ABSTRACT
The historical and comparative study of the identity and cultural image of dock labour during casualism provokes two questions: Was it global? and what did dockers in their mental pictures and conceptions of reality in, say, India, Tanzania, Palestine, Liverpool and New York, have in common? Cultural construction happened at many sites-at the work-place, within organisational groupings such as gangs and unions; in places of social recreation such as bars and pubs; in street confrontations with authorities, and most importantly in the neighbourhood and at the docker's home. Ethnic, racial and religious divisions were a dominant feature in the evolution of dockers as a complex occupational community, and as a non-unitary occupational culture. While ethnicity and nationalism made their impact through dockers' origins, organisation and work experience, the physical aspect of the dockers' cultural formation originated in the nature of work, in the task demands it exerted and in the high emotional involvement that they produced.
