| Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America Contributor(s): Norwood, Stephen H. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807853739 ISBN-13: 9780807853733 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $40.38 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2002 Annotation: This is the first systematic study of strikebreaking, intimidation, and anti-unionism in the United States, subjects essential to a full understanding of labor's fortunes in the twentieth century. Paradoxically, the country that pioneered the expansion of civil liberties allowed corporations to assemble private armies to disrupt union organizing, spy on workers, and break strikes. Using a social-historical approach, Stephen Norwood focuses on the mercenaries the corporations enlisted in their anti-union efforts--particularly college students, African American men, the unemployed, and men associated with organized crime. Norwood also considers the paramilitary methods unions developed to counter mercenary violence. The book covers a wide range of industries across much of the country. Norwood explores how the early twentieth-century crisis of masculinity shaped strikebreaking's appeal to elite youth and the media's romanticization of the strikebreaker as a new soldier of fortune. He examines how mining communities' perception of mercenaries as agents of a ribald, sexually unrestrained, new urban culture intensified labor conflict. The book traces the ways in which economic restructuring, as well as shifting attitudes toward masculinity and anger, transformed corporate anti-unionism from World War II to the present. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Labor & Industrial Relations - History | United States - 20th Century - Social Science | Men's Studies |
| Dewey: 331.892 |
| LCCN: 2001059763 |
| Lexile Measure: 1440 |
| Series: Gender and American Culture (Paperback) |
| Physical Information: 0.81" H x 6.24" W x 9.3" (1.08 lbs) 344 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This is the first systematic study of strikebreaking, intimidation, and anti-unionism in the United States, subjects essential to a full understanding of labor's fortunes in the twentieth century. Paradoxically, the country that pioneered the expansion of civil liberties allowed corporations to assemble private armies to disrupt union organizing, spy on workers, and break strikes. Using a social-historical approach, Stephen Norwood focuses on the mercenaries the corporations enlisted in their anti-union efforts--particularly college students, African American men, the unemployed, and men associated with organized crime. Norwood also considers the paramilitary methods unions developed to counter mercenary violence. The book covers a wide range of industries across much of the country. Norwood explores how the early twentieth-century crisis of masculinity shaped strikebreaking's appeal to elite youth and the media's romanticization of the strikebreaker as a new soldier of fortune. He examines how mining communities' perception of mercenaries as agents of a ribald, sexually unrestrained, new urban culture intensified labor conflict. The book traces the ways in which economic restructuring, as well as shifting attitudes toward masculinity and anger, transformed corporate anti-unionism from World War II to the present. |
Contributor Bio(s): Norwood, Stephen H.: - Stephen H. Norwood, professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, is author of the award-winning Labor's Flaming Youth: Telephone Operators and Worker Militancy, 1878-1923. |
