University of California Press Wartime Shipyard: A Study in Social Disunity

Wartime Shipyard: A Study in Social Disunity by Katherine Archibald is a powerful sociological portrait of the American home front that uses the booming, chaotic shipyards of World War II as a laboratory for examining the fault lines of class, race, gender, and status. Though the war and the yard itself have long since passed, Archibald insists the deeper subject―social disunity―remains urgent and timeless. The shipyard compressed a vast and unusually representative cross-section of American workers into close, often tense contact, magnifying the prejudices and suspicions that divided group from group. By tracing the everyday encounters, frictions, and hostilities of these workers, Archibald illuminates the fundamental mechanisms of disunity and the barriers to solidarity that persist far beyond the historical moment of wartime industry. Organized thematically, the book moves from women’s experiences in the yard to the treatment of “Okies,” African Americans, and other marginalized groups, before turning to the layered dynamics of unions, class consciousness, and nationalism. Archibald’s method is both empirical and expansive: detailed observation of attitudes and behaviors gives rise to broader insights into the perennial struggles over social cohesion. At stake, she argues, is not merely a historical account of one workplace but the urgent question of whether modern societies, in the atomic age, can achieve the inclusive unities on which their very survival depends. Wartime Shipyard thus stands as both historical record and theoretical reflection, a vivid case study that speaks to the enduring challenges of division, prejudice, and inequality in American life. For scholars and general readers alike, this book offers a sobering reminder that the deepest struggles of wartime America remain contemporary. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1947.