From Workplace Culture to Collective Resistance: An Ethnography ^☆

Abstract

This chapter examines the underpinnings of collective resistance in a nonunion factory. I begin by acknowledging the important contribution made by Randy Hodson and others who have uncovered key material structural underpinnings of collective resistance in workplaces. Such an approach, however, leaves large unanswered questions about collective agency. I argue that a focus upon the potential links between lived culture and collective resistance can bring us closer to an understanding of collective agency. To this end, I present key findings of an ethnographic study of culture and resistance at window-blinds factory. I outline the informal collective resistance enacted by the workers in the factory and offer an analysis of the structural factors underpinning the considerable resistance at this factory. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to outlining the everyday Stayin’ Alive culture on the shopfloor and to analyzing the dotted lines that led from this culture to the collective resistance.

Citation

Korczynski, M. (2016), "From Workplace Culture to Collective Resistance: An Ethnography ^☆ ", A Gedenkschrift to Randy Hodson: Working with Dignity (Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 28), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0277-283320160000028005