This book presents an accessible and fascinating account of theoretical debates around identity and work, recent empirical trends and methodological arguments concerning the role of oral testimony and its interpretation. Focusing on three occupational sectors in particular teachers, bank workers and the railway industry it also presents an argument that is both more general than this and theoretically and analytically wide-ranging. The book explores some important questions: how are workers, both in the past and the present juncture, socialised into work cultures? What are the cultural and structural differences with regard the world of work across class, gender, and generation? What are the historical conditions of which these differences play a part? How is the idea of work found in a range of representations, from artistic production to sociological discourse expressed and explored? The development of concepts such as 'structures of feeling' and affect, and the weaving in of historical and visual material, make the book important to a wide range of readers including ethnographers, cultural sociologists and narrative researchers. In turn, this book offers an authoritative and sophisticated summary and analysis of work and identity and is an important intervention into mainstream sociology concerns.

Autorentext

JOHN KIRK Senior Research Fellow at the Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University, UK. He is author of Class, Culture and Social Change: On the Trail of the Working Class, and The British Working Class in the Twentieth Century: Film, Literature and Television. He is currently completing a book on European identity communities. CHRISTINE WALL Senior Research Fellow at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Westminster and Deputy Director of ProBE (Centre for Research into the Production of the Built Environment). She is currently Principal Investigator on the Leverhulme Trust funded research project 'Constructing Post-War Britain: building workers' stories 1950-70'.

Inhalt
Introduction Charting Historical Change: Work in the US and UK During the Twentieth Century Narratives of Labour and Labour Lost: Working Life and its Representations Identity in Question and the Place of Work Working at the Chalk-face: Articulating the 'teacherly-self' and Educational Change Teller, Seller, Union Activist: Class Formation and Changing Bank Worker Identities Tracking the Place of Work Identity on the Rails Something to Show For it: The Place of Work Memorabilia in Three Occupations Narrating Work Identity: Oral Testimony and the Place of Anecdotes Conclusion References