Micro-politics of Resistance

What I found interesting in both Kelly's Race Rebels and Enstad's Ladies of Labour is the idea of working class identity and modes of resistance to exploitation as heterogenous and contingent. Further, their analysis reveals that political action doesn't always have to take prescribed paths (such as strikes or revolution) for it to become meaningful. Kelly notes how the forms of resistance that African American and Chicano workers practiced at Mickey D are culturally and context specific and a set of every day practices, rather than organized political action. But, Kelly argues that these actions were significant for the workers as a way of countering exploitation and authority and informing their sense of self.

Enstad's contention that the identity performed by working class women is outside of the normative construction of the 'worker' - 'white male worker' - points to the heterogeneity and the complexity of identity formation of workers along the axes of gender (and race). While the more institutionalized labour organizations attempted to impose a monolithic identity of a 'worker,' these women were able to form an alternative identity via their consumer habits and tastes. This resonates with the study on female garment factory workers in Sri Lanka, which I read for the book review. It indicates how female garment factory workers consciously attempted to signal their difference from "respectable" middle class women by wearing flashy clothing, an excess of jewelry and make up or openly flirting with men in public spaces. Although these acts are carried within a capitalist consumerist logic, it enabled the female workers to develop an oppositional consciousness in constructing an identity that is different from both other women and male industrial workers.

Thus, all the workers don't develop a political consciousness as workers in a prescribed or monolithic way and their resistance to exploitation can take different forms. What is important to note is that these acts are capable of making some sort of a difference in the absence organized political action.