Abstract
The causal role of culture in contentious politics has been the subject of much dispute by scholars in the study of social movements in general and labor contention in particular. While several approaches illuminate the cultural dimensions of contentious claim-making, the cultural foundation of contention remains underdeveloped. In this paper, I address this gap by investigating the role of culture in the formation of the antagonism at the basis of contention. I argue that the formation of contention is an event at the level of meaning that establishes the moral disunity elementary to contentious claim-making. I demonstrate this process by revisiting the case of nineteenth-century Lowell, which was marked by the employers’ investment in the workers’ moral welfare. I show that the workers’ interpretation of their experience and thus the formation of their contention depended on their rejection of the moral view offered in the employers’ cultural project. That view presented workers with a perception of themselves and their occupation that could no longer be justified, thus from their perspective losing its moral ground. This study has implications for future research regarding the moral disunity at the foundation of contention and the historical analysis required to explain this disunity.
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Notes
Thus, my use of the concept is strictly distinct from the organizational perspective’s strategic action fields (Fligstein and McAdam, 2011).
I am strictly using this terminology as it is employed in Bourdieu’s framework, bearing no relevance to the thesis of relative deprivation (Merton and Kitt, 1950; Runciman, 1966). Stressing an overlap (Ermakoff, 2013) exaggerates superficial similarity and misses the historicity of expectation and opportunity in Bourdieu’s framework in contrast to the psychologistic, ahistorical thesis of relative deprivation.
As early as 1828, the Middlesex Mechanics Association advertised lectures in newspapers (The Lowell Journal, 1828); and the Universalist Society announced opening “a school for improvement” (The Lowell Journal, 1828). Numerous advertisements on libraries and bookstores appeared in Lowell’s newspapers. A contribution titled “Our Household” (The Offering, 1841, p. 346) exemplifies the range of newspaper and magazines subscriptions at boardinghouses.
See Bourdieu (1996) for his analysis of the structural break of the literary field in its early years in France. This account contradicts the institutionalist perspective (DiMaggio, 1986) concerned with institutional coherence as indicative of a formation of cultural elites. Acts of exclusions and exclusivity in cultural taste are supported by much evidence even if elite institutions maintained diverse interests across several artistic genres.
See Josiah Quincy’s (III) much cited The History of the Boston Athenaeum (1851); the society’s constitution published in the American Journal of Education in 1829; and the Register of the Proprietors of the Boston Athenaeum (1898).
See NAR, 1(1), (1815). One can clearly see the omnipresence of the so-called Fireside Poets who were the first American Romantics to rival British Romantics in popularity in New England along with domestic, “conduct” literature. Lydia Sigourney, John G. Whittier, James Russell Lowell are among the well-known names. See, William Channing’s “American Literature” (1815) and “Mrs. Sigourney and Miss Gould” (1835).
This can be seen from the Catalogue of the Library of the Boston Athenaeum 1807–1871. The following are some examples from the Offering and by no means an exhaustive list: In volume-I series-I (as archived), see “Woman’s Proper Sphere”; “Beauty and Wealth”; “Golden Watches.” In I(II), see for instance “Abby’s Year in Lowell”; “The Return of Spring”; “Ancient Poetry”; “Forgiveness”; “Love of Nature”; “The Heroine of Columbia”; “Translations from the French”; “Woman”; “Prejudice Against Labor”; “A Weaver’s Reverie”; “Tales of Factory Life no. 2”; and “The Good are Happy.” In III(II), see “The Bridge of Sighs”; “Cousin Judith’s Visit to Boston.” In IV(II), see “A Scene in Elysium”; “The Affections Illustrated in Factory Life.” In V(II), see “Improvement Circle.”
See Sigourney (1867) on her patronage by Daniel Wordsworth. The Fireside Poets, like Whittier and Bryant, were either in socially dominant positions as lawyers or editors (of for instance North American Review, Atlantic Monthly, New England Weekly Review), or later acquired such positions. During his career, James Russell Lowell taught at Harvard, edited the North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly, and served as an ambassador to Spain.
Andrews Norton, a renowned founding Unitarian referred to it as infidelity in his A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity (1839). See also The American Whig Review 1(3) (1845, p. 243), and Lowell’s satire of Emerson in A Fable for Critics (1848).
Of Horace Greely, a Utopian Socialist and founder of the New York Tribune, and company, in a letter to his wife Lidian Emerson, March 1st 1842. See also: his letter to Margaret Fuller, March 1st 1842; “Fourierism and the Socialists” (1842), in the Transcendentalist literary magazine The Dial (3); and The Conduct of Life (1860, p. 112). Exemplifying further the pursuit of cultural production for its own sake, Emerson’s protégé, Thoreau, later wrote: “the earnest lecturer can speak only to his like” (1906[1855], p. 197).
See also Emerson’s (1912[1842]) critical review of Brownson’s The Mediatorial Life of Jesus: A letter to Rev. William Ellery Channing (1842).
This was articulated in the first issue of Garrison’s the Liberator: “An attempt has been made … to inflame the minds of our working classes against the more opulent, and to persuade men that they are contemned and oppressed by a wealthy aristocracy” (1831, p. 3).
The idea that Boston Brahmins were exclusively for slavery due to economic interests is misleading: see Brauer (1967). The Free Soil Movement behind the Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberty Party included Fireside Poets and Unitarians: see Channing’s Slavery (1835). On the Garrison–Whittier conflict, see Kennedy (1892, p. 151).
A few more examples. In vol.-I series-I (1840): “Dignity of Labor”; “Woman’s Proper Sphere”; “Lowell- A Parody on Hohenlinden.” In vol.-I series-II (1840-41): “Aristocracy of Employment”; “A Vision of Truth”; “The Spirit of Discontent”; “Woman”; “A New Society”; “Ambition and Contentment.” In vol.-IV series-II (1844): “Our Improvement Circle.” In vol.-V series-II (1845): “Improvement Circle.”
The reference to slavery in the chant “Oh! I cannot be a slave,/I will not be a slave,/For I’m so fond of liberty” is not evidence for an exclusively racial logic of moral character (Schocket, 2000), despite importance of racial lines in the larger picture in the United States. Recall the discussion above of the Anti-Slavery movement by Whigs.
This was already underway: On November 17, 1836, a “reminder” from the Lowell Lyceum was published in the Lowell Advertiser stating: “Amid the din and turmoil of political excitement, I hope our fellow citizens will not forget the Lyceum. The lecture of the courses for the present season will be given tomorrow evening, by Rev. Mr. Emerson of Concord … the price of tickets is put so low that no one can be kept from the lectures on account of the expense” [emphasis mine].
This is not the same as a break with female virtue (Boryczka, 2006), hence the observations made in studies from a feminist perspective that the workers paradoxically laid virtuous demands – e.g., in the name of Christianity, domestic life – in a radical way that broke with established morality (Lutes, 1993; Lazerow, 1987). This duality stems from the different determinants of gender in the different contexts of political action and cultural production, where women were central especially in literary culture (Ryan, 1975). For instance, the working women’s association was an auxiliary to the mechanics,’ reflecting an exclusion which was normative in labor movements (Voss, 1993) and explaining the break from morality while maintaining female virtue.
The following are a few examples on the repertoire of labor associations available from early on. The Workingmen’s Companion advertised its new issue in the Lowell Journal on August 3rd, 1831; On October 2nd, 1830 The Lowell Mercury announced a new issue of the “Workingman’s Advocate” on January 1st, 1831. In the same paper, The Workingmen’s Party announced that “it is time for the Ladies to think of establishing the Working-Women’s Party” (January 29th, 1831); The Factory Girls’ Advocate advertised their new issue in the Lowell Mercury on March 5th, 1831; and The Workingmen’s Advocate advertised that it sought to organize a new party on July 16th, 1831.
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Acknowledgments
I have accumulated several debts since the completion of this study in 2010. I am grateful to Marc Steinberg for his relentless advice and comments on different versions of this manuscript. I have also benefitted from the generosity of Monica Prasad, Robert Zussman, Priscilla Pakhrust Ferguson, William Lazonick, John Wooding, and Robert Forrant. Many thanks to the AJCS reviewers and editor for their constructive and thoughtful comments.
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Shams, S. A genealogy of moral character: The cultural constitution of contention in Lowell, MA 1825–1845. Am J Cult Sociol 6, 60–95 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-016-0016-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-016-0016-4