CULTURE ON TRIAL? A CASE STUDY OF DISPUTE (CALIFORNIA)

This research is an extended case study of conflict and dispute between minority and non-minority employees of a city/county welfare department in California. The study traces the dispute from its origin in intergroup tensions arising from increased minority hiring consequent to the Civil Rights Laws of the 1960s, through periods of escalation and deescalation, to its entry into the legal system for settlement and a consequent appeal of the initial court decision to a California appelate court.;More specifically, the research highlights the inability of the Court to resolve the major issues underlying the dispute. It also delineates the dynamics involved in the breach of the job ceiling in the Welfare Department which include: cooperation between minority employees, racist attitudes as barriers to minority employment and/or promotion, efforts by non-racists Whites to hold on to their jobs, and bureaucratic forces of self-preservation. Finally, the study shows the ways in which "culture," in both the classificatory and processual sense, became an integral element in the dispute, the legal proceedings, and the final decision by the Judge. The research is illustrative of: dispute settlement; social inequality, in terms of both the staffing and functioning of a welfare institution; attempted institutional change; and the differential perceptions of "culture" in contemporary American society--especially as these different understandings are brought together and clash in an American court of law.;Through the use of the extended case method, it is shown that the formally delineated court case is linked to a variety of ongoing social processes in contemporary American society--processes related to equal opportunity for jobs; retention of employment once attained; equality of service for welfare clients; discrimination/racism; inter-minority cohesion and cooperation; unionism; a procedural and substantive legal "subculture"; and an anthropological/social science procedural and substantive "subculture." Examination of these linkages shows that they collectively reflect a major stress point in American society--the clash of forces working for and against equal employment opportunities and equality of institutional services for all members of society.