This qualitative study of women's responses to the organizing of Local 34 at Yale University provides an empirical grounding for feminist theorizing of women's generation of meaning. Based on interviews with clerical and technical workers, the study illuminates the relationship between experiences and meaning. Subjectivities of gender, race and class contribute to meanings made and actions taken by union supporters and opponents in the context of social change. / Building upon feminist theory, the study suggests that the relationship between experience and meaning is a basis for action. The interviews offer examples of women's negotiation of multiple subject positions as they seek to sustain their identities in their responses to the possibility for change represented by the union. The research method, itself an encounter between subjectivities, undergoes scrutiny as a meaning-generating practice with implications for feminist theory and politics. Assessment of the strategic value for feminism of identity politics points to the exclusionary effect of appealing to a unified identity against which subjectivities work, whereas a politics of location admits the many positions from and within which meanings are made. / The study builds upon and extends the analytic tools and insights of feminist theory and contributes to feminist strategies for social change. Rather than reinforcing the expected classifications of pro- and anti-union women, of working and middle-class women, of white women and women of color, this project calls for looking beyond these categories in order to build theories and practices that accommodate the specificity as well as the commonalities of women's lives.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.70217 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Gregg, Nina |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Graduate Communications Program.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001255744, proquestno: AAINN72099, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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