Welcome to Reuben Roth's Sociology of Work and Education Website

Listed in Google's Directory of Sociologists
Biography
Academic Interests
What's Embourgeoisement?
Informal Learning
Academic Papers
Publications
Course Outlines, Assignments, Readings
Laurentian University's Insolvency

Greetings, I'm a Professor Emeritus whose specializations are Sociology of Education, Work, Health & Safety, and Labour Studies.

This website is where I allow public access to some of my past and current writing and research on the sociology of work and the workplace, informal and non-institutional forms of education, social stratification, economic and social inequality, the Canadian working-class in its many forms (social, political, cultural, etc.), progressive labour economics, political sociology and the continuing effects of industrialization and postindustrial market capitalism on people's everyday lives.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Reuben Roth is a Professor Emeritus, at Laurentian University, where he taught from 2005-2021. His main areas of research include: the sociology of education, the sociology of work and organizations, social class identity & working-class consciousness, labour education, labour history, unionization in Canada, the linkages between education & work, occupational health & safety, race/gender/ethnic identity in the workplace, and national/ethnic identities. He is also a former Research Associate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto - OISE/UT (1995-2003), a former Researcher and Project Manager for the Centre for the Study of Work and Society at York University (2002-04), an adjunct professor of sociology at Trent University (2001-2005), and a speech writer at Queen’s Park (1994-1995).

ACADEMIC INTERESTS

My doctoral research focused on the automobile assembly line workers at General Motors of Canada in Oshawa, Ontario. This is the largest auto assembly plant in Canada, and was once among the largest in the world. In my dissertation, entitled "Oshawa Autoworkers: Social Integration and Oppositional Class Consciousness Among the Unionized Workers of General Motors" I examine three things: (1) images of Canadian class society among autoworkers; (2) notions of working-class self-identity among Oshawa autoworkers; and (3) Oppositional working-class consciousness among autoworkers. In sum, I conclude that the experience of the assembly line and role of radical union education programmes has a lot to do with findings of "oppositional proletarian consciousness" among my sample group.

WHAT'S EMBOURGEOISEMENT? WHAT'S CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS?

The term for a change in political class consciousness, notably one that shifts from a 'proletarian-revolutionary' makeup to a 'bourgeois-middle class' variety, is embourgeoisement, which is defined by Abercrombie et al. (1988) as "an explanation of declining working-class support for radical political movements, as the result of increased affluence causing workers to adopt middle-class (bourgeois) values and life-styles." The collapse of British Labour Party votes during the 1950s propelled Goldthorpe et al. in their quest to answer the question of whether postwar affluence had spurred the embourgeoisement of the British working masses. The same question is often asked of Oshawa's General Motors autoworkers, which is the reason I pursue this topic so doggedly. Almost two decades after the initial study Goldthorpe wrote:

There has always been a political underplot involved in this idea [that the working class has been obliterated as both a social and political force]. ... The claim that the working class is in decline has been used to justify the[ir] strategy of a 'broad democratic alliance' against Thatcherism stretching as far rightwards as the SDP-Liberal Alliance. [This]... definition of class which focuses on consumption is therefore likely to lead to a belief in the dissapearance of class antagonisms and the merging of working and middle classes. Those who argued, after labour had suffered three successive electoral defeats in the 1950s, that the working class was undergoing 'embourgeoisement' --becoming middle class-- appealed to the evidence of manual workers' greater affluence and changed lifestyles (Goldthorpe, 1987: 3).

Here's a Canadian illustration of embourgeoisement. Michael Breaugh, the successor to former New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Ed Broadbent's seat in the House of Commons, was Oshawa's provincial MPP, and federal MP during the 1980s and early 90s. Below Breaugh speaks candidly about Oshawa autoworkers' lack of support for the social democratic NDP. This is from the CBC radio program "The House" (CBC Radio One broadcast, July 24, 1999):

If they are an hourly-rated worker..they're going to be making good money by anybody's standards, sixty five to seventy five thousand, in that range. If they are a skilled tradesman (sic), then they will be much in demand and they will probably be into six figures. These are people who have at least two cars brand new probably got a boat, probably got a camper, probably got a cottage. These people are concerned about how they accumulate wealth, how they hold onto it; taxation is a big problem..

On the surface this sounds like a concrete illustration of the concept, doesn't it? Embourgeoisement is often cited (whether in name or otherwise) as the chief cause for the failure of political parties or workers' movements.

In my dissertation I selectively tested portions of Michael Mann's (1973) thesis among General Motors autoworkers, but I primarily engage in an examination of these workers' proletarian class consciousness. Basically I'm asking the questions "have industrial workers in Ontario adopted the tenets of capital accumulation?", "where has the (archetypical) alientated working-class (as outlined by Blauner, 1964) gone?" and latterly, "has a labour aristocracy formed among the ranks of General Motors/CAW autoworkers?"

I use my own prior industrial work experiences, and especially my auto assembly experiences, to ground much of what I write. I most often use social analysis within an historical-materialist framework and conduct my analysis using 'reflexive' thinking, which is the process of reflecting on the experiences we relate critically (reflecting on reflections); the application of theory to our own lives, or the use of personal experience to 'produce' sociological knowledge. In many of my papers I am quite critical of the hyper-rationalized Taylorist production-line used in auto plants, and I'm an advocate for broadening the recognition of the indigenous learning that working-class --and other dispossessed people-- do.

Lastly, I employ the sociological paradigm of social conflict theory, which has an undeservedly negative reputation. Rather than judge this perspective as needlessly negative, the conflict paradigm (and critical sociology) allows us to analyze social phenomena constructively. I plan to write more about this and post it here sometime in the future.

INFORMAL LEARNING

Too often "informal learning" is collapsed into the meaningless, but hopeful phrase "lifelong learning". This is a dubious tag that can mean all things to all people. Of course it rarely takes into account indigenous forms of learning as legitimate and recognized (via credits) forms of learning. Unfortunately, the recognition of 'informal learning' is not only unheralded in our society, but it's actively discouraged; as a result of this practice -- and the economic power relations which are still intimately based on the relations of production -- working-class people are typically downtrodden, dispossessed and disenfranchised, a condition that doesn't promise to cease very soon.

I'm also a critic of the way our public schools treat people who fall outside of traditionally powerful (read: white, middle-class) social groups. I'm a strong supporter of our public education system, but acknowledge that it needs a drastic overhaul in terms of equity. I suggest works like Paul Willis' Learning to Labour or Tom Dunk's It's a Working Man's Town, for those who want some background reading on this matter, or see my M.A. thesis, Kitchen Economic for the Family: Paid Education Leave and the Canadian Auto Workers union.

My research interests include the following: working-class ethnography, class schemas and working-class consciousness, social inequality in terms of social class, race and gender; labour process theory; the working-class in its historical, cultural and political forms; public social policy; educational democracy and informal learning, the national question as it relates to Quebec and Palestine; labour education (current forms and future possibilities); workplace health and safety; Canadian social relations; trade unionism in Canada and its relationship to social democracy and the promotion and development of sociology as an academic discipline (a somewhat traditional carrying-on of the original 'sociological project' initiated by St. Simon and Compte).

I enjoy reading essays that critically examine class and labour issues in Canada and the U.S. and the ongoing developments in the labour and social democratic movements of the industrial West. I'm a member of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), the American Sociological Association (ASA), the Association of Humanist Sociologists, and the Canadian Sociology Assocation (CSA).

ACADEMIC PAPERS AND RESEARCH

Below are some papers I've written over the years. This list has grown considerably since I started this webpage in 1997 and is a resource for sociology, social sciences, labour (labor) studies, business, and human resources students, among others. I'll describe a few papers here, but feel free to explore them all. One is an essay I wrote on the Canadian Auto Workers' (CAW) form of 'social unionism' -- a challengenging alternative to the 'business union' model. Another is an early paper and addresses the 'ultra Taylorist' Japanese Kaizen HR process also known as 'Lean Production', 'Lean Manufacturing' or 'Japanese Production Management' (JPM). There's also an essay in which I use Dorothy Smith's critical investigative technique of 'textual analysis' to examine a specific General Motors - CAW document. This document was a signed agreement between a district committeeperson and local management which addressed modified work rules on the GM Oshawa assembly line. I've also included a short essay on the relationship between the unionized working-class autoworkers of Oshawa and the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP). One essay that is a personal favorite is a sociological explanation for the shootings at high-schools in Columbine, Colorado and Tabor, Alberta. I wrote it to my children (young at the time) when they asked me why schoolchildren in Canada and the U.S. were shooting at one another and then committing suicide. This is an example of how sociology is relevant to everyday events and can have great explanatory power. I've also included several initial drafts of my Ph.D. dissertation on social class imagery, class identity and oppositional class consciousness among Unifor Local 222 members (formerly Canadian Auto Workers Local 222), who work at General Motors. Lastly, there's a related bibliography which needs updating but is a great resource for students and researchers.

For my doctoral dissertation, I distributed over a hundred (N=102) survey questionnaires aimed at General Motors/CAW Local 222 workers between mid-2000 and early 2001. During the course of this work I developed an interview questionnaire that I've used to explore the question of working-class consciousness with a small group of autoworkers who responded to the original survey. My research has already yielded much fresh data on present-day worker attitudes and their relation to class identification and oppositional class consciousness and I hope to publish it in book form sometime in the not-too-distant future. Currently I hope to extend my research to Sudbury mine and smelter workers and non-unionized Toyota workers at Cambridge, Ontario.

Your comments on my posted papers (below) are always welcome. I'm also eager to hear from others conducting research in similar areas.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you're a student quoting these essays I ask that you give me proper academic citation. Besides, many of my papers include my own personal experiences of assembly-work, based on my seven years on the General Motors assembly-line, so there seems little point in trying to pass these off as your own. All are protected by copyright.

PUBLICATIONS

The Shock Doctrine Comes to Canada: Laurentian University’s Insolvency Claim and the Neoliberal Tide A paper by Reuben Roth, in Critical Sociology, September 2021. ABSTRACT: During the depths of COVID-19, Laurentian University, a small Canadian postsecondary institution located in the mid-sized city of Sudbury Canada, declared that it was insolvent and was legally allowed to terminate one-third of its faculty and cut almost one-half of its academic programmes. This historically unprecedented attack on a Canadian public institution utilized a Federal corporate court process, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), a piece of legislation akin to the US Chapter 11 process. The result of the still-ongoing process saw the university Administration and Board of Governors working against the interests of the community, targeting the arts, Indigenous, Francophone and working-class communities. This article poses the question ‘to whom do universities belong, and at what point does a publicly funded university stop being a collective “social good” – responsible to the society that spawned it – and start being a stand-alone organization that serves private interests?’

Blue-Collar Aristocrats? General Motors Autoworkers and Oppositional Class Consciousness a 2008 paper in Humanity and Society

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PAPERS RELATED TO UNION EDUCATION:

Chapter One of my doctoral dissertation 'Oshawa Autoworkers: Social Integration and Oppositional Class Consciousness Among the Unionized Workers of General Motors'

Lean Manufacturing in the Auto Industry: Kaizening Ourselves to Death On Lean Manufacturing at General Motors, Oshawa (Ontario, Canada)

"Notice to Departments 91 and 92 Employees": An Institutional Ethnography

Lecture to York U. Labour Studies Course 'Workplace Alienation and Union Activism at General Motors, Oshawa'

The Rise of Precariousness in Canada's Nickel Mining Industry

Hidden Knowledge: Organized Labour in the Information Age. This link takes you to an excerpt from the book's introduction. I co-authored a chapter (with D.W. Livingstone) on the learning experiences and learning capacities of Oshawa autoworkers. This is based on research I conducted for David Livingstone's "Working-Class Learning Strategies" project from 1994-2001.

Workplace Communities and Transformative Learning: Oshawa Autoworkers and the CAW

Workers' Knowledge: An Untapped Resource in the Labour Movement. By D.W. Livingstone and Reuben Roth. A paper presented to the International Conference on Union Growth, Toronto, April 30-May 1, 2001

The Canadian Auto Workers and Paid Education Leave: Social Unionism in Practice

'Kitchen Economics for the Family': Paid Education Leave and the Canadian Auto Workers Union. This is my complete (reformatted) master's thesis on the history and structure of the PEL program of the Canadian Auto Workers union. Take heed that this is a large (500+kb) WordPerfect 9.0 file. Students, please don't plagarize and do cite me properly when you quote.

THESIS-RELATED (Ph.D.) PAPERS ON SOCIAL CLASS, CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, EMBOURGEOISEMENT, LABOUR (LABOR) ARISTOCRACY, ETC.:

Guest lecture at York University on Social Class in the New Millennium, November 28, 2003

Oshawa Autoworkers: Social Integration or Classic Alienation? Oppositional Class Consciousness Among the Unionized Workers of General Motors" AN UPDATE!

The Wealthy Autoworker: Representations of Working-Class Consciousness Among the Unionized Workers of General Motors Canada

The Autoworkers of General Motors, Oshawa: Integration or Alienation?

Bibliography on embourgeoisement and "General Motors Autoworkers" essayA handy resource for Labour (Labor) Studies students

Oshawa Autoworkers: Social Integration and Oppositional Class Consciousness Among the Unionized Workers of General Motors -- MOCK ORAL THESIS OUTLINE -- MARCH 2002 -- NOTE THIS IS AN MS-WORD 97 DOCUMENT -- CLICK LINK TO DOWNLOAD AND OPEN OR SAVE

The Hidden Injuries of Class Revisited: Notes to a Sociology 215 lecture, Feb. 12, 2001 On socialization and social class in North America today

Literature on Social Mobility Posting to 'working-class studies' newsgroup - NB: This is an MS-Word document -- click to save or open.

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COURSE OUTLINES, ASSIGNMENTS, GUIDELINES, TIPS AND READINGS

OF INTEREST TO LABOUR STUDIES STUDENTS

Course syllabus for LBST 1006 winter 2014

Course syllabus for LBST 3136-EL01 Social, Economic and Political Landscapes of Occupational Health and Safety

Course syllabus for LBST 3906-EL01 "Organizational Theory"

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OF INTEREST TO UNDERGRADUATE SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS

OF INTEREST TO INTRODUCTORY SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS

Don't Panic: A Tourist's Guide to Sociology. A short note to introductory sociology students

Being Testwise - Lecture on Quiz and Exam-taking, September 2011

General Essay Guidelines for Prof. R. Roth. Note that although most of these suggestions are aimed at SOCI-1015 students, they also serve as my general suggestions for most student essays in all courses. Note this is an MS-Word file.

Writing a Term Paper

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OF INTEREST TO SOCI-2296 "SOCIOLOGY - EDUCATIONAL ISSUES" STUDENTS:

Syllabus for SOCI-2296 'Sociology - Educational Issues' (Fall 2016).

The Schools We Need -- a policy paper by Leithwood, Fullan and Watson (2003), funded by Atkinson Foundation. I contributed a paper titled: “Public Perspectives on Schooling: An Overview and Analysis of Public Opinion Polling on Education” to the effort, which based a chapter on my findings."

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OF INTEREST TO 4th YEAR SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS

Winter 2017 SOCI-4076 Syllabus. Note this opens directly to a pdf file.

Winter 2016 SOCI-4086 Syllabus. Note this opens directly to a pdf file.

Lecture on how to do the first assignment for SOCI-4086 (Winter 2011), a critical article review. Note this is a pdf version of a Powerpoint file.

This is an example of what I want in a research proposal. It's from SOCI-4086, but should be used as an model at all levels.

OF INTEREST TO ALL UNDERGRADUATE SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS

Tutorial Presenter's List of Questions. Use these questions as a guide to usher new students through the presentation of a course reading. MS-Word File.

Why Did Teens in Columbine and Tabor (Alberta) Kill Other Teens and Commit Suicide? (an essay for my children)

Race, Gender and Class: The Identity Politics of Postmodernity or the Socialist Project?

Laurentian's Right-Wing: Let's Make America (and Canada) Great Again"A Peripheral Analysis of the Sudbury Star Article "Cancel culture has no place at Laurentian"

OF INTEREST TO GRADUATE STUDENTS:

Syllabus for the Graduate course SOCI-5216 (Fall 2014) Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. beginning September 9, 2014.

Presentation criteria for graduate students in SOCI-5216 EL01

LAURENTIAN UNIVERSITY'S INSOLVENCY

The Shock Doctrine Comes to Canada: Laurentian University’s Insolvency Claim and the Neoliberal Tide A paper by Reuben Roth, in Critical Sociology, September 2021. ABSTRACT: During the depths of COVID-19, Laurentian University, a small Canadian postsecondary institution located in the mid-sized city of Sudbury Canada, declared that it was insolvent and was legally allowed to terminate one-third of its faculty and cut almost one-half of its academic programmes. This historically unprecedented attack on a Canadian public institution utilized a Federal corporate court process, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), a piece of legislation akin to the US Chapter 11 process. The result of the still-ongoing process saw the university Administration and Board of Governors working against the interests of the community, targeting the arts, Indigenous, Francophone and working-class communities. This article poses the question ‘to whom do universities belong, and at what point does a publicly funded university stop being a collective “social good” – responsible to the society that spawned it – and start being a stand-alone organization that serves private interests?’

An opinion piece that appeared in a local Sudbury news site "Laurentian University professor Dr. Reuben Roth says not only does Ontario need to overhaul how it funds universities, but the CCAA process needs to be reformed or scrapped entirely for all the destruction it has caused to working people"

Subjects of the New Corporate University: The Sabotage of Laurentian University"On April 12th 2021, Laurentian University terminated 116 full-time, mostly tenured, faculty members out of a total of 345 – all unionized employees with active collective agreements. Those that remained would teach and work in a much-slimmed-down “Laurentian 2.0” with 69 fewer academic programs. Fully half of the university’s programs, developed over 61 years, were eliminated in a process lasting a mere 70 days...".

Opinion: University faculty do much more than teach "I don't blame you for thinking that we sit around teaching one or two students. The lawyers and Laurentian University bosses told you so..."

Philip Regal is a professor of Biology, retired, from the University of Minnesota. Here he weighs in on the Laurentian University claim of insolvency in a piece titled "Laurentian University Crisis"xxx

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Contact

I can be reached via email at: rroth@laurentian.ca



This page has been in existence since May 7, 1997 and was last updated on June 16, 2022.