Paternalism,breach,and dignity: Worker upheaval as social drama in an age of neoliberalism

Abstract

This paper considers the Market Basket upheaval of 2013–2014 from the perspective of patriarchy, breach, workplace dignity, and social drama. It draws on Lingo and Elmes original data and analytic approach to their study of food workers in a family-owned, New England, supermarket chain who, after an unexpected change to the board, rose up to restore their patriarch and paternalistic institutional practices. It reimagines the Market Basket case through the lens of Victor Turner’s social drama with a focus on key phases of the upheaval which included breach, crisis, redress, and reintegration. The paper considers the power of paternalism to unify and activate loyal, working class followers who benefit greatly from paternalistic practices and feel threatened by their removal. It also considers the risks of paternalism particularly under conditions where a charismatic patriarch has less benign intentions and workers follow with unquestioned loyalty.

Keywords

Food workers neoliberalism paternalism patriarchy social drama upheaval workplace dignity

Introduction

This paper uses the case of a New England-based, family-owned supermarket chain, Market Basket, to examine the issues around organizational paternalism, breach, workplace dignity, and social drama in an era of neoliberalism. It suggests that there are varying types of paternalism in organizations and that in a crisis, the pool of worker loyalty that is often produced under paternalism can be mobilized to protect workers and other aligned stakeholders from other, sometimes greater harms, under neoliberal capitalism. While the Market Basket case reveals the power of paternalism to unify and activate loyal followers who feel threatened and even abused, it also raises concerns about the risks involved if and when a patriarch’s orientation shifts from benign to malevolent and workers and other allied stakeholders follow unquestioningly.

In 2013, a long-standing, unstated paternalistic pact between the family owners and food workers at Market Basket was breached in a way that led workers and affiliated stakeholders to rise up in opposition. Changes to board control at the company threatened the workers’ identification with the firm and their identity and dignity (Lucas, 2015) as the “true” family members and self-described owners of the “Market Basket Way” (Lingo and Elmes, 2019). This breach threatened to strip Market Basket workers of the protections that they had come to expect, in some cases for generations, and to expose them to the naked realities of neoliberal policies and practices that cared little for their welfare and from which they had been protected. Supported by active use of social media, this breach led to a coalescence of workers, customers, and suppliers around a common identity and shared interests (Lingo and Elmes, 2019). It unleashed a form of communitas (Turner, 1982) that energized the community to take bold actions to restore the benefits and protections that the paternalistic order had provided. Contrary to how docile and dependent workers in paternalistic organizations are sometimes portrayed in the literature, after this breach, workers and their allies assumed a great many risks in trying to reinstate their beloved former CEO to the leadership role and restore the employee-centric policies of the Market Basket Way.

Briefly, this paper reconsiders organizational paternalism and workplace dignity at a time when neoliberal policies and practices in the United States had decimated worker benefits and wages, especially in the retail food industry. It draws on Victor Turner’s theory of social drama as an interpretative lens both to tell the compelling story of Market Basket and to reconsider the theoretical implications for organizational paternalism and upheaval in an era of neoliberal shrouding.

Background

Organizational paternalism and workplace dignity

Paternalism as a form of management practice was widespread during the 19th century in businesses throughout Britain and the New England states of the United States. As a form of capitalism, paternalism focused on industrial betterment through personalized relations with workers who came to depend on their employers for more than just wages. In exchange for their loyalty and labor, workers were offered protection from harm, a sense of membership, moral education, and the cultivation of habits considered to be useful in or outside of the workplace. As Fleming (2005) notes, managerial paternalism has been “a way of organizing the employment relationship along the lines of a parental/child, master/servant, or teacher/pupil configuration. . .. (and) it is often but not always orchestrated around a nominally benevolent patriarch or philanthropist” (p. 1470).

Wray (1996) borrowed from Burawoy (1985) to define paternalism as a method of worker control that obfuscates the commodity status of labor. He identified several different forms. Traditional paternalism often arose on small family farms or shops. Sometimes referred to as “affectionate tutelage” (Bendix, 1974), it can be traced back to the early years of industrial production. Welfare paternalism arose in response to a larger workforce in organizations; in these instances, paternalism became part of the employment contract and was visible in amenities such as pension plans, company housing, and free holiday turkeys. Finally, sophisticated paternalism offered such new approaches as consultative committees or human resource specialists trained to take care of workers. While any form of paternalistic management practice is rare in 2021, there are cases, like the Market Basket case, in which some variation on authority, subordination, dependence, and commitment have arisen.

Paternalism has been a guiding ethos at many New England manufacturers dating back to the Lowell Mills (Massachusetts) experiment in labor relations during the 19th century. Cheape (1984, 1985) wrote about patriarchy among early New England manufacturers, where “owners were to care for workers, providing them where necessary with housing, schooling, religion, and training. In exchange workers made the radical jump from family farm and small handicraft production to factory. . .. Thus, loyalty and diligence were exchanged for security and care” (Cheape, 1984, p. 51). Even with the rise of unions and the passing of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, many of these same New England companies took pride in remaining union-free well into the 21st century and in protecting workers from layoffs and economic hardship in exchange for their loyalty and commitment to the firm.

While worker uprisings in the late 20th and early 21st century have been rare in the U.S., a similar event occurred in 1990 at Norton Company, another non-union New England company with a history of paternalistic practices. In this case, workers were encouraged by senior leadership to stage a series of large, vocal, and highly public protests to block the hostile takeover attempt by a British manufacturer (Elmes, 2018b). While successful at blocking the takeover attempt, the CEO and Board of Directors of Norton opted to sell the company to a French manufacturing firm for a better offer. When that happened, one of the leaders of the “Grassroots Committee” who worked closely with senior Norton management to ward off the hostile takeover attempt described herself as feeling like “roadkill”—metaphorically blindsided and left to die on the side of the road (Elmes, 2018b).

More recent studies have revealed new forms of paternalism that have appeared in the workplace. In a qualitative study of paternalism at a contemporary Chinese company, Zhu and Delbridge (2017) note how migrant workers from rural areas are often framed as immature “kids” lacking self-control and requiring managers to behave like parents and teachers to motivate them. The authors see this form of paternalism as a response to outsourcing in a rapidly growing urban (Chinese) environment employing migrant workers from rural areas. It is a kind of “tough love” and “infantilization” intended to socialize workers into becoming more mature and capable of securing future employment in other urban Chinese regions. More recently Leclercq-Vandelannoitte’s (2021) has drawn on Foucault’s notion of pastoral power to suggest a theory of neo-paternalism, a different form of care and control in modern organizations that dissolves the boundaries between work and non-work. Consistent with Foucault’s (1991) notion of pastoral power, neo-paternalism expresses the “principle of duty to care” that is built upon a “discourse of responsibility and ‘benevolent’ guidance, to provide care (to). . .every member of the flock” (Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2021, p. 7).

The relationship between paternalism and workplace dignity is complex. Lucas (2015) defines dignity as a “personal sense of worth, value, respect, or esteem that is derived from one’s humanity and individual social position; as well as being treated respectfully by others” (p. 622). It is a deeply subjective and personal experience and is often a source of tension in the employment relationship. Factors that threaten dignity in the workplace include overwork, mismanagement and abuse, incursions on autonomy (Hodson, 2002), verbal abuse and humiliation (Khademi et al., 2012), stigma attached to certain kinds of work (Chiappetta-Swanson, 2005), being compelled to demonstrate servility to others (Kensbock et al., 2014), and implementing coercive controls that dehumanize workers and erode pride (Crowley, 2012), among others. The instrumental and unequal ways in which workplaces are organized often contribute to workers’ sense that their dignity has been violated. Responses to dignity threats can range from resistance (Cleaveland, 2005), for example, labor organizing, cynicism, and sabotage, to engagement in positive identity work. Paternalistic organizational practices, while obfuscating the commodity status of labor, also offer protections for workers from the harsh indignities imposed by neoliberal practices and policies. The question becomes whether or not this becomes a fair or just exchange.

Paternalism and neoliberalism

What does paternalism feel like in an era of neoliberalism? Hostility toward the social was inherent in the thinking of early neoliberal economists like Hayek (1973) and Friedman (1962). To Brown (2019), 50 years of neoliberalism’s “attack on the social” in the U.S. has birthed antidemocratic movements from above (found in political leadership roles on the right) and from below (found among white nationalist and right-wing vigilante groups). It has undermined and, in some cases, dismantled state-based social programs and protections that once secured labor rights, environmental regulations, education funding, urban development, and health and safety programs, among others, designed to protect the most marginalized of society from the abuses of capitalism. As neoliberal policies in the U.S. have privileged “management, law, and technocracy” over “democratic deliberation, contestation, and power sharing” (Brown, 2019, p. 58), distrust of democratic governance structures and a growing sense of nihilism have settled in as well. A decline in “autonomy and comprehension” (Brown, 2019, p. 166) has contributed to a loss of conscience, opening a “spigot” of incivility, and violence visible in recurring efforts to deconstruct the administrative state (Rucker and Costa, 2017).

In a society built on neoliberal ideals, a paternalistic organization can feel like family or home, a safe haven in a society in which social programs and safety net protections have mostly disappeared. This may be particularly true for the victims of neoliberal policies and the global financial system, what Goodhart (2017) labels as “Somewheres.” In the U.S., they are typically white, working-class males, with limited education and an orientation to family and local or regional communities and places—the kinds of workers who are drawn to work at Market Basket. By comparison, Goodhart (2017) labels as “Anywheres” those elites who have benefitted economically from neoliberal policies and are more often urban, rootless, multicultural, and educated. Many of them are the executives who manage and control global corporations, including global food corporations. They are responsible for designing and executing policies that, for example, have weakened benefits and wages for full time food workers, have brought in greater numbers of temporary and contingent workers at low pay and with weak benefits, and have undermined unionization campaigns to keep labor costs low and worker influence subdued. Recent increases in food worker wages at some retailers have been due primarily to Democratic states legislating a rise in the minimum wage. Most food workers are still paid poorly; many live below the poverty line and depend on food stamps and other government assistance programs to mitigate hunger for themselves and their families (Rosenberg, 2020).

In her book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, Hochschild (2018) investigated the source of rage among Southern, white Somewheres in a working-class region of Louisiana. She found that many felt deeply disillusioned and angry, unable to find meaningful or well-paying work, and fearful of losing much of the natural beauty of their region to pollution and neglect. They attributed the causes of these problems not to 50 years of neoliberal policies that had destroyed well-paying, working-class, union jobs; had undermined environmental and workplace regulations; and had given birth to tax policies that benefitted wealthy elites, but rather to a litany of social, environmental, and safety governmental regulations that, from their point of view, had restricted their freedoms—a mantra consistent with the embrace of neoliberal ideals and conflation of personal freedom with economic activity. They blamed government-driven social programs for disproportionately benefitting “undeserving” minorities and immigrants and forcing working-class white males to move arbitrarily to the back of the line. They blamed regulations for interfering with “free” enterprise in their communities. In Hochschild’s study, these Somewheres were imbued with neoliberal ideals but unable to see how years of neoliberal policies had made their lives less secure and their economic status less equal.

In this context, a company that feels like home, that seems to look after the workers’ economic and social well-being, that builds new stores in low-income communities where many workers grew up, that sells locally sourced food at low prices, and that supports worthy non-profits in those Somewhere communities will likely be an attractive place to work. Immersed in a culture of paternalism, is it any surprise that a worker’s sense of identity and dignity would be threatened when the paternalistic employment relationship no longer honors the exchange of employer benefits and values for worker loyalty and commitment to the enterprise? It is easy to understand why, under these circumstances, workers, and other stakeholders would rise up in an effort to restore paternalistic policies and practices that benefitted them and that honored their working-class values. This is especially true given that the change in board control happened unilaterally and without notice and served the narrow financial interests of one faction of the family.

Methodology and the case

Methods and theory building

This paper is a retheorizing of the grounded theory, collaborative research on which the author of this paper collaborated in 2019 (Lingo and Elmes, 2019). In that paper, the authors assumed a process perspective (Langley, 2009) to make sense of how non-family members at the company responded to Arthur S. Demoulas’ (ASD) ascendence to control of the board and its consequences for the organization. As the authors note, a process perspective enables researchers to understand how the dynamics earlier in a crisis help to shape those occurring subsequently. Consistent with their qualitative approach, they mapped out key events and coded their data from thousands of pages of social media postings to the Save Market Basket Facebook from June 2013 and August 2014. Using an iterative process approach to the data, they then developed and refined these codes and themes from the data, identifying key phases, and micro-processes. Finally, they validated their codes and themes by triangulating them with archival data from over 50 newspaper articles and press releases and books such as Korschun and Welker’s (2015), We Are Market Basket: The Story of the Unlikely Grassroots Movement That Saved a Beloved Business.

The original study offered a grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1990) approach to how institutional preservation work happened at Market Basket and contributed to theory related to the role of non-family members in family businesses in crisis. However, it did not consider either the unique paternalistic culture at Market Basket or the neoliberal context of the period to explain why the upheaval was surprisingly unrestrained yet effective at preserving the Market Basket Way. In the end, the current paper offers a model of working-class organizational upheaval that can arise when a breach to the paternalistic contract sets in motion a social drama to preserve the extant social order.

Setting the stage

The story of the upheaval at Market Basket began modestly in 1917 in Lowell, Massachusetts when a Greek immigrant couple, Athanasios and Efrosini Demoulas, opened Demoulas Market to serve the mostly immigrant, working-class, Greek community in a city made famous by the Lowell Mills. Over the next 60 years, the Demoulas’ sons, George and Telemachus, expanded the company by offering high-quality goods, low prices, and caring customer service to mostly lower-income communities and families. These practices became the basis for the Market Basket Way.

In 1971, George died unexpectedly of a heart attack, making Telemachus the CEO of the Demoulas supermarket chain. Telemachus and his son, Arthur T. Demoulas (ATD), nurtured and expanded the number of markets throughout New England and changed the name to Market Basket. However, George’s untimely death set the stage for a series of lawsuits between the two sides that plagued the family for many years to come.

The most consequential of these lawsuits led to a 1990 court ruling awarding George’s heirs 50.5% of the company and Telemachus’ side 49.5% (Korschun and Welker, 2015). Because the court assigned five of the nine family shareholders to George’s side of the family (represented by George’s son, Arthur S. Demoulas or ASD), ASD’s side of the family could take control of the board and pursue their interests. They were not able to do so immediately, however, because, in 2002, one of those five family shareholders on the ASD side, Rafaela Evans (ASD’s sister-in-law), switched her vote in support of ATD as CEO. This meant that despite continuing animosity between the two sides of the family, the balance of board control after 2002 favored ATD, whose business philosophy, values, strategy, and practices as CEO were the basis for the Market Basket Way and the organization’s generous worker benefits, low debt, and continued growth. It is worth noting that ATD’s prior control of the board had been tentative at best and dependent on Rafaela Evans’ interests and whims; as CEO, ATD had been in a precarious position, one where the good will of worker associates and customers might 1 day prove to be essential.

ATD was the only Demoulas family member who had stayed involved in the day-to-day operations of the organization. By 2013, he had become the beloved patriarch of the organization for employees and customers and purveyor of the Market Basket Way. As CEO and President, he was affable and charismatic and worked hard to learn the background of every MB employee, who were called associates. When he visited stores, ATD was able to refer to personal facts about each person’s life—a sick child or parent, for example, or a recent graduation or wedding anniversary, or the university that a young cashier was attending. And under ATD’s leadership, Market Basket expanded its supermarkets across mostly low- and middle-income New England communities and became known for making generous charitable donations to civic organizations and events in those communities.

Retheorizing the market basket case as social drama

Turner (1980) considered social dramas to be “dramas of living” (p. 149) that typically unfold in four phases: breach, crisis, redress, and either reintegration or recognition of the schism. He noted that the “main actors” in any social drama are persons for whom the group has a “high value priority”—actors to whom people owe their deepest loyalty and allegiance and in whom they find love, prestige, and recognition. At Market Basket these would include ATD, his most trusted, long-term senior managers, many full-time worker associates, and a loyal customer base.

Breach

In June 2013, the old way of doing business at Market Basket was threatened dramatically when board member Rafaela Evans inexplicably changed her vote to give shareholder control to ASD’s side of the family. In turn, a new board favorable to ASD was elected and the initial phase of the breach began. Although unsuccessful at removing ATD as CEO in the fall of 2013, ASD immediately made changes that began to redistribute equity in the firm from business expansion and worker benefits and pensions to the family shareholders. Many worker associates speculated that ASD was planning to liquidate the company, possibly selling it to a rival food retailer.

At that moment, worker associates at Market Basket were thrust into a state of liminality defined as, “the state and process which is betwixt-and-between the normal, day-to-day cultural and social states and processes of getting and spending, preserving law and order, and registering structural status” (Turner, 1977, p. 33). They became beings “in transition, no longer what they were, nor yet what they will be” (Rowe, 2008, p. 128). Turner (1990) called liminality, “fructile chaos, a fertile nothingness, a storehouse of possibilities, not by any means a random assemblage but a striving after new forms and structure, a gestation process” (p. 12). To Grimes (1995), liminality is a moment of “ritually generated limbo. . .and anti-structural moment of reversal” (p. 151). Roles and rules that typically normalize behavior may be suspended, thus “encouraging a range of behavior and expression not fully available within the boundaries that conventionally organize and restrain daily life” (Rowe, 2008, p. 128). In a period of liminality, social conventions, and identities dissolve into the background as experimentation and play emerge and participants engage one another in new modes of relating.

Typically, a breach violates norms in a way that cannot be ignored and evolves into “a scene of heated feelings” (Turner, 1980, p. 150). It precipitates a crisis in which sides are taken and factions form. The breach spreads “until it coincides with some dominant cleavage in the widest set of relevant social relations to which the parties in conflict belong” (Turner, 1980, p. 150). The crisis reveals the basic social structure of relations that are mostly constant and consistent—in this case, between the two sides of the Demoulas family and between working class employees and customers and the elite beneficiaries, that is, ASD and his management team, of the change in board control. Typically, when breach occurs, members of the disturbed group introduce redressive mechanisms into the breach that may vary depending on “the depth and significance of the breach, the nature of the social group within which the breach took place, and the group’s degree of autonomy in regard to wider systems of the social relations” (Turner, 1980, p. 151). Mechanisms can range from personal advice or informal mediation to legal machinery and public ritual. At Market Basket, mechanisms included founding a Facebook page where the aggrieved could post comments and personal testimonials that honored ATD and the Market Basket Way. As the crisis deepened and emotions intensified, rituals began to include sign-filled, public protests in empty Market Basket parking lots as well as worker, customer, and supplier boycotts of the stores.

According to Lingo and Elmes (2019), it was during the period between when the board changed and ATD was fired that worker associates awoke from this liminal state, began to identify themselves as the true Market Basket family, and took action. During this breach phase, worker emotions became intensified and harnessed, the identity of a wider sense of the Market Basket family emerged to include non-workers, and shared interests became increasingly more salient and aligned across stakeholders (Lingo and Elmes, 2019).

Crisis and redress

The firing of ATD in June of 2014 marked the moment when breach was transformed into a crisis and redress. It gave rise to spontaneous communitas, a “direct immediate and total confrontation of human identities. . .offering an endless feeling of power. . .and an intersubjective illumination” (Turner, 1982, pp. 47–48). At that moment, the sense of shared identity, emotions, and interests that had been coalescing among workers and others during the previous year of social media community building gave rise to a concerted and committed sense of shared purpose and action. According to Turner (1982) communitas is a source of “liberation of human capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity, etc., from the normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social statuses” (p. 44). It has a flow quality (Turner, 1982) to it, a merging of action and awareness in the present moment consistent with Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde’s (1993) concept of flow. Communitas is characterized by an intense feeling of community spirit, solidarity, and equality. At Market Basket, it became visible among a collection of worker associates, customers, and suppliers who were increasingly more identified with and unified in trying to preserve the organization. According to Maxwell (2008), at the heart of the communitas experience is a “moment of grace, transcending all difference, offering the possibility of salvation” (p. 62)—a restoration, perhaps, of worker dignity in this struggle.

Scenes of Market Basket parking lots crowded with worker associates and customers, some carrying stuffed giraffes to signify sticking out their necks, others carrying signs with photos of ATD with captions that read, “I believe,” suggest the depth of feeling that existed in this phase of the uprising. Workers refused to show up to work, customers boycotted stores (sometimes taping receipts of where they had shopped at other supermarkets to the front glass windows of vacant Market Basket stores), and vendors refused to resupply warehouses. Empty Market Basket parking lots became filled with thousands of protestors in a carnival-like atmosphere, local and regional political leaders pressured ASD to sell the business to ATD, and all 71 Market Basket stores across the New England region shut down entirely, with empty shelves and no customers.

These forceful actions served as ritualized ceremonies and rites of passage (McCabe, 2019) that transformed workers, customers, and suppliers from their everyday roles as deli managers, shoppers, and local suppliers to heroic leaders of a unified Market Basket community and family. The upheaval flipped the status hierarchy, putting workers, customers, and vendors in charge as the real caretakers of the business, not ASD and what some called his “phony” management team. With solidarity and equanimity, workers risked their jobs and financial well-being to preserve the institution and its practices, under the banner of We are Market Basket. This organization was theirs, and they were willing to do anything to preserve it.

By July 2014, Market Basket was on the verge of collapse with tens of millions of dollars in accumulated losses and ATD struggling to find a way to purchase back the company before it was either sold or had to file for bankruptcy. Eventually on August 27, 2014, ATD succeeded. Afterwards Market Basket reintegrated itself around the same core values of the Market Basket Way with ATD as CEO, but with a significant load of debt for the first time in the company’s history. Through ritual and the spirit of communitas, worker associates, customers, and suppliers—the working-class stakeholders who identified themselves as the authentic Market Basket family—succeeded at restoring their beloved patriarch and paternalistic order.

Discussion and Conclusion

At the end of his study of paternalism at Ourfirm Trust, Wray (1996) drew on a Martin and Fryer (1973) quote to characterize the paternalistic employment relationship at the company: “authoritarianism tempered with generosity.” For Market Basket in 2013, however, given the neoliberal context in which the company had prospered, a more apt label for its flavor of paternalism might be, “generosity tempered by discipline and control.” Across the United States, there was few other businesses in food retailing that paid workers as well, that provided as generous retirement benefits and bonuses, that had such low worker turnover, that saved customers as much money on their food bills, that had such high customer ratings, and that purposely focused on markets in low- and middle-income communities. Workers, customers, and suppliers were treated with respect at a time when most other food retailers were downsizing, reducing wages and benefits, or being bought out by competitors in the massive consolidation of food retailing during the 1990s and 2000s (Elmes, 2018a).

We know from the literature that there are different kinds of paternalism and different types of patriarchs. Market Basket was a family business rooted in place and staffed with worker associates who valued family and community. Like many paternalistic companies, it was and is a place-based organization—place being the “profound center of human experience” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 23) where people live and where they “stop, rest, and get involved” (Tuan, 1977). Unlike space, which has often been “enshrined” as “absolute, unlimited and universal” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 19), place is a product of human perception and embodied experience (Guthey et al., 2014). Escobar (2001) notes, “Place has dropped out of sight in the ‘globalization craze’ of recent years, and this erasure of place has profound consequences for our understanding of culture, knowledge, nature, and economy. It is perhaps time to reverse some of this asymmetry by focusing a new—and from the perspective afforded by the critiques of place themselves—on the continued vitality of place and place-making for culture, nature, and economy” (p. 141). The people allied with the Market Basket upheaval identified deeply with place in how they thought of themselves and the organization and how they made sense of their roles as worker associates, customers, and community members. The Market Basket Way was anchored in the organization’s core values, past practices, and way of doing business. It was a story that could be traced back to the very first Demoulas Market that in the early 1900s served a low income, immigrant Greek community in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Can we acknowledge that paternalism, with all its faults and obfuscating effects on the commodification of labor, is often rooted in a strong sense of place, where everyday exchanges and sense of community give meaning to people? Can we also acknowledge that how paternalism is experienced depends in part on the economic context in which it operates? De Lissovoy (2018) notes that for many workers neoliberalism promotes a kind of anxious autonomy that often obscures the pathologies of “inner emptiness, lack of purpose, burnout, and feelings of superfluity within employees” (Visser, 2019, p. 51). Was it a surprise that workers found meaning in the benign paternalism and economic success of Market Basket under ATD and were willing to risk their livelihoods to avoid the ravages of equity appropriation under ASD and his management team? Was their failure to demand greater ownership and control over the company a sign of false consciousness and mystification under a paternalistic spell, or an enthusiastic embrace of something of value in an era when most Somewheres were witnessing their salaries, benefits, life expectancies, and affiliation with their community choked by a neoliberal stranglehold?

While the Market Basket upheaval is still admired by many observers on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, it is important to note that a real danger lurks in the shadows of this kind of paternalism. Were the events at Market Basket a harbinger of social and political upheavals to come, in this case under a patriarch who would not be so benign and among followers who would lose any sense of moral awareness and courage? It was only 2 years after the Market Basket saga that Donald Trump would win the U.S. Presidency, fueled by the exuberant support of working-class Somewheres loyal to an authoritarian patriarch who disparaged traditional democratic processes, calling them socialist, identity-absorbed, elitist, and a threat to his followers’ “freedom.” Unlike what happened at Market Basket, the political upheavals that occurred during the Trump era, including an attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, have been noteworthy for their explicit racist, white nationalist, and violent language and actions; and they have echoed a similar nostalgic embrace of community and family, intense loyalty to the patriarch, and disinterest in any real form of democracy or shared power.

The Market Basket case has revealed the power of patriarchy to unify and activate disillusioned and disheartened working-class people who feel a deep affiliation with place. Market Basket was their home and any real or perceived threat to it was met with strong and swift retaliation. If or when more malignant forms of patriarchy fill the hollowed-out places that neoliberalism has left at other industrial, governmental, and community organizations, to what lengths might workers and their allies go to claim what they believe is rightfully theirs on behalf of (or in collusion with) their beloved patriarch? Whom might they displace and how? And how might their actions further fragment and corrupt what remains of democracy and civil society in the United States?

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Chris Boyer, Michael Cavanaugh, Elizabeth Long Lingo, Yunus Telliel, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Michael B Elmes

Author biography

Michael B Elmes is Professor of Organization Studies at WPI in Worcester Massachusetts, USA. This paper is part of a research stream on food justice, food security, and food workers.

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