rick fantasia, cultures of solidarity (1988)

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[1] ambiguity: the importance of the instances of 'cultures of solidarity' being chronicled, in the book.

(A) on the one hand, Fantasia is right to refute the argument that all Americans are entirely self-interested, and have no stake in the labour movement/unions. there isn't a lack of 'traditions of solidarity', i think we can agree with him--'solidarity' is very clearly prevalent in d-to-day existence, as practice, even in a weak labour movement (pg. 14)

all this is fine. together with the argument against survey/one-dimensional measurement of class consciousness (pg. 5, 6), that is the book's principal aim, and he carries it off well enough.

but let's be clearer than he is, also, that there are serious problems with setting this low a bar. because there is something very rotten about the American labour movement, when--instead of comparing it to (a) totally self-interested workers, you compare it to (b) other labour movements; (c) itself in the 30s (pg. 4); (d) where we would like it to be

he's alive to this, in the conclusion, and he says some general things in this regard. but it's not central to his case studies. the narrative, there, is always developed against the silly position that american workers are always selfish--he finds moments of solidarity and we're supposed to rejoice/say eureka--rather than in light of the conviction that there's something seriously wrong.

[(B) he pooh-poohs 'trade-union consciounsess'/class consciousness distinction, but it's not clear why. there is a real reason to be very critical of simply trade-union consciousness. he himself notes the limits of that understanding, in the course of his book]

[2] what this leads to is the more important, central problem with the book--the narratives he's giving us have nothing to offer, really, in the way of analytical or explanatory insight. the question that he's trying to answer is just not clear, at all; there's no real argument.

his task, as he understands it, is to look at how collective solidarity emerges--as 'praxis', rather than as a attitude/belief-system, what have you. that's fine, but it doesn't go very far at all. and it becomes quite tedious/unenlightening to read.

we really want, I would suggest, is some account of why movements emerge when and how they do. to the extent that he gives us an answer to this in his case studies, it's a very weak one--we get a story about individual triggers/contingency (pp. 234-235--'collective action was 'complex set of interactions...'; pg. 99--'spatial positioning' of workers re: foreman.) (there's also the argument that collective action begets more solidarity--but it would be difficult to make this into a coherent argument about larger shifts in the strength of labour. you just push the question back)

it may be that, partly, the things he's trying to explain are so insignificant/'small' (tens of workers on a wildcat for a few hours!?) that 'contingent'/trigger explanations are in fact sufficient, for them.

but then of course in that case we can't extrapolate, scale up, which is fatal. (unless we somehow believe that more significant waves of labour unrest are also 'contingent',) we can't really say anything about what we're really interested in-- emergence of social movements, etc.

it's also, however, a function of the fact that he just doesn't ask the question.

for that, I think you'll have to take seriously things that he, to his credit, hints at in his book (pg. 119, plant leaving--. there's a structural context for many of the things that triggered what he's noting in the book, in the 70s, when firms across the country were faced with profitability pressures, etc, and so resorted to strategies for ramping up productivity that provoked the kind of backlash we see bits and pieces of, here (pg. 123-124--mechanization, de-skilling at hospital). there's a whole book making this argument, of course. this is the direction we ought to be heading.

[3] the other 'big' question that this book raises, which I already mentioned, is the question of the 'exceptional' weakness of the American labour movement. to the extent that he's committed to an explanation, it's institutional (pg. 227--'structures of industrial relations' vs. Italy)--'Taft-Hartley' is responsible for the exceptional weakness of the American labour movement.

there's certainly something to this, but I would have liked much more, here. he's stressing the institutional facts partly because of his larger argument that 'cultures of solidarity' develop in context, and the context is 'business unionism'.

but the larger argument, if we step back from his aims, is a bit too path-dependent. as he himself notes in his conclusion, there are reasons to doubt that labour only operates within the institutional constraints set by the time--the 30s were not like that. why is it that labour can't find the strength to ignore Taft-Hartley? surely other factors matter, as well. historical-structural factors; political-strategic factors. [balance of 'class forces' vs. his slight voluntarism pg. 167]

[4] attack on rationality is misplaced -- 'feelings' are important, but 'feelings' are constructed on real ground; i.e., you won't be able to sustain optimism if the grounds for it don't exist.

[5] is micro-level assessment just off-limits? no, I don't think so--it's more the way he goes about trying to understand it. there are structural ways to do this, that would shed insight on larger cases.