Neighbourhood Identities, Neighbourhood Dispositions

Abstract

How do workers’ experiences of waged work colour their perceptions and depictions of the people who inhabit their social world? Do workers who stand alongside one another on the factory floor share identities, and what Ira Katznelson (1986, p. 18) refers to as dispositions: interpretations of the social system, and values and morals that are formed in the course of interaction and provide a cultural frame for action? These questions invite an investigation of connections between participation in capitalist production, and workers’ representations of their own and others’ identities, their attitudes towards various groups in their community, and their patterns of social behaviour; connections which, too often, are assumed, rather than empirically investigated.