Refracted Agency in Postindustrial Politics: The Case of Woonsocket, Rhode Island

• In Event: Labor Politics and Worker Consciousness

Abstract

Labor-aligned parties have lost much of their vote share across advanced capitalist polities of late. Many see this as evidence of dealignment and the result of new cleavages driven by globalization that make the working class as such a problematic subject. Three perspectives have emerged to explain this which see contemporary postindustrial workers as either inherently divided and reactionary, as nascently militant but lacking effective leadership, or simply as discouraged and resigned. This study challenges these accounts empirically through a holistic study of working-class consciousness in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
Woonsocket is a town that used to have industry and a vibrant union movement. The Independent Textile Union once organized nearly all of the town’s textile workers but since the 1950s it has experienced relentless disinvestment. Woonsocket today ranks among Rhode Island’s poorest cities with high rates of homelessness, addiction and food-stamp dependence. Once staunchly Democratic, Woonsocket also displays dwindling majorities for that party which finally flipped Republican in 2024. It thus offers a conspicuous case for interrogating rustbelt dealignment.
My analysis of 81 interviews with working-class residents reveals several things. First, workers are broadly progressive and inclusive on most socio-political issues, from racial and gender equality to unions, policing and economic redistribution. Second, however, they are deeply demobilized, stemming not only from disappointment with extant parties and leaders as well as increasing demographic diversity, but also from the structural fragmentation of wage work and its piecemeal re-integration with social reproduction. Third, these workers are not merely ‘resigned’ but normatively redirected: their agency, while discouraged from formal politics and organizing, does not merely dissipate but flows toward other, ostensibly apolitical ends: family, leisure, drug use, recovery. I theorize this shift as refracted agency, a conjuncturally-specific concept that enables a more accurate interpretation of ongoing political turbulence and working-class dealignment.

Author

• Peter R. Ikeler, SUNY-Old Westbury