The World We Have Lost: Reflections on Varieties of Masculinity at Work

Abstract

The focus on gender in and around the process of deindustrialisation is a very welcome development. The academic attention paid to the decline of male dominated places of work in part can be seen as a continuation of industrial/work sociology's longstanding interest in working-class industrial workers. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that, notwithstanding a critical gendered account of deindustrialization that pays more attention to women, there remains a need to understand more fully the subtle processes of male gender construction within industrial work. Arguably what has not been fully accounted for are the subtle, complex, and varied ways in which younger males became fully fledged men through a shopfloor ritual, social and cultural transmission, and rites of passage. The article makes two main points. Firstly, it reflects on the notion of care in work and the idea of a moral order of the workplace wherein the workplace acted as an extended caring family. I want to think about this social form through my own research as well as that of other scholars in a variety of industrial workplaces, and also by drawing on workplace autobiography. Secondly, the piece highlights the continued attraction of an older one-dimensional image of male industrial work. In studying this aspect of workplace masculinity, we might be better placed to think about the nature of gendered loss associated with mass industrial closure over time and how in-work socialization patterns have been dramatically transformed. In the process this account will add great depth to our understanding of deindustrialization and industrial culture more generally.