http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/2693/1/cox%2Dr%2Damericas%2Dpyramids2002.pdf

America’s Pyramids: Presidents and Their Libraries

In this thesis I explore the connections between changes to the formal procedures by which American labor unions enroll new members and the subsequent meanings and purposes that potential members and third parties attribute to unions. In the first essay I use a new, multi-stage model of union organizing to demonstrate that previous research has underestimated the difficulties that unions face in enrolling new members, particularly when charges of employer illegality are involved. In the second essay I theorize that this alteration of the union-formation process, by focusing members' attention on the necessary first step of becoming organized rather than on contract negotiations, has contributed to the erosion of the unions' long-established and once robust system of exclusive jurisdictions. I argue that union voters' shift toward diversified unions is an example of how categories are used in the process of social valuation and how changes in valuation can help organizational sociologists understand why category systems can suddenly change. In the third essay (co-authored with Thomas A. Kochan and Lucio Baccaro) I discuss other historical episodes where changes to the laws governing union organizing have been associated with changes in the definition of a legitimate union member and draw several implications for the prospects that current labor-law reform being debated in Congress will have a large effect on union membership. Thesis Supervisor: Thomas A. Kochan Title: George M. Bunker Professor of Management Thesis Supervisor: Ezra W. Zuckerman-Sivan Title: NTU Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Economic Sociology Thesis Supervisor: Roberto Fernandez Title: William F. Pounds Professor of Management

Contest, social valuation and change in American labor-union organizing, 1961-2004

Past research demonstrates a marked tendency toward “acculturative conservatism,” whereby immigrants select given names for their children that are established—that is, popular in an earlier generation of the native population. Prior research has generally understood such conservatism as reflecting a lack of “mainstream” cultural capital; established names are popular among immigrants because they are unaware of current fashion. But we argue and show that even when they are aware of current fashion, immigrants may favor established names to affirm their membership in the host society. Comparing given names among World War II Jewish servicemen (born around 1918) with given names in the general US population in 1920, we show that the parents of these servicemen exhibited a pattern of acculturation that was (1) selective (in avoiding popular native names with strong Christian associations, and embracing certain unpopular native names) and (2) conservative (in their tendency to favor established names relative to newly popular names). In addition, our key finding is that these parents favored those established names whose popularity was rising and avoided those whose popularity was declining. This suggests that Jewish immigrants were aware of mainstream fashion, but deliberately chose established names so as to express their membership in American society. More generally, this result indicates that the acculturation process is as much about gaining social acceptance as about becoming adept in the mainstream culture.

A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews

Thesis (S.M. in Management Research)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2013.

A lack of security or a lack of capital? : acculturative conservatism in immigrant naming

This thesis explores the Boston Police Strike of 1919 through the lens of class struggle and ethnic tension. Through an examination of the development of Boston’s class structure, particularly focused on the upper class Brahmins and the Irish working class, it concludes that the Brahmins’ success in suppressing the police strike allowed for their maintenance of socioeconomic power within the city despite their relatively small population. Based on their extreme class cohesion resulting from the growing prominence of Harvard University as well as the Brahmins’ unabashed discrimination against their ethnic neighbors in almost every sphere of society, the Brahmins were able to maintain their power in Boston’s cultural world. The Irish working class, on the other hand, which attempted to use the increasing popularity of public and police unionization to challenge the status and power of the Brahmins through the creation of the Boston Police Union and subsequently through the notorious Boston Police Strike of 1919 was ultimately unsuccessful, and it was left in the same position in which it started, at the bottom of the social ladder. The suppression of the strike by members of the upper class and their allies, particularly those in high government positions, served to preserve and affirm the socioeconomic power of the Brahmins over much of Boston society and brought the era of public police unionization to a close.

Francis Russell

Papers

The Coming of the Jews

Coolidge and the Boston Police Strike

The Shadow of Warren Harding