Dreams of Recognition, Fantasies of Revenge is a study of two overlapping and mutually constitutive spheres: work in the late twentieth-century United States, and the symbols, words, and images that dominated discussions of that work in mass culture. This study begins with the end of the postwar economic boom in the early 1970s and continues through the "New Economy" years at the end of the century. It charts the transformations of work and the workforce during that period, from the new legal equality won by women and people of color, the decline of the manufacturing sector, the widespread entrance of women into the paid labor force, and the growth of office and other kinds of service work. It outlines that history through the mass culture stories of the period—the dreams and fantasies that the news media, Hollywood, the television industry, and sometimes workers themselves constructed about work and workers.

This study argues that recognition and revenge were dominant themes in the mass culture stories of work in this period. It demonstrates the ways in which, in the midst of upheavals in the work force, workers were consistently misrecognized; and how in the face of that confusion, workers of all sorts waged struggles for both cultural and legal recognition. At the same time, revenge—feared and hoped-for, imagined and real—constituted another frame through which workers were understood, as their long-held expectations, like increasing prosperity and corporate paternalism, were dashed. This project begins with an examination of the concern about the "blue-collar blues" in the 1970s and continues through the apprehension about uprisings in the "pink-collar" world of secretaries, the alarm about disgruntled "white-collar" workers causing an epidemic of workplace violence, and the campaign to punish welfare recipients (who lacked collars of any color) believed not to be working hard enough. Real struggles by workers for recognition and real fears about their desire for revenge gave rise to stories built around those themes, deeply shaping the everyday chatter about work in late twentieth century mass culture.