Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor / Edition 1

by William Puette

Overview

A ground-breaking study of the Hadrami community in Indonesia. The book considers the evolution of Indonesian Arab identity in the context of the rise of nationalism throughout Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875461854
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/31/1992
Series:	Cornell International Industrial and
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

What People are Saying About This

Paul F. Clark

A comprehensive and informed analysis of an issue that is vitally important to anyone who supports or criticizes or studies or participates in the labor movement.

Editorial Reviews

"A comprehensive and informed analysis of an issue that is vitally important to anyone who supports or criticizes or studies or participates in the labor movement."

--Paul F. Clark, Pennsylvania State University

From the Publisher

"A comprehensive and informed analysis of an issue that is vitally important to anyone who supports or criticizes or studies or participates in the labor movement."

Paul F. Clark

Puette, who teaches at the University of Hawaii, has produced a useful but thin survey, documenting a consistently negative depiction of labor unions in movies, television, cartoons and the press. Low public opinion of organized labor, he suggests, is linked not only to weakened unions but to this sagging portrayal. Puette finds the corrupt union image from On the Waterfront a pervasive influence and notes that most television dramas espouse the viewpoint of the employer or consumer, not of the worker. Newspapers, he writes, no longer dedicate resources to a labor beat; but Puette weakens his argument by focusing on the Hawaiian dailies' placement of labor stories next to crime stories--hardly industry practice. Puette deconstructs selected TV news reports and offers case studies, including one of the 1989 United Mine Workers' Pittston strike, in which the major media concentrated on strike violence to the exclusion of substantive questions. Puette concludes that the putative liberalism of America's media excludes support for labor; had he integrated that observation further into his study and explored the reasons for it, this book would have been richer. Illustrated. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

On the interaction between agricultural mechanization and rural culture. Rikoon considers the succession of threshing systems in terms of the relations between specific technologies, occupational practices, and the social organization of work. An intimate and detailed look at a dynamic phase of rural development. An eye-opening (and appropriately accessible) analysis of the portrayal of organized labor in movies, on television, and in the press, including cartoons. Puette particularly focuses on the national media's representation of the Pittston strike, as well as local coverage of a labor dispute in Hawaii. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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