DOI•
Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs
01 Dec 2011-Iss: 32, pp 5-8
About: The article was published on 2011-12-01 and is currently open access. It has received 1252 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Working class.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue for the need to include an intersectional perspective in the field of working life research, especially by placing issues of exploitation, distribution, and production at the core of intersectional analyses.
Abstract: A central challenge to gender studies during the last 15 years has been the expanding field of intersectionality. The use of intersectional perspectives within working life research has explored how class, sexuality, and race difference affected women’s position in the labor market. The aim of this article is to argue for the need of including an intersectional perspective in the field of working life research. By taking our point of departure in the work of feminist scholars Joan Acker, Miriam Glucksmann, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, we argue that an intersectional perspective can expand as well as challenge working life research. But we also argue that working life research in many ways can contribute to the field of intersectional studies, especially by placing issues of exploitation, distribution, and production at the core of intersectional analyses.
21 citations
Cites background or methods from "Learning to Labour: How Working Cla..."
...class analysis explored formations of class identity in terms of social construction and as a political and ideological subject (Willis 1977; Ambjörnsson 1988; Horgby 1993)....
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...Inspired by Marxist theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, as well as historians such as E.P. Thompson, Marxist class analysis explored formations of class identity in terms of social construction and as a political and ideological subject (Willis 1977; Ambjörnsson 1988; Horgby 1993)....
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Dissertation•
01 Sep 2016
TL;DR: In this article, a cross-cultural ethnographic study of Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) centres in the UK and The Gambia is presented, focusing on the lives, narratives and practices of young men and YMCA staff in each location.
Abstract: Founded in London in 1844, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) has spread across the world, becoming integrated into state programmes of social reform and driving a development discourse that links socially productive youth into economic moralities of transformation. I trace the circulation of these ideas through a multi-sited, cross-cultural ethnographic study of Young Men's Christian Associatin (YMCA) centres in the UK and The Gambia, focussing on YMCA programmes that operate transnationally, implementing global youth-oriented policy in local centres linked by bilateral partnerships. I follow these transnational linkages from Sussex Central YMCA (based in Brighton and Hove, England) where I have strong links as worker and volunteer, to a similarly sized centre in Banjul, Gambia, creating a cross-cultural analytical framework through which to explore the experiences of young men participating in their programmes. Using these contrasting contexts, I focus on the lives, narratives and practices of young men and YMCA staff in each location, analysing how YMCA programmes foster a version of transnational masculinity that combines economic rationality with the spiritual principles derived from Protestant Christianity. I explore this in reference to an often implicit, idealised form of YMCA masculinity based around strenght of 'mind, body and spirit', known as the 'Whole Man'. I suggest that the 'Whole Man' operates as an idealised motif of manhood within YMCA centres, fostering notions of self-sacrifice, empathy and embodied dynamism that is reproduced at the YMCA through 'secular rituals'. I trace how these masculine subjectivities interact with localised conceptions of manhood and youth in each location, focussing on the interplay of differing versions, conceptualisations and practices of masculine behaviour in each location. This thesis is generated by the friction between self-help models and actual lived realities, frictions which I hope to show represent the limitations of totalising models of coherent subjectivity based on moral principles.
21 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: Teixeira et al. as discussed by the authors examined and compared the existing processes of corporate capture related to Boeing and Embraer in the regional training systems of Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A., and São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil.
Abstract: In today’s globalized world, the power of influence of multinational corporations over the state and society is significant. One particular area is related to how MNCs have influenced states and public educational institutions in order to shape their educational agendas and training initiatives. Many scholars have conceptualized such an influence as processes of corporate capture. In this dissertation, I examine and compare the existing processes of corporate capture related to Boeing and Embraer in the regional training systems of Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A., and São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil. I also investigate how their distinctive state forms and their forms of governance account for differences in the evolution of such processes. This research, drawing from Neo-Marxist theories of the state and labor geography, critically engages with FDI studies and the GPN literature. Methodologically, this dissertation is based on qualitative crossnational comparative methods. Fieldwork was undertaken between 2014 and 2017, when fiftynine semi-structured interviews were conducted with state managers, representatives from educational institutions, not-for-profit organizations, and firms, among others. In this research I develop two major arguments. First, I argue that the evolution of processes of corporate capture in the regional training systems of São José dos Campos and Charleston is intrinsically connected to their accumulation strategies and state forms. However, such an evolution happens through different mechanisms and is related to different state scales. Second, I turn my attention to the local forms of governance of Charleston and São José dos Campos, claiming that they reinforce processes of corporate capture at the local scale. I argue that their tendency to reinforce processes of corporate capture in training has to be comprehended alongside with their state form and type of state selectivity. The State, Aerospace Multinational Corporations and Variegated Forms of Corporate Capture in Regional Training Systems: A Cross-National Comparative Study Between Charleston, SC, U.S.A. and São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil by Tiago Roberto Alves Teixeira B.S., Universidade Estadual do Paraná, 2010 M.A., Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”, 2013 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography. Syracuse University December 2019 Copyright © Tiago Roberto Alves Teixeira 2019 All Rights Reserved
21 citations
Cites background from "Learning to Labour: How Working Cla..."
...Marxist and neo-Marxist theorists have greatly contributed to understanding the role of education in our society (Bowles & Gintis 1976; Willis 1977; Giroux 1980; Reay 2018)....
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...Marxist and neo-Marxist theorists have greatly contributed to understanding the role of education in our society (Bowles & Gintis 1976; Willis 1977; Giroux 1980; Reay 2018)....
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...Another important role of schools explored by the authors is related to how schools reproduce class inequality (Bowles & Gintis 1976; Willis 1977)....
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...One of the major contributions concerns how the values learned at school correspond to the values required at the workplace, and how schools influence working class students into working class jobs (Bowles & Gintis 1976; Willis 1977)....
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Dissertation•
01 Jun 2016
TL;DR: This article explored the impact of deindustrialisation and the subsequent move to a post-industrial 'new economy' on skilled working class men and their sons and grandsons, finding that men did not lose their engagement with their trade learning and hands on work.
Abstract: This thesis addresses the impact of deindustrialisation and the subsequent move to a post-industrial 'new economy' on skilled working class men and their sons and grandsons. The decline in manufacturing and growth of service-based jobs has prompted many social theorists to argue working-class men’s ability to construct meaningful careers and identities is becoming ever more limited. This thesis explores 27 career history interviews collected in South-East England from 13 former Royal Dockyard tradesmen and 14 of these men’s sons and grandsons. Closed in 1984, Chatham’s naval shipbuilding and repair yard had been the major employer for generations of men and their families for over 400 years. To explore this generational significance and consider the long-term, residual effect of deindustrialisation on male work identities a mutigenerational sample was used. In the process of doing thematic analysis, it became clear that cross-generational themes were being continued and reinterpreted by these men. Three intergenerational themes were central to the men’s explanations of how they tackled transition in their working lives. The first theme ‘getting on’ reflects evidence that the men’s career motivations and attitudes were primarily focused on upward career mobility and better job security. The second theme ‘personal adaptability’ was the men strategy of adapting skills and embodying new work identities to actualize their desire to ‘get on’. However in the transition to post-industrial employment, men did not lose their engagement with their trade learning and hands on work. The third theme ‘a craft outlook’ illustrates that men developed unpaid craft projects, to retain a ‘linear life narrative’ (Sennett, 1998), which gave meaning to their evolving careers and lives. These craft projects also created channels through which fathers, sons and grandsons talked about their growing and changing relationships with each other.
In light of these themes, this study generates four main findings. First although men had to deal with change in their careers this did not cause a rupture in their working identities. Instead they used powerful life themes (Savickas, 1997), to take ownership of their own working lives. So they navigated deindustrialisation and employment change in a manner that left many now viewing these transitions as positive in either personal and/or economic terms. Second, class and occupation were still fundamental to men’s identity. But, unlike career writers who suggest that a self-driven career is a middle class, professional notion this study found these men did construct sophisticated career narratives. That incorporated both their private and paid work, akin to Mirvis and Hall’s (1994) notion of a ‘protean career’. Third, the PhD finds that neither sample experienced a working class male crisis due to feeling they could not satisfy traditional gendered identities and masculine practices. Instead, intergenerational transmission was based on each generation making something of what had been passed to them, a process Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame (1997: 93) term the ‘transmission of equivalents’. The replication of occupations was not the desire of any generation in this study. Finally, this study finds that craft had a continued and evolving meaning for the majority of men. Craft gave men practices on which to structure a linear life narrative, produce familial solidarity and create a powerful labour ethic of performing quality work. Overall findings from this research challenge the idea that most men were/are passive victims of industrial change. By contrast, the majority of men in this study managed to carefully adapt to and navigate the transition from industrial to post-industrial work.
Whereas this study only speaks for a section of the skilled working class, these findings suggest that the current literature needs to be modified in three ways. First, the manual working classes should not be considered a homogeneous or static group when responding to deindustrialisation. The skilled men in this study demonstrate a distinct experience of work transitions. Second, the experiences of the men were mediated by the regional employment context of the south-east, whereas the current literature is largely based on relatively isolated communities in the North of England or Celtic fringes. This studies results therefore questions the validity of generalising the impacts of this process at a national or international level. Third, unlike static studies of geographically located collective community experience, this research has followed generations of families. These individuals’ career stories reflect the important accounts of men who strategically moved away or commute to work outside these former industrial areas. Overall the omission of these factors has led to an over passive account of deindustrialisation and the move to the new economy, which robs many working-class men of their individuality and active agency.
21 citations
Cites background from "Learning to Labour: How Working Cla..."
...However, whilst the young men in Willis (1977) study were fatalistically preparing themselves for going into low skilled manual jobs in manufacturing like their fathers, such jobs had now become scarce in this area....
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...A common theme in this research is that the decline in industrial work has led to a rupture in what it means to be a man in these former industrial communities (Walkerdine and Jimenez 2012; Nixon, 2009; Nayak, 2003 and Willis 1977, 1984)....
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...In many ways displaying similar ‘anti school’ attitudes and behaviours to ‘the lads’ in Paul Willis (1977) classic study Learning to Labour....
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...Studies on former industrial communities commonly cite a separation between the residual image of physical work and the jobs open to this generation of working-class men (Walkerdine and Jimenez, 2012; Nixon, 2009; Nayak, 2003 and Willis 1977, 1984)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on three studies of social class change among the middle classes undertaken in London over the last 25 years to reflect on the changing values expressed by respondents to school choice and argue that the consequence has been to diminish the amount of choice and ensure that distance from school becomes the sole arbiter of access to most popular schools.
Abstract: In this paper we draw on three studies of social class change amongst the middle classes undertaken in London over the last 25 years to reflect on the changing values expressed by respondents to school choice. We argue that there has been a hardening of attitudes to school performance and a loss of middle-class autonomy towards schooling. Increasingly we note a concern to navigate the few areas of privilege in a school system designed for working class children but now expected to cater for a vastly increased and educationally-anxious middle class. We specifically address the way in which choice of school has become enshrined in legislation but has itself become constrained by the lack of places in popular schools. We argue that the consequence has been to diminish the amount of choice and ensure that ‘distance from school’ becomes the sole arbiter of access to most popular schools. Thus an attempt at widening access to education has in effect restricted it to those able to access the housing markets near...
21 citations
Cites methods from "Learning to Labour: How Working Cla..."
...This applied not just to the working classes who, as Paul Willis (1977) noted, did not so much fail in the education system but rather were failed by it; increasingly the middle classes’ ‘place in the sun’ was threatened by the new and wider culture of aspiration and New Labour was increasingly focused on this group....
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...This applied not just to the working classes who, as Paul Willis (1977) noted, did not so much fail in the education system but rather were failed by it; increasingly the middle classes’ ‘place in the sun’ was threatened by the new and wider culture of aspiration and New Labour was increasingly…...
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...Unlike the other areas where children were schooled at their local primary school and the ‘crisis’ came at eleven with the transfer to secondary schools, in Islington a migration to the private sector began at seven as the realisation dawned that they would need to pass the competitive examinations to London’s elite private ‘public’ schools.11 Accordingly, a well-developed private ‘circuit’ of preparatory schools designed to feed the children into the preferred private schools – Highgate, Channing, St Paul’s, City of London – has developed....
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References
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01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: The concept of community of practice was not born in the systems theory tradition as discussed by the authors, but it has its roots in attempts to develop accounts of the social nature of human learning inspired by anthropology and social theory.
Abstract: The concept of community of practice was not born in the systems theory tradition. It has its roots in attempts to develop accounts of the social nature of human learning inspired by anthropology and social theory (Lave, 1988; Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984; Foucault, 1980; Vygotsky, 1978). But the concept of community of practice is well aligned with the perspective of systems traditions. A community of practice itself can be viewed as a simple social system. And a complex social system can be viewed as constituted by interrelated communities of practice. In this essay I first explore the systemic nature of the concept at these two levels. Then I use this foundation to look at the applications of the concept, some of its main critiques, and its potential for developing a social discipline of learning.
1,082 citations
Book•
27 Jun 2011
TL;DR: In this article, the Flatlands of Oakland and the Youth Control Complex are discussed. But the focus is on the role of black youth in the criminal justice system and community institutions.
Abstract: Preface Acknowledgments Part I Hypercriminalization 1 Dreams Deferred: The Patterns of Punishment in Oakland 2 The Flatlands of Oakland and the Youth Control Complex 3 The Labeling Hype: Coming of Age in the Era of Mass Incarceration 4 The Coupling of Criminal Justice and Community Institutions Part II Consequences 5 "Dummy Smart": Misrecognition, Acting Out, and "Going Dumb" 6 Proving Manhood: Masculinity as a Rehabilitative Tool 7 Guilty by Association: Acting White or Acting Lawful? Conclusion: Toward a Youth Support Complex Appendix: Beyond Jungle-Book Tropes Notes References Index About the Author
909 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults and finds that for them, the transition from K to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to...
Abstract: This article examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults. For them, the transition to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to ...
663 citations
TL;DR: In this article, student engagement research, policy, and practice must become more nuanced and less formulaic, and the ensuing review is structured accordingly, guided in part by social-ecological analysis and social-cultural theory.
Abstract: Student engagement research, policy, and practice are even more important in today’s race-to-the top policy environment. With a priority goal of postsecondary completion with advanced competence, today’s students must be engaged longer and more deeply. This need is especially salient for students attending schools located in segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods and isolated rural communities. Here, engagement research, policy, and practice must become more nuanced and less formulaic, and the ensuing review is structured accordingly. Guided in part by social-ecological analysis and social-cultural theory, engagement is conceptualized as a dynamic system of social and psychological constructs as well as a synergistic process. This conceptualization invites researchers, policymakers, and school-community leaders to develop improvement models that provide a more expansive, engagement-focused reach into students’ family, peer, and neighborhood ecologies.
528 citations
TL;DR: The Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (LISA) as discussed by the authors used a mixed-methods approach, combining longitudinal, interdisciplinary, qualitative, and quantitative approaches to document adaptation patterns of 407 recently arrived immigrant youth from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico over the course of five years.
Abstract: Background/Context: Newcomer immigrant students are entering schools in the United States in unprecedented numbers. As they enter new school contexts, they face a number of challenges in their adjustment. Previous literature suggested that relationships in school play a particularly crucial role in promoting socially competent behavior in the classroom and in fostering academic engagement and school performance. Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the role of school-based relationships in engagement and achievement in a population of newcomer immigrant students. Research Design: The Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (LISA) used a mixed-methods approach, combining longitudinal, interdisciplinary, qualitative, and quantitative approaches to document adaptation patterns of 407 recently arrived immigrant youth from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico over the course of five years. Based on data from the last year of the study, we examine how the role of relationships mediates newcomers’ challenges with academic engagement and performance. We identify factors that account for patterns of academic engagement and achievement, including country of origin, gender, maternal education, English language proficiency, and school-based relationships. Findings: Multiple regression analyses suggest that supportive school-based relationships strongly contribute to both the academic engagement and the school performance of the par
356 citations