextual When I was young my family owned a cart analysis the researcher puts the idiographic age company in Chicago and we lived in a accounts into nomethetic frames of reference historic suburban village. Drafted into the as the etic heritage of anthropology allows army, I had cozy duty in Texas when other (Geyer 2001; Harris 1968). troops went to Viet Nam. In college my ex The second method of investigation for penses were covered by veterans' assis this article was the use of autoethnography tance programs, graduate and research as or "reflective observation" (Forsyth & Palmer sistantships, and separate teaching con 1999), an "interior vantage poinr (Hummel tracts. Without ever having a tenurable job, I 1994), and "opportunistic research" (Reimer was published, sat on M.A. thesis commit 1977; Ronai-Rambo & Ellis 1989). This "com tees, was active in sociology associations, plete-member-researcher" method (Adler & and was an Associate Editor for a journal Adler 1987; Ronai-Rambo & Ellis 1989), the which encourages creative sociology. joining of the actor-orientation and the ob In spite of these modest successes I left server-orientation as the combined voices higher education due the uncertainty of con of the first- and the third-person singular, al tracts from one term to another, where pay lows us to view the world of the "I" and the checks were unevenly distributed, in pursuit "the ... " in a variety of ways. We can walk with of other opportunities. My current employ my good friend Dick Hummel when he en ment in a privately-owned and non-union fac gages in, and writes about, blood sports as tory, and reflection on my twenty-five-some "1, the hunter-scholar." We can sit in a night thing years as a scholastic outsider, have club and watch dancers hustle customers enticed me to rethink my favorite sociologies, as "1, the table dancer-sociologist" (Ronai forging a finer understanding of, and appre Rambo & Ellis 1989). We can sit in a room ciation for, the conflict and alienation per and listen as a sports writer attends weekly spectives in sociology as they are related to meetings with his dying former sociology the real presence of a dual-class and ten professor as "1, the reawakened-student" sion-based bourgeoisie-proletariat structure (Alborn 1997). We can eavesdrop on the cus with its separate outlook of "rank has its privi tomers of a restaurant in Chicago's Hyde leges." The dramatic changes in employment Park district as they tell each tall tales, friendly core values and treatment of workers serve lies, and solve the world's problems over as the basis for this ideological journey. coffee and food (Duneier 1992). Finally, we Besides the normal library research for a can ride with an outlaw motorcycle gang by project like this, there were two related meth reading about the experiences of "I, the biker ods of gathering information. The first of joumalisr (Thompson 1967). This analytic these was ethnography, "the native's point of experiential and inclusion method of data- 120 Volume 30 No. 2 November 2002 Free Inquiry In Creative Sociology gathering is in accord with a famous invita categories - hence socially stratified. tion for the sociologist to tak~an unfamiliar The pieces of work used here do not rep look at a familiar world (Berger 1963) - one resent all possible identifications of social wherein the investigator is first a participant class systems; instead, they were chosen in society, who then becomes an invigorated because they offer examples of bipolar ar spectator whose own observations become rangements. The search for evidence was the objects of study. entertaining because I had to locate appro There are four facets to this study which priate passages in books I had already read, lead to its successful completion. There is a and then find additional confirmation in new need to identify how dual-class structures publications. The illustrations come from a have been presented in the mass and popu variety of sources including general and the lar media, for two reasons: First, it is through matic novels, poetry, a travelogue, a book such entertainment outlets that many of the about sports, and several movies and televi public's perceptions of social stratification sion shows as they collectively identify the are derived; and second, those mediated re universality and the diversity of two-dimen alities lend support to the arguments made sional class structures. So, just who are at the end of this article. Then, specific so these storytellers who have the audacity to ciological interpretations of class data are be sociologists sine qua non, and what are offered through the writings of scholars like the shows which have the gumption to teach Weber (1978) and Edwards (1979), with tar sociology outside the classroom? geted emphases placed on the contributions Some of the writers who were selected of Marx (1959) and Seeman (1959, 2001) for quotation include such noted Euro-Rus which identify various dimensions of work sian authors as Victor Hugo of Les Mise ers' economic alienation. These debilitating rabies; Fyodor Dostoyevsky who wrote Crime experiences are discussed in detail because and Punishment, Leo Tolstoy who composed factory workers are subjected to varieties of the short story ·Master and Man;" and the devaluation and social indifference by an controversial social conscience of Victorian owner-managerial social class. The data England, Rudyard Kipling, who mastermind about alienation are followed by identifying ed the poem 'The Ballad of East and West.• the means by which workers can adjust to a Reliance is also placed on Stowe's Uncle harsh environment, using the assorted meth Tom's Cabin, Theodore Roosevelt's exploits ods of adaptation offered by Merton (1968). from Through the Brazilian Wilderness, as The body of the article is concluded with well as Nordhoff and Hall's trilogy of books summary and cautious remarks about the about the mutiny aboard the H.M.S. Bounty. presence and outcomes of the tensions be Unfortunately, only snippets from these vol tween the "haves" and the "have-nots. • The umes can be used because of space limita assembly of arguments begins by providing tions, but additional sociology can be found evidence from classical and contemporary in them. literatures, as well as visual media, which Four thematic novels are also reviewed, underline the contention that there are many and they include Stowe's book, again, Alan and varied forms of criteria for dual-class Paton's Cry the Beloved Country, as well as stratified systems. Alexander Waugh's Island in the Sun, all of which are woven around racial politics. Then, RECREATIONAL SOURCE EVIDENCE Leon Uris' Trinity is concerned with the poli All literature reviews are undertaken with tics of religion in strife-torn Ireland. Several the purpose of supporting the author's point stanzas from Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches" are of view. With that in mind, let me remind the also important, as are the contents of sev reader that social classes are not just cate eral movies and old television series, but gorical differences in lifestyles led by asso first I begin with analyses from Hugo's novel. ciations of people. If that were the case then Les Miserables is a story with which I be the divisions would exist on a horizontal plane came familiar as a seventh-grade student. as simple nominal classifications. However, One of my teachers had an extra class pe when some sort of moral worth or social im riod with us, and during it he would tell us portance is assigned to the groupings they about the adventures and the flights of the are turned ninety degrees, a vertical angle to hounded Jean Valjean as he fled from the the original plane, now existing as ordinal dogged detective Javert. Later in life I decided Free Inquiry In Creative Sociology Volume 30 No. 2 November 2002 121 to read the book, and in my copy of it there is by the European aristocracy and preserved a wonderful line which depicts the dickensian for them by law ... Poachers continually chal lifestyle of the underprivileged poor who were lenged this domination by taking game when under the heavy-handed control of those peo ever and wherever it offered itself. Laws ple who had social influence and who held provided draconian penalties for violators legal power.