Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Bethlehem Steelworkers: Working Class Families in a Post-Fordist City

研究生Jill A. Schenuum将在David Harvey博士的指导下，对宾夕法尼亚州伯利恒的前工业工人及其家庭进行研究。随着伯利恒从一个工业钢铁城镇转变为一个政治经济更加灵活的城镇，这些工人从他们的工业工作中流离失所。尽管有大量关于20世纪80年代去工业化的社会科学文献，但对流离失所的产业工人的后续研究很少。这项研究解决了这一差距。研究人员将特别关注经济变化如何改变社区、家庭和工作场所的日常生活的社会景观。她希望确定这些微观尺度上的变化是如何在阶级认同和关系上产生更大的变化的。她将通过对前钢铁工人的访谈、对公共事件的参与观察以及对媒体的分析来收集定性数据。她将试图确定家庭如何理解这种转变；家庭形式、家庭结构和性别角色如何影响和受到这些变化的影响；以及工人阶级的道德和政治行动是如何被社区组织和城市社会关系所塑造的。这项研究将对社会科学作出贡献，对地方一级去工业化的长期社会影响进行仔细的个案研究。它还将有助于制定支持转型期工人的社会政策。此外，该奖项还支持社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student Jill A. Schenuum, with the guidance of Dr. David Harvey, will undertake research on former industrial workers and their families in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. These workers were displaced from their industry jobs as Bethlehem transitioned from being an industrial steel town to a town situated within a more flexible political economy. Although there is a robust social science literature on the deindustrialization of the 1980s, there are few follow-up studies of displaced industrial workers. This research addresses that gap.The researcher will focus particularly on how the economic changes altered the social landscape of everyday life in communities, families, and workplaces. She wishes to determine how these alterations at the micro-scale may have produced larger changes in class identity and relationships. She will collect qualitative data through interviews with former steel workers, participant observation in public events, and analysis of media. She will seek to determine how families make sense of the transition; how family forms, household structures, and gender roles influence and have been affected by the changes; and how working class morality and political action are shaped by and possibly shape, community organizations and urban social relations. The research will contribute to social science with a carefully carried out case study of the long-term social effects of deinudstrialization at the local level. It also will help to develop social policy to support workers in transition. In addition, the award supports the education of a social scientist.