Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism, Family Politics, and Workplace Justice (Sexuality Studies) - Softcover

Murphy, Ryan Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 143990989X ISBN 13: 9781439909898

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2016

Synopsis

In 1975, National Airlines was shut down for 127 days when flight attendants went on strike to protest long hours and low pay. Activists at National and many other U.S. airlines sought to win political power and material resources for people who live beyond the boundary of the traditional family. In Deregulating Desire, Ryan Patrick Murphy, a former flight attendant himself, chronicles the efforts of single women, unmarried parents, lesbians and gay men, as well as same-sex couples to make the airline industry a crucible for social change in the decades after 1970.

Murphy situates the flight attendant union movement in the history of debates about family and work. Each chapter offers an economic and a cultural analysis to show how the workplace has been the primary venue to enact feminist and LGBTQ politics.

From the political economic consequences of activism to the dynamics that facilitated the rise of what Murphy calls the “family values economy” to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Deregulating Desire emphasizes the enduring importance of social justice for flight attendants in the twenty-first century.

About this title

Book Description:

How flight attendants have drawn on feminist and LGBTQ activist legacies to challenge big business's rise to power after 1970

About the Author:

Ryan Patrick Murphy—a former San Francisco–based flight attendant for United Airlines and Council Representative for Association of Flight Attendants–CWA Council 11—is Assistant Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.

About this edition

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 143990989X
• ISBN 13: 9781439909898
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252