INTERPRETATIONS OF DREAMS: PROFESSIONAL OR PROLETARIAT. IDEOLOGY AND COLLECTIVE STRATEGIES OF REGISTERED NURSES (NURSES).
Contributors: Columbia University.
Published: 1991
Number of pages: 246
Subjects: Anthropology, Cultural.; Women's Studies.; Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Will American white collar workers ever demonstrate solidarity and embrace the traditional collectivist values and strategies of industrial trade unionism? Or, are they shackled to the individualist, often narcissist values and strategies of credentialism?.

This study employs E. O. Wright's theory of contradictory class locations to examine the class location of white collar workers. It focuses on the occupation of nursing, a representative of the growing ranks of white collar service workers. By examining the nursing labor process at two hospitals, three different segments within the occupation emerged, each with a distinct level of control in the workplace. One group of low status nurses resemble blue collar industrial workers, another segment bears a resemblance to managerial work and the middle status nursing managers resemble both the industrial worker and management.

Correlated with these three different class positions are three variations on the interpretation of the symbol of "the professional"--a ubiquitous symbol in American culture--and, three different collective strategies. Nurses in the low class position translated professionalism to mean "worker control": collective control over the conditions of nursing work as a reward for their altruism, skill, and devotion to service. They chose trade unionism to attain their vision of professionalism. Nurses in the high class position interpret professionalism as "human capital": increased individual economic and social reward in exchange for their personally enhanced credentialism. Their strategy for attaining this vision of professionalism is professionalization, monopoly control over their occupation's market. Finally, nurses in the medium class position, the most "contradictory" of all class locations, translated professionalism to mean both "worker control" and "human capital". They believe in professional unionism as the means to attain their more conflicted vision of professionalism.

This study shows that a closer look at the historically specific relationship between labor process and the formation of ideology provides a sharper picture of the politics of particular class locations within the white collar workforce.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-05, Section: A, page: 1855.

Thesis (PH.D.)--COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1991.

School code: 0054.