Legal Conflict and Class Structure: The Independent Contractor-Employee Controversy in California Agriculture

This article examines the interconnection between legal conflict and class structure in American agriculture. Law, as seen in the example of the California strawberry industry, is intimately involved in the transformation of economic systems and class relations and is itself affected by those change...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Law & society review 1987-01, Vol.21 (1), p.49-82
Main Author: Wells, Miriam J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural labor
Agricultural Policy
Agriculture
California
Class
Class Relations
Class structure
Community supported agriculture
Conflict
Contracts
Crop production
Crops
Fair Labor Standards Act
Farm workers
Independent contractors
Industrial agriculture
Industrial production
Labor Policy
Law
Legal status, laws, etc
Legislation
Plaintiffs
Professional relations. Trade unions
Sharecropping
Social classes
Social conflict
Sociological jurisprudence
Sociology
Sociology of work
Sociology of work and sociology of organizations
Strawberry industry
United States
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article examines the interconnection between legal conflict and class structure in American agriculture. Law, as seen in the example of the California strawberry industry, is intimately involved in the transformation of economic systems and class relations and is itself affected by those changes. The impact of the law on social class varies across industrial subsectors and over time. In this case legal distinctions, in the context of changing political pressures and technoeconomic constraints on production, have encouraged the adoption of sharecropping. This form of production alters the legal status, economic interests, and subjective identification of workers, thus creating a new basis for future class interrelations.
ISSN:0023-9216
1540-5893
DOI:10.2307/3053385