Finished my phD in History, and now I'm basically a NEET for the time being. How's everyone going? Haven't active;y used this site for a while, and it's cool to see the same familiar faces are still here. So, I'd like to ask everyone: on what subjects do you consider yourself most knowledgeable in, and is there anything about it that you think is the most interesting to know?
I am currently about 3/4 (Retail, Office, Factory, Food Service) of my way through what I have refered to as my 'Lived Ethnography of the Midwestern Proletariat'. As the proud holder of an anthropology undergrad I am in no way qualified to do this study but if lived experience counts for anything in anthro anymore, I probably have a better idea of working class culture than any university student does. In doing so, I have learned some basic principles.
The more masculine the work environment, the more ok it is to be gay with the fellas.
Wanting to fight someone is always a joke until it is not.
Your management is always dumb and has very little to actually do, but is generally best when they don't do anything. Despite how poor the general understanding of literacy, history, and mathematics is by the general populace, somehow, undereducated workers are still better at organizing themselves than management, at least until 4.
Familiarity breeds contempt and no one is more contemptuous towards themselves and their co-workers than the average American.
Most Americans are both underworked and underpaid, particularly in office jobs (see previous comment on management).
Factory floors, even non-unionized, still operate entirely on seniority and connections, so you might as well have a union.
I haven't hit food service yet, but I've heard that they are overworked and underpaid, which would be a nice change of pace.
Very interesting. You could make some good writing on the condition of the working class in the imperial core, sort of, an expansion on those basic principles. If you feel like it of course.
Tbf, David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs is a good starter book for such a topic, but it doesn't really have the hands on thing of how generally underworked you can feel in a factory once you get used to the repetition. Like, you are exhausted at the end of the day, but you look back and realize you didn't actually do a whole hell of a lot. I mean, you made alot of product but the job that you yourself did was such a small facit of the mechanism of production you don't feel like you accomplished anything. Like, due to Marxism, we know that economically speaking, we are alienated from the value of our labor, but that alienation takes an emotional toll as well, sowing discord and contempt for yourself and your fellow worker, which leads to all kinds of mental disorders that society struggles to deal with. In such an environment, the most rational way to deal with it is to isolate yourself from others in order to not have to deal with both their and your own neuroses that have developed because of american industrial capital.
The most common complaints I hear (and find myself making) are about the 'r**ards' further up the line (which is a couple hour long production process) with the management being a close second, but that dynamic can change depending on line size and constitution. That affects the whole cultural output and attitude. Like metal work is culturally different than industrial food prep, despite being incredibly similar processes.