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Acknowledgments

The people who enabled me to complete this study are conspicuous in my memory, though only a few of their names will appear in these pages. Foremost among them are the men and women with whom I worked and talked during those torturously long days in the field and the evenings of replenishment that followed. Their willingness to spend time with a curious, imposing, and often confused gabacho infused my research with greater insight and purpose than it would otherwise have had. Although I must preserve their anonymity because of the vulnerable positions they occupy, their lives and their work are chronicled in this study. I am sure that some of them still wonder how anyone can become a doctor by cutting lettuce. This is the evidence.

Appreciation must also be offered to the union officials, growers, and executives who provided information valuable to the study. Union and management alike questioned my purpose but their cooperation allowed me to more accurately weigh competing arguments and interpretations concerning the dynamics of lettuce production and industrial agriculture.

During the field portion of the research, Juana Franklin, Rich Carbajal, Frank Bardacke, Julie Miller, and Bob Buttner were invaluable in helping me cope with the hardest work I had ever done. Their kind advice and condolence made it possible to keep going—even when my back and feet said it was time to quit.


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Intellectually, my debts are varied and numerous. First in line is Arnold S. Feldman. Much beyond what was called for, Ackie enlightened, endured, encouraged, and ignored me at all the right times. His prophecies—"you will get a grant, you will finish the study, you will get a job"—have all been borne out, though I tended to disbelieve him all along the way. Without doubt his incredibly high standards in training and his demands for excellence have made those achievements possible. I know I cannot discharge my debt to him, just as I am sure I will continue to ask for favors.

My debt to Bill Friedland is a long-standing one. Through Bill, I came to appreciate the sociological perspective as an undergraduate. This was no small accomplishment since I took only one sociology course. His tutelage, always centered on the need to develop a praxis of sociology, captured my interest and guided me through a number of fascinating studies. I also thank Bill for his advice to "get out of California if you're going to go to graduate school." I did, but decided after several Chicago winters to renew my research on southwestern agriculture.

I was fortunate in having the manuscript read in its entirety by John Walton, Allan Schnaiberg, and Howie Becker. They all provided a great deal of criticism, support, and professional socialization along the way. I would also like to thank William J. Wilson, Michael Burawoy, Paul Lubeck, Bob Alford, Chuck Tilly, Mayer Zald, and Michael Kearney for their help at various stages of the research and writing. Many of my friends listened, criticized, questioned, and complained while I went through this process. In particular, I toast Whit Soule, William Finlay, Sam Gilmore, Ann Fredricks, Tim Kappel, and Joy Charlton. Another reason for listing them here is so that I can say later that I knew them when they were just graduate students. Sheila Wilder undertook the enormously difficult task of word-processing the manuscript and did it with the dispatch, patience, and good humor that is her trademark. However, a certain computer company, which for reasons of legal liability shall go unnamed, has lost me forever as a customer due to the last-minute destruction of several disks by one of its expensive machines.


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The National Science Foundation (NSF #78-25914) and the Graduate School of Northwestern University aided enormously with grants to support this study. Of course, neither those institutions nor the people listed above are responsible for the evidence or conclusions presented in this work. I alone take responsibility for them.

Finally, the writing and revision process could not have been completed without the steadfast support of my best friend, Rosanna Hertz. She persistently argued that I could not overlook the salience of gender and family in the organization of work and labor markets and pushed me in the direction of a literature which I, as a "class-first" analyst, had succeeded in ignoring. The evidence for how convincing (and right) she was is clear throughout this study.


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