Illusive Identity The Blurring of Working Class Consciousness in Modern Western Culture

by Walker, Thomas J. Edward; Doyle, Daniel J.; Lea, Douglas A.; Lorenzini, Pietro; Sims, David S.; Edward Walker, Thomas J.; Yaudes, Cynthia Gwynne

• ISBN13: 9780739103487
• ISBN10: 0739103482
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-28
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Illusive Identity is a transnational exploration of the evolution of working-class consciousness within modern Western culture. The work traces how the rise of popular culture blurred the definition and dulled the influence of class identity in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapters tackling changing class consciousness in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the United States offer rich insight into the movement from a traditional community-based social identity to a modern consumer-based culture; a mass culture influenced by industrialization, new social institutions, and the powerful imagery of new media. Illusive Identity vividly demonstrates the transformative impact of modernity on the laboring classes, as advertising, entertainment, and the rise of the popular press replaced traditionally shared narratives about the nature of work with a new and liberating cultural paradigm.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(10)
Cocoa and Class in British Popular Press Advertising: A Process of Cultural Agency	11	(29)
Daniel J. Doyle
Nazi Labor to 1939: From Working-Class Consciousness to the ``People's Community''	40	(18)
Douglas A. Lea
Italian Workers and Paradiso: The Don Camillo Stories of Giovanni Guareschi in Their Historical Setting	58	(34)
Pietro Lorenzini
From Guthrie through Dylan to Springsteen: Losing the Working Touch	92	(20)
David S. Sims
A Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Labor Age and the Popular Press, 1920--1930	112	(33)
Cynthia Gwynne Yaudes
Tainted Sources: Government/Media Misrepresentations in the Case of the International Workers Order	145	(42)
Thomas J. Edward Walker
A Final Thought	187	(2)
Bibliography	189	(12)
About the Contributors	201