Dealignment Reconsidered: The Case of Woonsocket, Rhode Island

• In Event: 40420 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11: The Politics of Authoritarianism 2

Abstract

Across Western so-called democracies, working classes no longer seem to vote as they once did. Center-left electoral parties have steadily lost vote shares and participation from workers and the poor while nascent attempts to replace them from the left have either stalled, been aborted or fallen prey to similar dynamics of stagnation. While some observers question the existence of such a trend or whether “dealignment” per se is the best descriptor, a near-consensus appears to be emerging that it both A) is happening and B) largely maps onto a broad decoupling of parties and classes. Questions remain, however, about its content and causes. Are workers substantively moving right, away from these parties? Or are they being alienated from electoral politics generally? Are these shifts driven primarily by ideological exposure and manipulation or by deeper-seated structural conditions? This paper, based on a multi-year case study of postindustrial Woonsocket, Rhode Island, finds evidence in favor of political alienation over rightward tilt and of structural over ideological determination in a clear-cut context of Democratic dealignment. It argues for a reconceptualization of working-class political agency – a framework in which it is not simply muted, manipulated or resigned but structurally redirected toward non-political and simultaneously non-capitalist spheres. I call this refracted agency which engenders a partial consciousness among contemporary workers. Conditions of late neoliberal capitalism do not simply confuse or demobilize workers, as Frank (2004), Hochschild (2016) and Dörre (2020) argue. They de-politicize them and redirect their agency toward use-value oriented spheres as a practical adaptation to a dystopic post-capitalism, distinct from Chibber’s (2022) in-system “resignation” description. Much like McCarthy and Desan (2023) argue for the disjuncture of structural from political primacy, I find a similar dynamic in Woonsocket. My paper elaborates this perspective based on fine-grained analysis of 81 in-depth interviews with working-class residents.

Author

• Peter R. Ikeler, SUNY-Old Westbury