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Winter 2002
This information effective for Winter 2002.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
Winter 2002
Instructor: David Brundage
TTh 10–11:45
Kresge 319
Office: 312 College Eight; tel: 459-4645; e-mail: brundage@cats
Office Hours: Monday 10-12, Tuesday 1-2
Course Description
We are at a turning point in the history of labor in this country. On the one hand, working people and their unions are facing the most profound challenges that they have faced in half a century: corporate globalization, the migration of jobs out of the country, speed-up, and declining union membership. At the same time, the American labor movement is undergoing a dramatic set of internal changes, becoming more activist, more democratic, and more attuned to the aspirations of women workers and workers of color. Many labor activists and leaders are now struggling to put labor at the center of a broad progressive movement that would shift the balance of power in American society, moving it away from the corporate boardroom and into the offices, workshops, and communities of American working people.
The goal of Community Studies 100H, “Theory and Practice of U.S. Labor,” is to provide students with an introduction to these issues and trends. The course will explore various analytical approaches to the American working class, the history of the labor movement, and some of the main problems facing working people today as a way of understanding current directions in labor and working-class activism.
The course will be divided into three parts: (1) In the first four weeks, we’ll examine the history of the American labor movement, focusing especially on its rapid growth in the 1930s and 1940s and its growing conservatism in the 1950s and 1960s. We’ll also look at the evolution of the American class structure in the 20th century, focusing on the transformation of work and the changing gender, ethnic and racial composition of the work force. (2) In the next few weeks of the class, we’ll examine the contemporary crisis of the labor movement, against a backdrop of corporate globalization and deindustrialization, the changing character of work, and changes in welfare policy. (3) In the final part of the course, we’ll examine some of the new trends in labor activism, including labor-community alliances, new efforts to organize immigrants and undocumented workers, new political initiatives, and strategies to build international labor solidarity.
Course Requirements
Since this course will be run as a seminar the overriding requirement is that you attend every class, having completed all the reading assignments and being prepared for discussion. This is your class and its quality, what you get out of it, will depend entirely on the quality of your individual and collective input.
Beyond this, you will be evaluated on the basis of a take-home midterm exam
based on the lectures, class readings, and films from the first part of the
course (Weeks 1-4); and a research paper of approximately 15 pages that critically
examines a contemporary labor campaign or program in light of the larger theoretical
concerns developed in the course. The midterm exam will be due in class, Tuesday,
October 24. The research paper will be due on the last day of class, Thursday,
November 30.
Required Texts
Michael Yates, Why Unions Matter
Steve Babson, The Unfinished Struggle: Turning Points in American Labor,
1877–Present
Gregory Mantsios (ed.), A New Labor Movement for the New Century
Ruth Milkman, (ed.), Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary
California
The following are available at Bay Tree Bookstore and are on two-hour reserve at McHenry Library.
There will also be a class reader, available at Bay Tree. A copy of the reader will also on two-hour reserve at McHenry.
Course Schedule
Thursday, Sept. 21: Introduction to the course
Tuesday, Sept. 26: The experience of work
READING: Barbara Ehrenreich, “Maid to Order: The Politics of Other Women’s
Work,” HARPER’S MAGAZINE (April 2000), pp. 59-70; Ben Hamper,
RIVETHEAD: TALES FROM THE ASSEMBLY LINE (1991), pp. 15-44; Studs Terkel, WORKING
(1972), pp. 3-14; Barbara Garson, THE ELECTRONIC
SWEATSHOP (1988), p. 7–38, all in READER.
Thursday, Sept 28: Thinking about class, thinking about labor
READING: Yates, WHY UNIONS MATTER, Introduction and Chapter 1; Raymond Williams, KEYWORDS: A VOCABULARY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY (1983), pp. 60–69; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto, Part 1” (1848); Selig Perlman, “A Theory of the Labor Movement” (1928); and Clark Kerr, et al., “Industrialism and Industrial Man” (1960), all in READER.
Tuesday, Oct. 3: Origins of the U.S. labor movement
READING: Yates, WHY UNIONS MATTER, Chapter 2; Babson, THE UNFINISHED STRUGGLE, Introduction, Chapter 1; David O. Stowell, “Small Property Holders’ and the Great Strike of 1877: Railroads, City Streets, and the Middle Classes,” JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY, 10 (September 1995): 741–63, in READER.
Thursday, Oct. 5: Fordism and Taylorism
READING: Babson, THE UNFINISHED STRUGGLE, Chapter 2; Harry Braverman, “Scientific Management,” in READER.
FILM: “People’s Century: On the Line, 1924”
Tuesday, Oct. 10: The emergence of industrial unionism
READING: Babson, THE UNFINISHED STRUGGLE, Chapter 3.
Thursday, Oct. 12: Working-class consciousness in the Great Depression
READING: Melvyn Dubofsky, “Not So 'Turbulent Years’” A New Look
at the 1930s,” in HARD WORK: THE MAKING OF LABOR HISTORY (2000), pp.
130–50; Bruce Nelson, “‘Pentecost’ on the Pacific: Maritime
Workers and Working-Class Consciousness in the 1930s,” POLITICAL POWER
AND SOCIAL THEORY 4 (1984): 141–82, both in READER.
FILM: “Union Maids”
Tuesday, Oct. 17: American workers in the post-war era
READING: Babson, THE UNFINISHED STRUGGLE, Chapter 4; Robert Bruno, “Everyday
Constructions of Culture and Class: The Case of Youngstown
Steelworkers,” LABOR HISTORY 40 (May 1999): 143–76, in READER.
Thursday, Oct. 19: Labor in the 1960s
READING: Babson, THE UNFINISHED STRUGGLE, Chapter 5; Cletus E. Daniel, “Cesar
Chavez and the Unionization of California Farm Workers,” in
READER.
FILM: “At the River We Stand”
Tuesday, Oct. 24: Economic Slowdown
READING: Teresa Amott, CAUGHT IN THE CRISIS: WOMEN AND THE U.S. ECONOMY TODAY,
pp. 24–48 (handout); William Adler, “A Job on the
Line,” MOTHER JONES, March 200, pp. 40–47, 86–87 (handout).
Take-home midterm due.
Thursday, Oct. 26: Immigrants in the American working class.
READING: Lillian B. Rubin, “Family Values and the Invisible Working Class” (handout); Milkman (ed.), ORGANIZING IMMIGRANTS, ch. 1.
Tuesday, Oct. 31: Immigration and the labor movement.
READING: Milkman (ed.), ORGANIZING IMMIGRANTS, ch. 2.
Thursday, Nov. 2: Organizing immigrant workers: Case studies
READING: Milkman (ed.), ORGANIZING IMMIGRANTS, chs. 3–5.
Tuesday, Nov. 7: Organizing Immigrant workers: More case studies
READING: Milkman (ed.), ORGANIZING IMMIGRANTS, chs. 7–9.
Thursday, Nov. 9: Building democracy.
READING: Yates, WHY UNIONS MATTER, ch. 3; Mantsios, (ed.),
A NEW LABOR MOVEMENT FOR A NEW CENTURY, Introduction and Part 1.
Tuesday, Nov. 14: Organizing the unorganized.
READING: Yates, WHY UNIONS MATTER, ch. 4; Mantsios, (ed.),
A NEW LABOR MOVEMENT FOR A NEW CENTURY, Part 2.
Thursday, Nov. 16: Cultivating diversity.
READING: Yates, WHY UNIONS MATTER, ch. 6; Mantsios, (ed.),
A NEW LABOR MOVEMENT FOR A NEW CENTURY, Part 3.
Tuesday, Nov. 21: Political action.
READING: Yates, WHY UNIONS MATTER, ch. 5; Mantsios, (ed.),
A NEW LABOR MOVEMENT FOR A NEW CENTURY, Part 4.
Thursday, Nov. 23: No class—Thanksgiving
Tuesday, Nov. 28: International solidarity.
READING: Mantsios, (ed.), A NEW LABOR MOVEMENT FOR A NEW CENTURY,
Part 5.
Thursday, Nov. 30: Summing up.
READING: Yates, WHY UNIONS MATTER, ch. 7; Mantsios, (ed.),
A NEW LABOR MOVEMENT FOR A NEW CENTURY, Afterword.
Final paper due.
Winter 2002
Instructor: Paul Ortiz, Department of Community Studies
Phone: 459-5583
E-mail: portiz@cats.ucsc.edu
TTH 2:00–3:45
Social Sciences 2 159
Times would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place, the
relations of countries and the relations of classes had to change, before I
discovered that it is not the quality of goods and utility which matter, but
movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have come from,
where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there. —C.L.R.
James, Beyond a Boundary
The goal of this seminar is to learn how to organize a revolution. We will learn what communities past and present have done and are doing to resist, challenge, and overcome systems of power including (but not limited to) global capitalism, state oppression, and racism. Along the way, we will explore the following questions: Where do ideas for democratic social change come from? How do “ordinary people” forge resistance in the face of exploitation? How does historical memory shape identity and political action? How do people build the relationships of trust that form the building blocks of new social movements? Emphasis will be placed on studying subaltern groups including slaves, peasants, migrants, workers, “second-class citizens.” The people that Melville referred to as the “mariners, renegades and castaways” of the emerging global economy from 1492 to present.
We will examine the intersection between past and present struggles using an interdisciplinary approach that keeps individual agency and power in constant dialogue and tension. We will draw upon films, oral testimony, music, poetry, “incendiary literature” and other forms of evidence.
The course is designed for Community Studies majors who plan to do a six-month field study. Non-majors interested in the course are welcome to participate if there is enrollment space.
Reading, writing, and research assignments for this course will be substantial. To paraphrase C.L.R. James, “You don’t play with revolution.”
COURSE FORMAT
Class Participation and Response Papers: This seminar is designed to promote vibrant discussion and debate. The primary purpose of the weekly Response Paper is to help you to explore key questions as well as to prepare for seminar participation. Each student will write eight response papers (each will be 2–3 pages, typed and double-spaced). Papers will be due on Tuesdays. On alternate weeks you will also circulate discussion questions in advance to your colleagues via our class email list.
Final/Research Project: Each student will identify an organization, or movement-past or present-involved in the work of social change, broadly defined and write a fifteen-page essay regarding this movement’s origins as well as the movement’s theory and practice of resistance and recruitment.
Grading: Class participation (20%); Response papers (40%); Final Research Project (40%) Class participation includes circulating questions to your colleagues in advance of seminar meetings.
Response Papers
A response paper is not a summary. Response papers critically engage with class
readings. I welcome papers that take issue with the reading. Indeed, the reading
assignments have been chosen to provoke debate. Whether you agree or not with
the reading you will need to employ hard evidence in your response papers. It
is not acceptable to say: “I feel like the author’s point is unfair,”
or “I like what the author says…” You must demonstrate why the
author’s point is valid, incorrect, etc. You should be writing to convince
a general audience rather than a narrow, academic one. In other words, avoid
jargon.
Research Projects
The most successful social activists are keen students of the human condition.
The purpose of the research project is to give you the space to carefully explore
a field of endeavor that you may want to pursue as a field study option. For
example, at this point you may be interested in working with an agricultural
cooperative. You might use your research project to examine the emergence of
agricultural cooperatives in Central America or the United States, to take just
two examples.
Your research project will incorporate three levels of evidence: 1) secondary sources; 2) primary research; 3) at least one documented discussion with a living person engaged in the kind of social activity you are describing. We will meet on an individual basis twice during the quarter—during the week of January 29 as well as the week of February 19—to discuss your work and share ideas.
Research projects will consist of four formal elements: 1) A prospectus or outline, due on January 29. This prospectus, which we will discuss in class, is essentially your research outline. 2) A bibliography or list of suggested readings/resources. These are records, films, web sites, etc. you used in the making of your research project. 3) A jargon-free hypothesis stated at the beginning of the research project, and re-visited in your conclusion. You are not expected to reinvent the wheel in your paper. However, you must be able to give a clear exposition on your given topic. You must also be able to explain why your topic is important This is also a way to acquire the skills you will need to write field notes, grants, and other fun things in the future. 4) Footnotes. You must document all of your sources.
Class Discussions
I expect each of us to observe mutual respect towards each other. Social movements
are built upon relationships of trust and reciprocity. Please design a name-tag
that will help us learn your name.
Attendance
More than two absences without a signed medical excuse will have a profound
impact on your grade.
Office Hours
My office is #208, College Eight. My office hours are Tue/Thu 10:00–11:30.
I am happy to meet with you outside of these times. My home number is 469-3306.
You should schedule a meeting with me to discuss the progress of your final
research projects during the weeks of January 29 and February 19th.
Mid-Quarter Evaluations
On February 12, I will give you a written evaluation of your work based on class
participation, response papers as well as progress on your research project.
I will also ask you to evaluate my work as a classroom teacher.
Community Studies Department Potluck
Our department is having a potluck late in January for majors and potential
majors to meet and chat with each others as well as faculty and staff. More
info to follow.
Major Texts We Will Sample From: (Available at Slug Books and at McHenry
Library Reserves.)
Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City,
1954–1985; James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden
Transcripts; C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture
and the San Domingo Revolution; Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The
Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the
Revolutionary Atlantic; Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short
History of the Agrarian Revolt in America; Benedita da Silva: An Afro-Brazilian
Woman’s Story of Politics and Love; Charles Payne, I’ve Got
the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
Reading List
“To denounce hierarchy does not get us anywhere. Instead what must be changed are the conditions that make this hierarchy exist both in reality and in minds.” —Piere Bordieu
WEEK OF JANUARY 3: COURSE OVERVIEW
Thursday syllabus and course review, admin work. Community Studies majors’ essays.
WEEK OF JANUARY 8: SOCIAL THEORIES OF RESISTANCE, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Bring A Nametag!
Tuesday Introductions; syllabus review
In-class reading: Barbara Trent, “How We Got the Buses Rolling,” Santa Monica Messenger, November 16, 1983.
Small Group exercise: Attend A Local Martin Luther King Celebration. Write brief summary (1–2 pages) due January 22.
Thursday Discussion: James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, 1–107; 136–152; Ortiz, “Social Theory, Resistance and Social Movements: Some Key Analytical Terms”
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, vii–xxiv.
Delia Aguilar, “Questionable Claims: Colonialism Redux, Feminist Style,” Race & Class 41, no. 3 (2000), 1–12. Electronic Reserve (ER)
(Response papers due today; in the future: response papers due every Tuesday.)
Suggested Readings
Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire, Interviews with David Barsamian (Foreword
by Edward W. Said)
C.L.R. James, Modern Politics
Leo Howe, “Scrounger, Worker, Beggarman, Cheat: The Dynamics Of Unemployment
And The Politics Of Resistance In Belfast,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, v4 n3, (Sept 1998), 531–551.
WEEK OF JAN 15: WOMEN IN STRUGGLE; GENDER AND ORGANIZING
Key Themes: Gender, class, and race; political struggle; REFUSING
TO BE A VICTIM; religion and social change; Worker’s Party of Brazil; Memoirs
and resistance; Telengana Peasant Revolt, 1946–51
Tuesday Benedita da Silva: An Afro-Brazilian Woman’s Story of Politics and Love
Film: “With Babies and Banners” (Women’s Emergency Brigade, Flint, Michigan 1936–37)
Thursday Benedita da Silva, cont. and The Frente Autentico del
Trabajo, “Women Would Make a Beginning and Then Their Husbands Could Join,”
in Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, The New Rank and File, 181–186.
(ER)
Suggested Reading
Jacquelyn Cole, “The Taliban and Women In Afghanistan,” Works in
Progress (November, 2001), 13.
Fran Leeper Buss, ed., Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo El Sol: The Life
of Maria Elena Lucas
Stree S. Sangathana, We Were Making History: Women in the Telangana People’s
Struggle
WEEK OF JANUARY 22: CAPITALISM, SLAVERY AND INTERNATIONALISM
Key Themes: Emergence of capitalism and slavery; internationalism; Liberation theology; radical Christianity; leveller and digger traditions; anti-capitalism; commonism; American Revolution from below.
Tuesday Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic 8–70; 174–247.
Thomas Frank, “Preface: A Deadhead in Davos,” in: One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy, ix–xvii. (ER)
Thursday Peter Linebaugh, Rediker, and Frank, cont. The Many-Headed Hydra, cont.
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 6–26.
Film: Africans in America, Part II: “Revolution” (The American Revolution)
Suggested Reading
Ray Raphael, People’s History of the American Revolution
Howard Fast, The Proud and the Free
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the
English Revolution, 87–183; 324–386. (Suggested: 57–72)
David J. Weber, ed., What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?
Daniel Burton-Rose, et.al., The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the
U.S. Prison Industry
In-class reading: Stan Goff, “Letter of Resignation from the Communist Party of the Carolinas”
WEEK OF JANUARY 29: SLAVE REVOLUTIONARIES/EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
Mandatory Individual Meetings to Discuss Final Projects
Key themes: The self-generation of democratic and revolutionary ideas among slaves. Relationship between “leaders” and the “led;” Experiential learning. Linkages between the French Revolution and the San Domingue revolutions. (And relevance to contemporary protests against “globalization.”)
Tuesday C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 27–61; 82–165;
In-Class reading: “Demands of the Colored People of Apalachicola, Florida” (1890)
Thursday C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 224–288.
Film: “Talking History: E.P. Thompson and C.L.R. James” (Two historians think outside of the box)
Suggested Reading
Martin Glaberman and Seymour Faber, “Back to the Future: The Continuing
Relevance of Marx,” in Critique, 32–33 (2000)
Film: “Sankofa”
WEEK OF FEBRUARY 5: BUILDING A MOVEMENT CULTURE
Key Themes: Recruitment as an organizing problem; sequential stages of organizing a social; Farmer’s Alliance; cooperative experience; Populism; decline of democracy in America
Guest speaker: Lawrence Goodwyn
Tuesday Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, 3–124; 264–322.
Thursday Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, cont.
WEEK OF FEBRUARY 12: IDENTITY, CULTURE, AND DYNAMIC TRADITIONS
Key Themes: Historical memory, iconography, and identity. Identity
politics. Identifying and overcoming divisions within movements. Invention of
tradition and uses of tradition in social movements and “imagined communities.”
Tuesday Robin D.G. Kelley, “Identity Politics & Class Struggle,” New Politics, vol 6, no. 2 (Winter 1997) (ER)
Paul Ortiz, “‘Eat Your Bread Without Butter, But Pay Your Poll Tax!’: Roots of the African American Voter Registration Movement in Florida, 1919–1920,” in: Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, eds., Charles Payne and Adam Green, 1–39.
Adolph Reed, “Why Is There No Black Political Movement,” in Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene, 3–9. (Electronic Reserve [ER])
C.L.R. James, “Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana,” C.L.R. James: At the Rendezvous of Victory: Selected Writings, 172–185. (ER)
Vinay Bahl, “What Went Wrong With the History From Below or, Why I Won’t Commit Sati,” Conference Paper at “Globalization From Below” conference, Duke, February 6, 1998 (Electronic Reserve [ER])
Thursday Hugo Hernandez, “Instead of Letting Me go Out Alone, They Went With Me,” in Lynd and Lynd, The New Rank & File, 54–62. (ER)
Film: “Oh Freedom, After While” (Missouri Sharecroppers’ Organizing Campaign, 1935–1941)
Suggested Reading
Staughton Lynd, “The Webbs, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg; Models of Renewal and
Decay in the Labor Community”
WEEK OF FEBRUARY 19: GENDER AND CROSS-GENERATIONAL ORGANIZING
Mandatory Individual Meetings to discuss final projects
Key Themes: Preparation for starting a protest movement; Organizing across generational divides; women’s leadership; Civil Rights Movement; citizenship; Highlander Folk School
Tuesday Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, 29–179
Film: “At the River I Stand” (Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike, 1968)
Thursday Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 363–390.
WEEK FEBRUARY 26 : WORKERS' CULTURE, RELIGION, & STATE TERROR, I
Key Themes: Organizing against multinational corporations; sustaining
a movement in a one-party state; surviving state and corporate-sponsored terrorism;
the question of armed insurrection
Tuesday Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985, 1–79; Eqbal Ahmad, “Radical But Wrong,” in Regis Debrary and the Latin American Revolution, Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, eds. (ER)
Thursday Reading discussion cont./discuss research works in progress.
Recommended Reading: E.P. Thompson, “The Segregation of Dissent,” and “Sir, Writing by Candlelight,” in Thompson, Writing by Candlelight (ER)
WEEK OF MARCH 5: WORKERS’ CULTURE, RELIGION, & STATE TERROR, II
Mandatory individual meetings to discuss final projects
Key Themes: Guatemalan workers’ struggles; discuss research works in progress.
Tuesday Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985, 142–233;
Thursday Small groups reassess the following questions: 1) What is power? 2) What is resistance? 3) How are social movements organized? 4) What are the most effective ways of documenting resistance and social movements? Also Discuss research works in progress.
Suggested Reading
The Hebron Union of Workers and General Service Personnel, “The Worst
That They Can Do is to Put Me In Prison,” Lynd and Lynd, The New Rank
and File, 156–165.
WEEK OF MARCH 12: RETHINKING RESISTANCE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
NO NEW READING
Key Themes: 1) Redefining resistance and social movements; 2) Making
the history relevant to contemporary struggles; 3) Discussion of research papers
in progress.
Tuesday Continue to discuss major questions/research works in progress.
Thursday Class Evaluations. Research works in progress. Wrap-up.
MARCH 14: CLASS ENDS
RESEARCH PROJECTS DUE: MARCH 19
“You must be able to write what you think—and maybe what you write
about your day-to-day, everyday, commonplace, ordinary life will be some of
the same problems that the people of the world are fighting out. You must be
able to write what you have to say, and know that that is what matters; and
I hope you can see that you can begin anywhere and end up as far as anybody
else has reached. I hope you are not scared to write about what concerns you,
what you know—these things matter.” —C.L.R. James
Social Theory, Resistance and Social Movements: Some Key Analytical Terms
Throughout the course of the quarter we will use many terms in discussions
that are taken for granted. Some terms however, need to be clarified because
we use often use them without critical reflection. Below are some key words
as well as the ways that I have come to define these terms in my work as a historian/activist
of social change. It is important to note that these definitions are works in
progress. You will have your own important contributions to make in this discussion.
—Paul Ortiz
Recruitment
The most overlooked category of analysis in sociological literature on social
movements. The most overlooked factor in organizing. Too often, would-be organizers
assume that they will attract potential members by being “radical”
without understanding that “radical” is an abstraction at best and
a posture at worst. How do you go about recruiting folks to attend a meeting
or event? Why do you decide to attend a meeting? Do you attend events organized
by self-righteous individuals who have all of the answers? To quote Ronnie Cummins,
national director of the Pure Food Campaign, “We can’t go to the people
with a laundry list of politically correct ideas and say ‘Will you join
us?’ You’ve just got to say, ‘What do you think are the most
important issues?’”
Experiential Learning
To move forward in life it is necessary to learn from experience. Social movements
arise from the ways that people interpret their experiences. A group of people
may be impoverished for generations. It is not the poverty that spurs them to
organize. After all, they have always been poor. At a certain moment in history
however, this group may interpret their experience of poverty, their relations
to others, and draw certain conclusions that lead them to begin organizing.
Above all, people must develop a new level of self-confidence before
they engage in new types of social activity whether it is testifying before
a board of supervisors, organizing a cooperative, or going on strike. Experiential
learning stems from self-activity.
C.L.R. James emphasized that self activity boost self-confidence: “You
have to know what you are, and what you can do. And this nobody can teach you
except yourselves, by your own activities and the lessons that you draw from
them.”
In the following passage, James describes an example of experiential learning,
the formation of the workers’ councils in the Hungarian Revolution. People
used their experiences in workplace production to begin to build a democratic
society. These councils formed the basis of a new Hungary before they were smashed
by Soviet tanks:
“The secret of the workers’ councils is this. From the very start of the Hungarian revolution, these shop-floor organizations of the workers demonstrated such conscious mastery of the needs, processes, and inter-relations of production, that they did not have to exercise any domination over people. That mastery is the only basis of political power against the bureaucratic state. It is the very essence of any government which is to be based upon general consent and not on force. The administration of things by the workers’ councils established a basic coherence in society and from this coherence they derived automatically their right to govern.”
Vanguard
In contrast to the democratic model that we have outlined above, too many would-be
organizers employ a top-down model of recruitment that can charitably be described
as movement-killing politics. The “vanguard party” has been
a destructive concept in the history of the modern left. Unfortunately, it is
still a prevalent mode of organizing. Taken from V. I. Lenin’s What
is to be Done? (which V.I. later repudiated) Joseph Stalin and others took
the concept of the vanguard to mean that only educated, elite party bureaucrats
could lead the revolutionary process to success. This anti-democratic concept
is alive and well in capitalist societies that breed on hierarchy and inequality.
Arguably, the Democratic and Republican parties are vanguard parties—insofar
as they formulate policies and strategies that have little resonance among ordinary
people—that’s us. Thus, low voter turnout rates.
Social Movement
One of the most abused terms in social discourse. Nascent movements form every
day but few of them pass through the sequential phases necessary to qualify
for “social movement” status. Larry Goodwyn lays out four essential
elements of movement building: “(1) the creation of an autonomous institution
where new interpretations can materialize that run counter to those of prevailing
authority—a development which for the sake of simplicity, we may describe
as ‘the movement forming’; (2) the creation of a tactical means to
attract masses of people—‘the movement recruiting’; (3) the achievement
of a heretofore culturally unsanctioned level of social analysis—‘the
movement educating’; and (4) the creation of an institutional means whereby
the new ideas, shared now by the rank and file of the mass movement, can be
expressed in an autonomous political way—‘the movement politicized,’”
Populist Movement, xviii. Judged by this standard there are few if any
social groupings that currently qualify for the moniker “social movement.”
There are many social groups that could become social movements.
Education
There is no example of a successful social movement in history that does not
successfully educate its members especially after initial failures. When a new
social movement runs into trouble or suffers initial defeats—and this inevitably
happens in initial stages—movement organizers must be able to explain
why the failure has occurred or else the nascent movement will collapse.
Self-Righteousness
Here is a sure movement-killer. It is not that one does not have the right to
feel good about one’s philosophy. It is simply that condescending attitudes
of self-righteousness are barriers to recruitment of new members. During the
Montgomery Bus Boycott for example, no one asked potential boycotters to toe
a “party line.” Such ideologically correct thinking would have killed
the Bus Boycott in its tracks.
Ideology
Would-be organizers mistakenly think that correct ideology serves as the most
important tool of recruitment. Not much evidence to support this idea. Every
day hundreds of nascent movements shut themselves down in the process of drafting
ideological manifestos prior to engaging in any kind of meaningful social action.
This divorce between theory and practice is deadly. Few will join a group that
gives them long lectures on ideology. One can get this treatment in the workplace,
church, and family.
Relationships of Trust
Social movements are created by people who form relationships of trust with
each other. Activists who concentrate on writing manifestoes would do well to
think more deeply about the ways they interact with other people. On this note
it is disheartening to find activist organizations that purport to maintain
democratic ideologies yet maintain distinctly undemocratic social relations
among each other. Without a relationship of trust an organization drifts towards
bureaucratic inertia.
History
All social movements have a history. There is no documented case of a “spontaneous” social movement. Learn that history or it has a way of sneaking up on you and overwhelming your activism. The Peace Movement of the 1960s had a pre-history that stretched back to the formation of World War I-era peace organizations such as Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, not to mention the Quakers and other dissenting groups. In the 1960s proper, the “Peace Movement” stumbled through five years of experimentation (roughly, 1963–1968) before it began to effect real social change.
As Charles Payne shows in his work on the civil rights movement in Mississippi, young student activists succeeded in building the movement because they were able to productively engage in conversations with older African American activists who shared their experiences with the young folks. Intergenerational organizing was a prerequisite in the making of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Community
Like the term “social movement,” “community” has been so overused and ill-employed that it has been drained of meaning. Today, one hears of “the American community” the “business community” and the “Latino community” (to take only three such examples). Employed in this manner, the term is often invoked to create a static, homogenous social group with identical interests. This is inherently anti-democratic and retrogressive on issues of gender (men usually get to define the meaning of “community”) and it leads straight towards the politics of tokenism and demobilization. Adolph Reed notes that “Community presumes homogeneity of interest and perception, at least in principle. A politics stuck in its name is threatened by the heterogeneous tendencies put in motion by open debate. It is a politics that always has depended on narrowing the active black public and fastening the population as a whole to a middle-class—inflected program.” (Reed, “Issues in Black Public Life,” 12.)
Conservative
Analytically, not a very useful term of description. Does the term apply to
a white southerner in 1934 who is a Christian fundamentalist and a Socialist
involved in interracial union organizing? A word that lends itself to abstractions
and vapid analysis.
Liberal
Also not a very useful term of description. A convenient label used in a derogatory,
elitist manner by folks on all sides of the political spectrum. As in, “so
and so is a liberal, scoff, scoff.” Used in this manner the term is certainly
humorous to invoke during cocktail parties but tells us nothing about the social
content a person’s ideas and experiences.
Winter 2002
Instructor: Nancy E. Stoller
W 3:30–6:30 P.M.
Soc Sci 1 110
Office: College Eight 314
Office Hours: Wed. 10:00–12:00 noon and by appt.
Phone: 459-3104
E-mail: nancys@cats.ucsc.edu
Teaching assistants: Diedre Williams, diedre@cats.ucsc.edu
Karuna Schweig, karub@hotmail.com
Course description and work requirements:
Community Studies 148 is designed for students interested in the social context of women’s health. While all women share biological commonalties, our social positions, cultural backgrounds, occupations, and personal choices create unique situations. This course challenges purely biomedical definitions of women’s health through a multi-cultural and feminist approach. Because half the world is women and we all have some relationship to health and illness, this topic constitutes a potentially enormous field. “Women’s Health Activism” the course, can only provide a partial approach to this topic.
To bring greater focus to our examination, the course considers women’s health activism in an historical manner, beginning with the emergence of the contemporary women’s health movement of the 1970s and advancing to the present. We will include racial, class, and sexual critiques of the movement, as well as its major organizing themes: reproductive rights, women’s cancers, both intimate and state violence against women, cultural diversity, women’s work and health, and the impacts of poverty and racism.
An important activity within the course will be education about and experimentation with strategies of education and activism developed by various women’s health movements: alternative clinics, consciousness raising groups, self-examination, confrontations, public education, demonstrations, rallies, lobbying, litigation, and global activism.
Required Texts:
1. Nancy Worcester and Mariamne Whatley, Women’s Health: Readings on
Social, Economic, and Political Issues [WW] (req.).
2. Sapphire (Ramona Lifton), Push, Vintage, 1997 (req.).
3. The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s The New Our Bodies,
Ourselves (most recent edition) [OBOS] (opt.).
4. Carole Weisman, Women’s Health Care: Activist Traditions and Institutional
Change, Baltimore, Md, Johns Hopkins Press, 1998 (req.).
5. Other readings will be on ERes and are drawn from a range of writing by activists
in women’s advocacy and human rights organizations.
Website: Our website URL is http://ic.ucsc.edu/~nancys/cmmu148. The website will be linked to the Community Studies Home Page, the library, ERes, and various other women’s health research and resource links.
Assignments and evaluation:
Participation
1. Participation in class: A list of tasks will be available in the 2nd class.
You should volunteer for at least one activity as part of contributing to the
class. These tasks range from bringing food to preparing short video reviews
and suggestions for reading strategies. There are also opportunities to be on
panels. Everyone’s contributions will help make the class work better and
humanize it. (5%)
2. Participation in section. Regardless of how much you talk, you must attend section. Your section leader will be your primary evaluator, so it makes sense to be there…. (20%)
Writing and Research
3. Personal Journal: covering
a. your experience with the self-examination assignment;
b. your discussion with a woman different from you, in terms of class, race, age, disability, culture, or sexuality about her experiences with the health care system; and
c. personal reflections on one experience with the health care system as seen through the lens of one reading assignment.
Due at the section meeting closest to 2/6. Minimum length: 10 typed pages. (20%)
4. Reaction papers: 1–2 page papers on the reading due in section during the fourth , sixth, and eighth week of the course. (1/30; 2/13; and 2/27). (30%)
5. Final Project: This should be a group project developed within your section, involving from 2–4 people. It can be a joint research paper, a website, (which can be linked to the class website), an artistic or dramatic project. It must address the themes of the course, and can be a form of activism. All projects must be documented in writing, regardless of format.
Schedule for project: Proposals due in section on week of 1/30, with update on 2/20. Final projects due on last day of class to your section leader. Presentations to section or class are appropriate. (25%)
Week One 1/9 Introduction
Opening of course—Women’s health in the 1950s and ’60s—access to abortion, birth control, medicalization of childbirth, class and race in medical institutions. The ’60s–beginnings of the second wave of 20th century feminism; birth control, the pill; examining the past from our present knowledge.
Details: pick your section
Reading: WW: ch. 1, “Women and the Health Care System”; OBOS: ch. 25, “The Politics of Women’s Health and Medical Care”; Weisman, ch.1, “The Social and Historical Context of Women’s Health Care” and ch.3, “Patterns of Health Care Use.”Film: If These Walls Could Talk—about changing access to abortion.
The Seventies: Control of our Bodies
Week Two 1/16
The Boston Women’s Health Collective forms and invents OBOS; activism at the grass roots; self-exam; self-help; abortion rights; sterilization abuse; Seventies women’s health activism in Santa Cruz. —Alternatives to the medical system: collectives, clinics, and midwives.
Details: Distribution of specula.
Sections start this week.Reading: Finish reading from first week. Additional reading:
Weisman, ch. 2 “The women’s health megamovement”; OBOS ch. 12; WW ch. 8: 1
Suggested: OBOS and WW chapters on childbirth to get a sense of physiology and politics of childbirth.
Film: A period piece (4 min.)—about that time of month….Assignments:
Self-examination assignment—Get a speculum and instructions.
Begin your health journal.
Write about your self-examination experience.
Now is also a good time to think about your interview. One idea: Interview a woman who was your age in the 1950s or ’60s or ’70s and compare your current views and hers on menstruation, pregnancy, birth control, going to a doctor about a health issue. What does she think of your self-examination assignment? Comment on this in your journal.
Week Three 1/23 Structural inequalities associated with economic and racial exploitation
Reading: Push, Sapphire (Ramona Lifton); Sally Zierler and Nancy Krieger, HIV infection in women: social inequalities as determinants of risk, Critical Public Health, 8:1, 1998 (EREs); WW, ch. 2: parts 4–6; OBOS, ch. 7 on occupational and environmental health.
Film: It was a Wonderful Life—Four homeless women.
Week Four 1/30 Culture, language, alternative and traditional health care
Reading: WW: ch. 2 (all) and ch. 4, section 4.
Film: Her Giveaway—A Native American woman deals with HIV.
Assignments due: Reaction paper #1.
Group project proposal—1 page.
Week Five 2/6 Visibility concerning mental and physical disabilities, diverse sexualities and genders, body image (including weight), and age
Reading: OBOS: chs 1, 2, and 6: WW: chs. 3–7 (all) and ch. 8, sections 3–4.
Film: Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter—When your mother has Alzheimer’s Disease.
Assignment due: Personal journal.
From the Seventies to the Nineties: Continuing issues of violence, sexuality, danger
Week Six 2/13 State-sponsored violence—Incarceration and War
Reading: Nancy Stoller, “Improving access to health care for California’s women prisoners,” (Eres) and selected readings on the impact of war on women (Eres).
Film: Speaking Truth to Power—women prisoners testify about their health; and Sisters and daughters Betrayed—fighting trafficking in women and girls.
Assignment due: Reaction paper #2.
Week Seven 2/20 Intimate violence-Rape, domestic violence, and involuntary prostitution
Reading: WW: ch.12; ch. 5, sections 9–10; OBOS: ch. 8; Readings from Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger, and Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema, eds. Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition (both in Eres).
Film: No more Sabado Nights; and Beyond the Walls.
Assignment due: Group project update
For research papers, please turn in a bibliography and an outline or summary of 2–5 pages. For other projects, consult your TA for appropriate documentation.
Week Eight 2/27 Sexuality and Other Dangers—on-going issues of reproductive rights, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV
Reading: Re-read Zierler and Krieger; also read WW, chs. 8, sections 3–7; ch.9; OBOS, chs. 14–17.
Assignment due: Reaction paper #3.
Week Nine 3/6 Changing the system, the discourse, the goals in the U.S.
A. The health care system changes: contributions of the movement
Reading: Weisman, chs. 4 and 5; WW, ch. 5; OBOS: re-read ch. 25; read ch. 27.
B. Changed discourse and goals in breast cancer and other disease-focussed activism
Reading: WW, ch. 11.
Films: short segments from Cancer in Two Voices—a woman and her partner face breast cancer, and Rachel’s Daughters, The search for the Causes of Breast Cancer.
Week Ten 3/13 Global challenges and connections
Reading: Selected readings from Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 10, Nov., 1997—special issue on the international women’s health movement; articles by Sonia Correa, Lene Sjorup, Mabel Bellucci, and Maria Betania Avila (Eres); also OBOS, ch. 26 and WW, Chs. 10–12.
Film: (possible) To Empower Women—voices from the UN Beijing conference.
Details: course evaluation in sections.
Assignment due: Final project—presentations in section and/or full class.