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“We're Our Own Boss”: Gendered Class‐Consciousness and White Privilege among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers
Author(s) -
Feltault Kelly
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
anthropology of work review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.151
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1548-1417
pISSN - 0883-024X
DOI - 10.1525/awr.2005.26.1.1
Subject(s) - boss , privilege (computing) , white privilege , white (mutation) , consciousness , class consciousness , gender studies , class (philosophy) , sociology , psychology , political science , engineering , philosophy , law , race (biology) , epistemology , biochemistry , chemistry , neuroscience , politics , gene , mechanical engineering
This article analyzes the gendered class‐consciousness of white crab pickers of the Chesapeake Bay through their claim that they are their own boss. Although crab pickers work in a factory for a wage, have a boss, and punch a time clock, this article argues that gender, whiteness, kinship, and localized myths of hard work and independence tied to the coastal landscape formed a unique local and regional history linked to class and racial ideologies that actually allowed white crab pickers to contest packinghouse owners' authority over their schedules, speed, and other political aspects of work. The article analyzes ethnographic fieldwork, discourses in federal documents, and a strike by crab pickers to argue that white women's claim of self employment was an historically contingent process where class and class‐consciousness operated as relationships defined by women as they lived their own lives. The article concludes that scholars must separate class‐consciousness from class action and understand the political power of dominant classes to control the latter, especially in relation to gendered labor markets. Women crab pickers' claim of self‐employment points to a consciousness of oneself within a specific power relationship and subordinated position.