The Sacred and the Profane: The Exclusionary Legacy of American Labor 'Exceptionalism'

Abstract

Management accounting textbooks present workplace controls with no mention of labor's reaction to these tools of 'scientific' behavioral management. America is often seen as the epitome of a capitalist nation, but ironically those outside the U.S. are more likely to be aware of the intense conflicts between labor and management in the late nineteenth and twentieth century and the means used to suppress labor views in subsequent years. This paper explores how it is that worker perspectives came to be treated as so profane as to be unworthy of consideration in accounting pedagogy. The paper begins with an overview of American labor 'exceptionalism' and Durkheim's concept of the sacred and the profane. The discussion then turns to events before, during, and after a 1912 New England textile strike to illustrate the shifting affinities and processes used to vilify, exclude, and utterly silence the opposing group's voice from civil discourse.