Workers, Capital, and the State in British Columbia: Selected Papers

This collection of essays offers a comprehensive examination of theworking class experience in British Columbia and contains essentialbackground knowledge for an understanding of contemporary relationsbetween government, labour, and employees. It treats workers'relationship to the province's resource base, the economic role ofthe state, the structure of capitalism, the labour market and theinfluence of ethnicity and race on class relations. Using different analytical categories and based on primary research,the individual studies provide new assessments of the development ofcapitalist relations of production; the way new economic developmentschanged old and traditional cultures; the connection between the demandfor labour and the immigration policy; the impact of technology on workrelations; and the various responses of labour to the policies of thestate and capital groupings. Articles focusing on episodes from the 1870s to the present dealwith major staple industries such as the early fur trade, fishing,mining, and forestry and with the struggle of labourers against theiremployers in communities such as New Westminster and Fraser Mills andin specific sectors such as telecommunications and education. Many ofthe analyses show that ethnicity acts both as a focus of integrationand resistance against external forces in the larger society and as apoint of division and antagonism internal to the working class. The activities of the working class and its relationships to otherparts of society are of primary importance in explaining social andeconomic change in the province and in the country. Workers,Capital, and the State in British Columbia will be of interest tostudents of class, labour, and community relations.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments Contributors 1. Introduction / Rennie Warburton and David Coburn 2. Politics and the State in the Nineteenth Century / JohnMalcolmson 3. Making Indians / Michael Kew 4. The Underground Economy: The Mining Frontier to 1920 / PaulPhillips 5. Class, Ethnicity, and Conflict: The Case of Chinese and JapaneseImmigrants, 1880-1923 / Gillian Creese 6. Relations of Production and Collective Action in the SalmonFishery, 1900-1925 / James Conley 7. Workers, Class, and Industrial Conflict in New Westminster,1900-1930 / Allen Seager 8. Class and Community in the Fraser Mills Strike, 1931 / JeanneMyers 9. Ethnicity and Class in the Farm Labour Process / Allan Duttonand Cynthia Cornish 10. Public Policy, Capital, and Labour in the Forest Industry /M. Patricia Marchak 11. Workers' Control of B.C. Telephone: The Shape of Things toCome? / Elaine Bernard 12. The Rise of Non-Manual Work in British Columbia / RennieWarburton and David Coburn 13. The Class Relations of Public Schoolteachers in British Columbia/ Rennie Warburton 14. Conclusion: Capitalist Social Relations in British Columbia /Rennie Warburton

About the Author :
Rennie Warburton is a member of the Department ofSociology, University of Victoria. David Coburn is inthe Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Toronto.

Review :
Interesting, informative and thought provoking. The approach taken by the writers is very fruitful and students and researchers interested in the relationships among workers, capital and the state would do well to follow the approach used in this book. - Paul Gingrich (The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology)