American Automobiles and Workers' Dreams

This paper reviews Chinoy's Automobile Workers and the American Dream as an example of a lot of work which revolves around themes of alienation, worker degradation and quiescence. Two aspects of the automobile as an item in the sphere of consumption in post-war America are then detailed to try to point to the theoretical assumptions and empirical absences which characterize the dominant tradition exemplified by Chinoy's classic text. The paper ends by making some criticisms of the way production activity is privileged in social analysis and calls for the creation of a sociology of consumption to combat the emphasis on production as the source of social meaning and worth which is institutionalized in much sociology and most Marxism.