Tim Strangleman

The Nostalgia for Permanence at Work? The End of Work and its Commentators:

This article examines a contemporary trend in the sociology of work that is labelled here the ‘end of work’ debate after Jeremy Rifkins book of the same name. It explores this trend, suggesting that marked similarities exist between a range of authors in Europe and North America who propose that work regimes and the meaning derived from them are changing fundamentally. This literature is then placed in the context of an older canon on decline in work and employment. Using the insights of newer qualitative studies that have emerged over the last decade it is suggested that much of the ‘end of work’ type of writing over-generalises a complex situation, suggesting that sociology needs to incorporate macro theorisation with detailed empirical research if it is to properly understand changes in the contemporary world of work.

Knowledge, technology and nursing: The case of NHS Direct

NHS Direct is a relatively new, nurse-based, 24-hour health advice line run as part of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). The service delivers health advice remotely via the telephone. A central aspect of the service is the attempt to provide a standard level of health advice regardless of time, space or the background of the nurse. At the heart of this attempt is an innovative health software called CLINICAL ASSESSMENT SYSTEM (CAS). Using a number of qualitative methods, this article highlights how the interaction between the nursing staff and this technology is key to the service. The technology is based on management’s attempt to standardize and control the caller-nurse relationship. Thus the software can be seen as part of an abstract rationality, whereas how it is deployed by nurses is based on a practical rationality that places practice and experience first and sees the technology and protocols as tools.

Networks, Place and Identities in Post‐industrial Mining Communities

This article engages with the theme of the symposium by examining the role and meaning of networks in the context of a former coal-mining region in the UK. Mining communities have historically been noted by sociologists and historians for their strong social ties and extended families as well as for forming the bedrock of discussion of class and place. In the wake of the closure programme of the 1980s and early 1990s, such identities have been fundamentally challenged. The notion of networks is explored in four distinct but ultimately interrelated senses: occupational/work networks; networks around place; networks of class relations; and, finally, networks as relationships of family, kin and generation. Material presented here is based on research that investigated four former coalfield communities in the UK after closure, focusing on a former pit village in the North East of England. It begins with a discussion of community and the coalfield within sociological and historical literatures. It then proceeds to discuss the changing nature of community and social networks post-coal by focusing on the experience of two separate cohorts of former workers. It concludes by arguing for a historical understanding of the patterning of networks. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.

Ways of (not) Seeing Work: The Visual As a Blind Spot in WES?

The Work, Employment and Society conference held in Nottingham during September 2001 (WES 01) attracted over 320 delegates from all over the world who attended some 200 papers organized into a dozen streams. One of the most popular and well attended of these streams was entitled ‘Representations of Labour’, which spanned six sessions over the first two days of the event. Of the papers in these sessions, seven made use of visual aspects of work and employment through a variety of media. The range of work in this area was captured in one session that included a paper from Carol Wolkowitz on photographing work, a second presentation combining a photographer who worked with a poet, and a final discussion by Vivian Price, a US filmmaker who showed a video on the portrayal of female construction workers. What was interesting was that the initial call for papers for WES 01 had not specifically mentioned the ‘visual’ or ‘representation’ at all. It was only as the abstracts started to arrive in numbers that it became clear that there was a coherent stream to be built around issues of visual representations. In part what had inspired several contributions, in the absence of a formal stream, was the choice of pictures on the conference poster, which combined text with photographs by Langdon Coburn and Sebastião Salgado. During the conference a popular exhibition was staged of Salgado’s work from his ‘Terra: Struggle of the Landless’ collection, alongside an installation by Kay Syrad and Gordon MacDonald entitled ‘Making Work Visible’ (see Figure 1).

Work Identity in Crisis? Rethinking the Problem of Attachment and Loss at Work

The identity and meaning people obtain from their work is a central issue in contemporary sociology. There is a debate between those suggesting that we have witnessed either great rupture or continuity in the way employees engage with their jobs. This article reframes the question posed, developing a critical theoretical framework for understanding narratives of change derived from a range of theorists using concepts of nostalgia, tradition and generations. This framework is then used to read a set of work/life history interviews and autobiographical material from mainly older male workers in the UK railway industry who lament the erosion of their workplace culture and the sustainable moral order of the past. The article seeks to move beyond dismissing such accounts as simple nostalgia and instead suggests that these narratives can be understood as valuable organic critiques of industrial and social change emergent from work culture.

In Search of the Sociology of Work Past, Present and Future

This paper traces relations between the study of work and the evolution of British sociology as an academic discipline. This reveals broad trajectories of marginalization, as the study of work becomes less central to Sociology as a discipline; increasing fragmentation of divergent approaches to the study of work; and — as a consequence of both — a narrowing of the sociological vision for the study of work. Our paper calls for constructive dialogue across different approaches to the study of work and a re-invigoration of sociological debate about work and — on this basis — for in-depth interdisciplinary engagement enabling us to build new approaches that will allow us to study work in all its diversity and complexity.

Work and society : sociological approaches, themes and methods

Work and Society is an important new text about the sociology of work and employment. It provides both undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, business and politics, with a firm and enjoyable foundation to this fascinating area of sociology, giving comprehensive coverage of traditional areas of the sub-discipline as well as new trends and developments. The book is divided into three complementary and interconnected sections - investigating work, work and social change and understanding work. These sections allow readers to explore themes, issues and approaches by examining how sociologists have thought about, and researched work and how the sub-discipline has been influenced by wider society itself. Novel features include separate chapters on researching work, domestic work, unemployment and work, and the representation of work in literary and visual media.

Risk and the Responsible Health Consumer: The Problematics of Entitlement among Callers to NHS Direct

NHS Direct, the 24-hour telephone helpline, uses modern communications technology to offer easier and faster access to advice about health, illness and the NHS so that people are better able to care for themselves and their families. In-depth interviews with callers to the service show that they bring with them discourses of the ‘deserving’ and ‘ undeserving’ familiar in the provision of other welfare services. The figure of the ‘time-waster’ is the NHS equivalent of the welfare ‘scrounger’, acting as a mechanism to problematize entitlement. NHS Direct dispels such fears and legitimizes demand. At the same time, ever-rising levels of service use constitute a threat to what callers value most about it.

Sociological Futures and the Sociology of Work

This essay is a response to the call for a discussion about future trends in sociology by focusing broadly on the sub-discipline of work and employment. In doing so the piece directly engages with earlier interventions made by John Scott (2005) and Gayle Letherby (2005) in Sociological Research Online. It examines the current state of the sociology of work by charting its foundation and subsequent development. It suggests that there is currently a problem in the area caused in part by intellectual trends and fragmentation. It argues that those sociologists working in the field need to engage collectively in a reflective process to refocus the subject combining elements from its ‘golden age’ as well as from more contemporary sources.

Smokestack nostalgia, ruin porn or working-class obituary: The role and meaning of deindustrial representation

This article explores some of the visual imagery that has emerged from the process of deindustrialization. It seeks to understand the similarities and differences between post-industrial photography collected in book format in both North America and Europe and the critics of this genre. It makes sense of the value and meaning of this publishing trend and what it says about its market. While it would be easy to dismiss this material as “simply nostalgic,” representing another manifestation of “smokestack nostalgia,” this article suggests that we need a more nuanced account which asks questions about the continuing desire to reflect back and find value in the industrial past. In so doing it makes a contribution to a wider critical account of the role of cultural approaches to interpreting industrial change and working-class history.