The Anthropology of Organized Labor in the United States

Abstract

Anthropological research has produced a number of robust findings about organized labor. National and state policies are the chief determinates of unions' power to organize workers for concerted action to redress the imbalance between those who provide labor and those who control its use through ownership or management of capital. Unions are effective when workers do not accept management paradigms of shared interest; the organization of production promotes worker self-organization; discussion among workers is possible; unions show members how to address problems with space, ideology, and management manipulations of emotions; and unions draw on community contacts and social relations beyond the workplace. Unions are ineffective when they are corrupt, racist, and inattentive to change. Servicing and organizing functions of unions are contradictory. These and other findings leave many topics that anthropologists have not ethnographically explored and define an agenda for future research.