Fired Up, Burnt Out: How Progressive Campaign Workers Navigate Value Conflict
Cantor, Gabriella A.
2022
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If you ever had your door knocked on by a 20-something-year-old reminding you to vote, scrolled by a political candidate’s sharply worded tweets, or phonebanked for your favorite party’s nominee, chances are you have interacted with the labor of a political campaign worker. Each election cycle, thousands of campaign workers in the U.S. contact voters, create campaign media, and mobilize volunteers. ... read moreCampaign work is intense–– both in terms of the passion of its practitioners and in its demanding lifestyle. While scholars have studied the electoral consequences of political campaigns, minimal sociological research has been conducted on the workers that shape them. This study utilizes qualitative methods and a participatory approach to understand the world of campaign work. Specifically, it looks at how progressive campaign workers experience and navigate the gap between the stated values of progressive campaigns and said campaigns’ treatment of workers. In this thesis, I argue that progressive campaign workers are drawn to campaigns out of a desire to have an impact and advance progressive values. While working on campaigns, they benefit from the excitement, sense of fulfillment, community, and skills they access. Simultaneously, they face all-consuming, exploitative, and unstable working conditions. These conditions lead progressive campaign workers to experience alienation and burnout. In response, progressive campaign workers either leave campaign work, advocate for better conditions through unionization, or engage in quiet resistance. This thesis contributes to the fields of labor and political sociology by exploring the experiences and challenges faced by an understudied, unique group of workers whose labor helps shape our political world.
Thesis (B.A.)--Tufts University, 2022.
Submitted to the Dept. of Sociology.
Committee: Anjuli Fahlberg and Peter Levine.read less - ID:
- fj236h22b
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