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Singing Solidarity: Class Consciousness, Emotional Pedagogy, And The Songs Of The Industrial Workers Of The World, Tara Forbes

Wayne State University Dissertations

Singing Solidarity looks at songs and song culture in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from its inception to its decline near the start of WWI and examines how IWW songs engaged with, transformed, and directed workers’ feelings to “spur [them] to action” (Gould 47). Songs in the IWW repertoire created a sense of group identity and cohesion, supporting the IWW’s project of class consciousness and working-class solidarity. This solidarity, I argue, was felt rather than theorized. The felt solidarity of the IWW collective was intensified through the act of singing as a group, which was simultaneously an instantiation …

“I’Ve Always Had A Voice, Now I Want To Use It”: The Working Women’S Movement And Clerical Unionism In Higher Education, Amanda Lauren Walter

Wayne State University Dissertations

“I’ve Always Had a Voice, Now I Want to Use It”: The Working Women’s Movement and Clerical Unionism in Higher Education, examines the intersection of the labor movement and the women’s movement through the working lives and organizing of clerical workers in higher education in the United States beginning in the 1970s. Through an examination of UAW, SEIU, AFSCME, District 65, and AFT clerical organizing campaigns in higher education, I contend that women found their lack of collective bargaining power in the higher education workplace limited their effectiveness. Working women’s organizations and clericals in higher education, dealing with university budgetary …

The Many Worlds Of American Communism, Joshua James Morris

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines the American Communist movement between 1928 and 1957 by dividing up sources into worlds of activity, such as political work, labor organizing, and community organizing, and examining the multiple forms of engagement and experience by individuals’ part of a social movement. My research demonstrates that a social movement such as advocating radical political change in the United States can take on a wide variety of forms and can mean different things to different people based on where they came from, how they got involved in the movement and what they directly contributed to that movement. For example, …

White Supremacy As Class Compromise: The Poverty Of Structural Racism As A Theoretical Paradigm, Cody Robert Melcher

Wayne State University Theses

In this thesis, I develop a theoretical frame through which the perpetuation of racial inequality in the United States can be fruitfully interpreted. This reconceptualization is necessary, I argue, because the now dominant paradigm of so-called “structural racism” is methodologically untenable. I contend that the seminal theoretical and empirical accounts within the paradigm do not provide compelling or methodologically sound explanations for the perpetuation of racial inequality, often (and disturbingly) ignoring the historical record of race relations in the US. Specifically, I show that these accounts rely on the dubious causal mechanisms of structural inertia or ideological racism. Where these …

The Power To Protect Themselves: Gender, Protective Labor Legislation, And Public Policy In Michigan, 1883-1913, Amy Marie-Holtman French

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study provides a narrative of laborers' fight for legal protection through the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Since American law was one of the most important forces in shaping and limiting workplace reform, both labor unionists and reformers used the law to try to solve labor problems. Reformers employed the law to force state control over women and children, while labor unionists attempted to craft legislation to allow working men control over industrial relations.

Although society and the law treated men as independent agents, working men were not truly free. Common law designated workers as servants. Employers denied laboring …

Us Foreign Trade Zones As The Secret Lover: Is Uncle Sam Faithful To Tariff Elimination?, Richard J. Smith

Social Work Faculty Publications

For centuries the nations and principalities of the world have engaged in trading schemes to boost exports. Conquest, protection of domestic supply through tariffs and eroding domestic currency are all part of the historic policy harem. The United States has a foreign trade zone program. Who knew? FTZs evoke images of women locked inside a dark sweatshop in a jungle making hoodies for football fans. While these "developing" countries have unambiguously embraced FTZs as an export strategy, Uncle Sam has played the unwilling suitor to the concept, making the FTZ a common law revealed preference while engaged with but not …