‘I have to like it’: Working-class awareness among workers at a Bata shoe factory

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F23%3A00130618" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/23:00130618 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/RGNGKERFJWB4YSTIWEAM/full" target="_blank" >https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/RGNGKERFJWB4YSTIWEAM/full</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/07255136231165803" target="_blank" >10.1177/07255136231165803</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

‘I have to like it’: Working-class awareness among workers at a Bata shoe factory

Original language description

The working class has been interpreted within various disciplines and conceptual frameworks, some pointing to the gap between the depiction of the working class as a potentially active social force in the neoliberal deregulated global market and its portrayal as a suffering class of the marginal and excluded. In this text, I move behind this dichotomy to explore the everyday experiences of working-class men and women. Based on ethnographic research at the Bata shoe factory in the Czech Republic, I examine the meanings factory workers attach to their working classness. I investigate their sense of place in society in general. I argue that class matters in the workers’ perceptions of the self. On the one hand, the workers adopt the awareness of subalternity in relation to the educational and further the labor field that ranks them among the lowest positions. On the other hand, they take individual pride in their endurance of the hard work that shoemaking is believed to be. The committed work and emphasis on collectivity turn the microorganism of the factory into a place of mutual discipline, where the praised collectivity functions also as a tool for enhancing work effectivity, also in the interest of the management. By pointing to the concrete dimensions in which they balance the feelings of pride and shame, belonging, and symbolic displacement, I contribute to the sociological understanding of contemporary working classness.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50401 - Sociology

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Thesis Eleven

ISSN

0725-5136

e-ISSN

1461-7455

Volume of the periodical

175

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

18

Pages from-to

108-125

UT code for WoS article

000974103700001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85153395579