Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-159).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX75519/87. / Spine title: The work machine.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-272). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-272). Also available on the Internet.

This thesis explores the dynamics of economic relations and distributive outcomes according to displaced steelworkers' own accountings of deindustrialization and job loss. Whereas class analyses tend to investigate consciousness according to “true” versus “false” preferences and “post-class” scholars assert that “post-materialism” is replacing “materialist” social concerns, the author abandons these dualisms to demonstrate that workers use cultural codes of “purity” and “pollution” to represent and evaluate individuals, interests, and relations. The findings buttress the continuing relevance of social class for explaining social identity, consciousness, and antagonism.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to lay the groundwork for the eventual combination of micro and macro levels of class analysis into a unified theory. The first steps of this process require the creation of a micro level theory of class identity formation, a slight reconceptualization of the class map upon which the macro level theory is based, and an elaboration of the partial macro level theory provided by Wright (1997). At the micro level, I find the factors which contribute to class identity formation depend on which class identities are being distinguished. This result echoes the findings of Centers [1949] 1961, but moves beyond his analysis by quantifying the contribution of each of the factors to the predicted probability of selecting a class identity. At the macro level, I find that including partial ownership in Wright's class map uncovers important hidden variation among Wright's non-owning class locations. Separating partial owners from non-owners illustrates an important source of division in class consciousness not possible using Wright's class map. Finally, I further elaborate Wright's partial theory of class consciousness by demonstrating that McPherson's concept of socio-structural space can be usefully applied to the class structure, which provides a set of hypotheses to explain how class formation affects class consciousness. The solidarity hypothesis is supported, suggesting class based homogeneous friendship relations strengthen class consciousness in the polar class locations. Increasing class based social distance between friends, decreases the strength of an individual's class consciousness. While just the first steps, these advancements in theory and empirical results help further the cause of creating a unified theory of class by strengthening our understanding of both the micro and macro levels of class analysis. With these improvements in place, further work at both levels of analysis can continue the process of integrating the two levels of analysis.

The relationship between party organisation, class consciousness and workers’ struggle has been a basic issue in Marxism since its foundation, and particularly since the rise of revisionism at the end of the last century. To the very limited that a “mainstream” literature on Lenin sought to locate him within the Marxist tradition that tradition was identified with a determinist interpretation of Marx developed by the revisionists and centrists. This approach has been countered by a generally sympathetic view of Lenin’s comments on party organisation, argued by a recent set of “critics” of the “mainstream” view. Yet despite their wish to make a comprehensive critique of the “mainstream”, most of the critics have failed to do so due a residual element of determinism in their understanding of the relation between workers’ struggle and the development of class consciousness.This thesis seeks to complete the critique of the “mainstream” through establishing the role of conscious intervention in realising the material possibilities for workers’ struggle. It does so through a case study of the labour movement in St. Petersburg between the “Emancipation” of 1861 and the “Stolypin Coup” of 3/6/1907. A pivotal point in the development of this movement was “Bloody Sunday” (9/1/1905), and the thesis is structured around that moment to show what changes, as well as what does not change, in the role of conscious intervention in periods of mass struggle relative to times of more limited protest.