The 'New Working Class'
Posted on February 02, 2004 @ 17:41 in Reading
I'm reading an ancient *cough* 1960 *cough* article, titled The 'New Working Class' (Lockwood, David (1960) "The 'New Working Class'," European Journal of Sociology, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 248-259). It opens like this:
The problem of the 'new working class' is located in the events of recent political history, specifically in the three successive electoral defeats of the Labour Party.
This article obviously addresses an important issue, but if you're not already familiar with the meaning of the term "new working class," then the "problem" that is being addressed completely escapes you. Maybe if you're British, you'd know about the post-war string of defeats of the Labour Party, but if you're not, then the localization of The Problem in that issue doesn't tell you a whole lot.
What suddenly struck me, when reading this opening line, is how important the specifics of our own place and time are. Maybe I turn out to be addressing issues that in 50 years are still relevant, but more likely people will look, if they happen to be looking that way at all, at my work wondering what the point and the context of the exercise was. There is something to learn from mr. Lockwood's article though and that is the rest of his first paragraph, in which he explains The Problem:
In attempting to explain the failure of the traditional working class party to increase, or even retain, its support among the wage-earning population, a good many generalizations about the causes and consequences of secular changes in the class structure have been advanced and disputed. The salient thesis is that which seeks to account for the conservative drift of the working class in terms of their growing prosperity and their gradual assimilation to the middle class in an economy of full employment and rising expectations of material welfare. As one writer puts it: "The whole working class finds itself on the move, moving towards new middle class values and middle class existence."
Well, it pays to lay out the issues you're writing about in clear and plain language. After that first paragraph I know what the article is about, even though I didn't know about The Problem or its Context. So, even if some future PhD student wrinkles hir brow in wonderment over some strange and unknown preoccupation of mine, I should still try to explain what it's about, instead of assuming that the people who will be reading it will already be conversant with the issues at hand. I bet mr. Lockwood never thought he might get quoted on someone's weblog... who knows where a snip of my work will end up down the line?
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