I’d been told on a previous visit (at the wrong time to see any fish) that there are different rhythms to the fishing: the smallest boats come in at around 6.30pm and the larger ones which fish at night arrive back before dawn. ‘Are you arriving or leaving?’ I ask a man on a boat with a light on and the engine chugging. ‘Stiamo per partire. We’re just off,’ he replies. But there’s time for a chat.

I’m getting used to the topics and tone of these exchanges. There’s a tension in the air as the boat is readied for departure in the dark, and the weather, which is mild and calm for now, is an ever-present and unpredictable companion. They take the small boat. It’s just one of so many different judgements to be made, even before they set off. The boat is exposed and has just enough room for the two fishermen and a decent haul. ‘We don’t have higher-level qualifications,’ the skipper says, ‘but there’s a lot of skill in all this.’ He talks about the nets and how to manage them, the boat’s instruments and how to interpret them, and of course how to read the weather and decide when it’s time to return to shore, and how to manage the crew in times of danger and ensure everyone gets back safely. Then there’s the difficulty of getting a good price for what you’ve caught, even to get people to appreciate the difference between fish caught like this and those that are farmed or imported. It’s a hard way to make a living, and a dying tradition, he says.

‘What time will you be back in the morning?’ I ask
‘At 4.30 or 5am,’ he replies.
‘I’ll try and come.’
‘Do you struggle to get up early then?’ He’s casually making a distinction between us.
‘In somma…’

Another fisherman who’s not going out that night but who’s hanging around the docks says: ‘I’ll probably be around too. I can’t sleep on land.’

I resolve to make an effort. With an early night, I can manage an early start, I think. I set the alarm for just after 4…

Thursday, 2 December
It takes until nearly half past 4 to drag myself from the bed but I’m back at the docks by 10 to 5. The boats are already in.

‘We came back at 4’, the skipper I was talking to last night explains, ‘I didn’t like what the weather was doing.’ They’re washing octopus, squid, sole, prawns, and the odd scorfano (scorpion fish) on board, then packing them into open polystyrene boxes and lifting them ashore. The sale has already been arranged, and there’s a man waiting. He produces a set of scales from his van, and there’s some mumbled negotiation.

‘So what now?’ I ask the skipper. ‘Is your working day done?’
‘For now’, he replies. His mate will clean the boat. ‘Do you want some sole?’
‘Sure!’ I get given what feels like 2 or 3 kilos. ‘Thank you!’
‘When there’s enough, we can give some away.’
‘So when do you next go out?’
‘Friday,’ he says.
‘Maybe see you Saturday morning then, but a bit earlier I think!’

I go home and back to bed, starting the day again a couple of hours later – a day in which I know I’ll have a good dinner!

Saturday, 4 December
It was pretty windy last night and I wonder if there will have been much fishing. But I decide to get up and go and see anyway. This turns out to be the coldest – and earliest – morning I’ve known since I’ve been here. 5 degrees, a street sign tells me, at 4.30am. I don’t see the boat from earlier in the week but there’s another, larger one just in.

‘How was the night?’ I ask.
‘Fredda. Cold.’
‘How much colder is it at sea?’
‘Un bel po. Quite a bit.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Vicino. Tempo brutto. Close by. Bad weather.’

The man I am talking to looks and sounds exhausted. It was a rough night after at the end of a long week. And the catch was small. It takes less than 5 minutes to load it into the waiting van for it to be taken to the wholesale market.

I’m about to head home when I notice there’s a caffè open on the Via Roma opposite the docks. I go in and order a caffè latte.

‘Do you always open a 5am?’ I ask.
‘No, at 4.30,’ replies a very professional-looking barrista.
‘My goodness, that is an early start every day,’ I remark.
‘You get used to it,’ he smiles.

I drink a perfect coffee then go home, gratefully, and back to bed.

Dawn Lyon, Pun Ngai, Carol Wolkowitz, Anna Pollert, Miriam Glucksmann

The republication in 2009 of Miriam Glucksmann’s ethnography of factory work, Women on the Line (originally published in 1982 under the pseudonym, Ruth Cavendish) was the starting point for a panel discussion on researching gender and work at the Work, Employment and Society Conference, which took place in Brighton in September 2010. I approached Miriam with the idea for this panel as on rereading Women on the Line, which I first encountered as an undergraduate in the late 1980s, I was struck by how relevant it remains for current understandings of work, including the ways in which configurations of gender, class, race and age make for different experiences of work. The original text is unchanged but the republished book includes a new introduction and additional images. (There is a discussion of the republication with Miriam here.) The photographs taken at the time of the original study indicate how habitual ethnographic practice included photography and a keen attention to the visual ahead of ‘visual sociology’ developing as a novel form of sociological enquiry, and the inclusion of these photographs in the new edition of the book gives the reader glimpses into factory space, and the age and ethnicity of the women workers. In addition, Women on the Line is interesting as a form of sociological writing that is a narrative account of factory life but one that also makes a theoretical contribution ‘between the lines’ to analysing work, and Miriam reflects critically on the gain of formalising sociological concepts in the new introduction.

Miriam Glucksmann

Miriam Glucksmann (University of Essex) started the panel presentations with a reflection on the global changes in women’s work since the publication of Women on the Line. For more than 30 years, she has researched work, historical and contemporary, local and global, and with a range of methods. She remains centrally concerned with how and why work is undertaken in different socio-economic modes (paid, unpaid, formal, informal etc), and the shifts and connections across these modes in time and space. Glucksmann set out the context of understanding women’s work in the late 1970s, and the problem of the women’s movement’s failure to attract working class women which is what prompted her to leave her teaching job and work in the factory she later wrote about (so not something she intended as an ethnography at the outset). With reference to her recent research on ready-made food, she highlighted how class and gender configurations have changed over the past 3 decades, with looser gender divisions in workplaces in the 21st century, and the increased presence of both men and women migrant workers in assembly-line work.

Anna Pollert (University of the West of England), the second speaker, discussed her own ethnography of women factory workers, Girls, Wives, Factory Lives (1981), which was a fascinating counterpoint to Glucksmann’s. Motivated both by politics (socialist feminist) and pedagogy (to respond to the lack of books available for teaching at the time), Pollert’s study was an explicit piece of research, based on (non-participant) observation in which she sought to analyse wider issues of political economy through the micro-level of the workplace. She discussed the unstable, unfolding and contradictory nature of becoming a woman worker through the intersections of class, gender and age, in which there is both subordination and potential for change; and drew attention to the ordinary, the unspoken, and the unheard, themes which remain relevant in her more recent research on vulnerable, low-paid, unorganised workers.

The panel continued with a contribution from Pun Ngai (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), author of Made in China (2005), an ethnographic study of young migrant women engaged in factory work in urban China. Both as a researcher and an activist, Pun’s work has addressed the challenges faced by women factory workers, including the issue of material working conditions. She argued that current conceptualisations of agency that do not adequately grasp real constraints miss the complexity of the lived reality of gender and class, and that gender is central to the making and remaking of class in the present context of urban China. For instance, through the specific and highly gendered ‘dormitory regime’, rural to urban migrant women workers experience both alienation and solidarity.

Carol Wolkowitz (University of Warwick) concluded the panel presentations with a reflection on the role of the body in production, a central concern in her own recent work, notably in Bodies at Work (2006), and a significant if implicit dimension of Glucksmann’s account in Women on the Line, now made explicit in the introduction to the new edition. Wolkowitz had reread Glucksmann’s text through this lens and drew attention to Glucksmann’s use of auto-ethnography and of her own body to access the experience of women factory workers. In particular, she made connections to contemporary scholarship on the ‘feeling of doing’, the embodied person’s ‘haptic apparatus’. She then argued that analytical continuities in understanding work over the last 30 years are stronger than changes, notably the ongoing intensification of labour including in contexts other than factories. However, she also noted differences such as an increase in the performative nature of work, and the implication of the body and the self in aesthetic labour arising from amplified forms of control in the workplace; and the increased place of ‘touch’ in work, itself connected to new and/or more widespread forms of ‘body work’, i.e. work on the bodies of others.

A key area of discussion was the practice of ethnography, picking up on some of the speakers’ comments on the problems of doing ethnography today. The question of access is a very serious one with implications for the production of sociological knowledge about working lives in the 21st century, if researchers do only ‘what is possible’ rather than that which is conceptually or politically compelling. There was a lively discussion about the difficulties posed by institutional processes of ethical approval (which do not equate to ethical sociological practice), and calls for a critical and challenging approach to these constraints!

This was a great session. It was well attended (in spite of the 9am slot!) and its success was confirmed by numerous comments from people in the audience about how informative and enjoyable they found it to be. Thank you to the contributors, the conference organisers, and to everyone else who participated.

In Roma Centrale train station, there is a waitress who offers table service. Most customers buy from the bar; why not, it’s cheaper.

Table Service

People from all over the world pass through the station, and few of us understand the Italian service culture and its demarcation of space.

We sit at a table, two British, two Italian, waiting for the train to Firenze. We know how to behave (the Italians), and know the specificity of this practice (the non-Italians). We watch the waitress shoo away Danish, American, Japanese customers. In the time we’re there, she serves only us. The rest of the time her work is to deny service.

Refusal

It’s early evening and 4 bartenders (2 women, 2 men) are stood around waiting for the rush to start. They’re talking about the sorts of drinks they hate serving. The drinks, not the customers. The customers take on the attributes of their drinks, so that a pint of lime and soda signals moral failing (so fiddly, so cheap). A mean drink, not a proper drink, not sherry and a cherry. I drink Black Sheep bitter.

Injury

I think the bus driver is being rude when he doesn’t look at me. Then I see the careful way he turns to get my change. He’s in pain; his neck’s seized up. He’s still working. At least he can see the road ahead.

Demands

Silence in the British Library is often interrupted by querulous tones of someone for whom the electronic catalogue is too complex. The librarian’s voice is as loud as the questioner’s, but it is they who will later silence others for talking.

Technology

A speaker is presenting via video link, but only the sound is working. The display shows the whole audience the conferencing software and its typed exchanges to set the link up. As the speaker addresses questions from the audience about her presentation, the technician called in to get the visuals working does his job. We all see what he writes:

“hi, have you turned on your camera”

She doesn’t answer. His vision of his agenda gave no space to hers; she could only do one thing at once.

The space at San Benedetto is clearly structured, with solid marble counters and displays arranged in aisles and around the edges of the hall. The floor is very clean and dry, unusually so for a fish market. (For a contrasting account of London’s fish market, see A Day’s Work at Billingsgate.) There is a large variety of Mediterranean fish but to my surprise, some Atlantic fish too, such as sole or salmon. There was local sole too, if a little smaller. It was quite literally still flapping around on the counter. No need to check the eyes to assess the freshness of that! There’s a distinction between sellers of shellfish, wet fish, smoked, and frozen which I assume is part of the regulatory structure (and is common in other places too). There’s quite a range from large to small fish, from what’s considered to be prestigious to the ordinary: swordfish, tuna, bream, bass, gurnard, mullet, mackerel and much more. The shellfish includes local prawns, arselle (a type of clam found locally), small green crabs, the occasional lobster, mussels, and a kind of snail. Plus bottarga of course, the dried roe of mullet (or tuna), something Sardinia is famous for, ground to add to spaghetti, or bought whole then cut into small pieces and dressed with oil and lemon as an antipasto.

When I asked where specific fish came from, I was not only told that something was ‘Sarda’ but that it was caught off a particular stretch of coast at Villasimius or Cagliari for example. There’s a code that’s used uniformly in the displays that explains not only the country of provenance of the fish, but also whether it was caught at sea or farmed. Last week at a smaller market in Cagliari, I bought a local octopus and a squid from the Atlantic, probably near South Africa the fishmonger said, but brought in by air and on ice (but not frozen). (I didn’t ask the ‘where did it come from’ question until afterwards and hadn’t yet worked out the code…) I’m interested in the ‘length’ of the socio-economic process that brings fish from sea to table but hadn’t expected to see the produce of both such a short and a long one literally alongside one another in my local market…

Instead of taking pictures on my first visit to the main market at San Benedetto (it would have felt intrusive and I wanted to just look first), I decided to do a short (one minute) recording while walking around which you can listen to here: san benedetto 1 oct 2010. The recording highlights the presence of three distinct layers of sound that it’s hard to distinguish between when hearing them in real time (Makagon and Neumann, 2008). There is a low murmur of people talking, a collective sound in which it’s not possible to identify specific exchanges. There are knives being sharpened, a high-pitched screech that conjures up the image of a large blade. And there are the fishmongers making their sales pitches, playfully at times, and as much for the amusement of their peers as in an attempt to gain custom it seems. Indeed, humour is an integral part of the life of the market (Porcu, 2005). ‘Venga che imbroglio anche a lei!’ one exclaims provocatively. Come on so I can rip you off too!

There’s already a great selection of photographs of the fish market, the fishmongers and customers here (most of the first half are of the fish section, the rest of other parts of the market). And for close-ups of the fish, click here. And I expect I’ll be writing more about all this after my next visit…

References
1. Makagon, D and M Neumann (2008) Recording Culture: Audio Documentary and the Ethnographic Experience. London: Sage.
2. Porcu, L (2005) ‘Fishy business: Humour in a Sardinian fish Market’, Humour 18(1): 69–102.

Women on the Line is often described as a seminal ethnography of 1980s British sociology of work. Its republication in 2009 has attracted considerable interest, especially in the US. How would you describe the reception of the original publication of the book?

The enforced pseudonym and anonymity the first time round meant that I got very little sense of its reception. I couldn’t give any talks or publicise it at all. People wrote to Routledge asking to be put in contact with Ruth Cavendish, and they forwarded everything to me but of course I wasn’t able to reply to anything! Yet for many years afterwards I often met people who knew me, and were familiar with Women on the Line, but were unaware of the connection between us. It kept on happening right up to the appearance of the new edition published under my own name. My sense is that the book was quite widely read both in the UK and abroad, and by feminist and other activists as well as academics over the next few years, especially given the greater interest in studying and campaigning around work during the 1980s.

In terms of ‘method’, although your working at the factory was not intended as research, what do you think about the approach of ‘knowing by doing’ as a way of understanding work, in your case, quite literally working on the line – especially in a context in which the interview has come to dominate qualitative research?

Knowing by doing was certainly crucial, in the sense that my understanding of what was going on in the factory and how it affected the women would have been impossible without experiencing it myself. The ‘doing’ included not only the work itself, but also the numerous interactions with the women around me. The chatting that this involved ranged far wider than what would normally be covered in an interview, and of course I wasn’t determining the course of the conversation either. However, the interpretive ‘knowing’ part of it relied also on my pre-existing knowledge and analytical frames, and all the ‘doing’ was necessarily filtered through and mediated by what was already in my head, and my political preoccupations and questions in doing the job in the first place.

There are more photographs in the republished version of the book than in the original. Can you comment on the place of images in representations of work, and on the relationship between the written and the visual in this book.

I would have liked to include far more photos than the publishers would allow, and in colour. The black and white ones don’t really do justice to the situation and don’t come over nearly as well as the colour ones on the cover. I hope it makes a difference to readers being able to see what some of my work-mates looked like, especially those whose life stories are recounted. Similarly the spatial and physical layout of the shopfloor, and some examples of machinery should help to bring the narrative to life. There are so very few images available of the faces of women doing this kind of work (like the one of Alice who is looking straight at me taking her photo) so the more we can collect the better, especially when the women are engaged in the process rather than being objectified as ‘women workers’. However, these photos were taken during the strike/lockout, so everyone is looking more relaxed and happier than they would have done if they had actually been working!

The covers of the two editions are different. What is the story of them?

Cover of original publication, 1982

I have always disliked the cover of the first edition because it is so misleading. So many of the women came from the Caribbean or Indian subcontinent, yet the picture suggests white women only. The first version was even worse as they were all given long blonde hair. I objected and asked for black or Asian women to be represented. The concession was to give one of them curly hair, but I think she still looks white. Routledge wouldn’t budge further. The portrayal of the line was also misleading showing the women facing it rather than at right angles to it, so contradicting my description of how the spatial layout affected social and physical interaction.

Cover of republication, 2009

So of course I am much happier with the cover of the new edition, which I chose and which uses two of my own photos taken in the factory back in 1977. I was surprised how well the original negatives scanned in especially as it was only a little instamatic camera. In fact these are much better quality than the original prints. So that’s a lesson to keep old negs in a safe place! Now we have older black women on the cover, as well as a very young Irish worker, suggesting the age and ethnic composition, and you can see the line, and all the clutter. The ‘product’ is also clearly visible, and of course this would not have been possible in the 1982 edition.

Roger Barton

He said to call him the day before to confirm. ‘What time should I arrive?’ ‘Between 2 and 2.30.’ He means in the morning. I try to sleep at 9pm and set the alarm for just after 1am. With three layers of clothes, I arrive at the security barrier an hour later. ‘I’m going to work with Roger Barton,’ I say to the guard and we both laugh. I walk up the steps from the car park with the view of Canary Wharf behind – a very different kind of market. I go over to the stand. ‘Ali, give Dawn her coat,’ Roger says within a breath of hello. He turns to the others: ‘Tell her what we’re doing, show her, make her work!’

The so-called ‘new’ Billingsgate market (the site since 1982) is a covered hall with adjacent buildings for additional cold storage, as well as a shellfish boiling room and an ice-making plant! (see: www.billingsgate-market.org.uk.) There are 54 merchants in all, selling from stands organised along three back-to-back rows lengthways with several cross-cutting paths at intervals along them, and from shops around the edges of the hall. There’s nothing but fish and seafood on sale, broadly divided into so-called ‘fresh’ or ‘wet’, exotic, frozen, plus smoked and different kinds of seafood. The floor of the market hall is green and gleaming with water that reflects everything around. There is a whole network of pipes overhead which bring water hoses to the stands. There’s a phone at each stand and plenty of mobiles. In fact, there’s a lot of talking to the world outside. And there’s a lot of moving about. Porters are everywhere, each with their number, either working directly for a stand-holder or ‘freelance’, getting work according to the demands of the day. On the first-floor there are the merchants’ offices, some directly overlooking the market, plus the Clerk and Superintendent’s office, the Fish Merchants Association, inspectors, maintenance, police and first aid, as well as the Seafood Training School which offers courses in fish cookery.

The first thing that’s striking as you enter the market site is the smell, not bad, just there. Even the freshest fish in such quantities smells of something. It’s as if there’s an odour from all the wetness and cold too. At this time, the place is relatively empty, although the two cafes are already doing a good business. Roger tends to set up early, and it can take a small team of people a couple of hours. By the time I’ve moved a few boxes of prawns and look up, there’s already more going on. The activity creeps up on you with cries of ‘mind your legs’, ‘… your legs!’ and the rumble of trolleys. It’s the porters’ space and it’s up to you to get out of the way. I’ve no idea what time it is most of the time I am there. At one point it is still only 4am, at another it is suddenly 7.30.

Everyone works very fast. I know this because I am trying to keep up with them and it’s a struggle. There are a lot of boxes of prawns, at least 7 sizes, all 2 kilos. Some have different coloured labels, sometimes the labels are the same colours but the size is different. You have to read them then put them in the right pile. I find it hard to see where the size is written and keep getting it wrong.

‘Give Mike a hand with the congers,’ Roger says. Yeah, right. 30 kilos a box. I can’t shift them an inch. So someone tells me to lay out the snappers. I start by trying to pick up a 3 kilo fish. By the tail with a hand around its slippery body. ‘Pick the fish up through the eyes,’ I get told. I hesitate for a moment but once I get beyond the idea of it, it’s actually quite easy. You can get a firm grasp though the sockets, the bones are hard there and can take the weight. But only two fish in, I put my bare hand – ‘did you bring gloves?’ Roger had asked like I was supposed to know – into the ice and catch my thumb on the razor sharp gills of the snapper. My coat is no longer white and pristine.

By the time I come back from finding a plaster, the snapper are all laid out and I’m directed to help Jo with the prawns. ‘You need a knife and a marker for this job,’ says Roger. The marker is like a chunky black Pritt stick and the knives are varied. I use the one with the smallest blade and try to imitate the others by making a cross in the plastic packaging which I then tear away. I feel moderately helpful doing this. Then Roger says to take away the rubbish, next to the cold storage area outside. It’s piled on one of the pallets with a hand-held steering device underneath. It’s simple if you know how. I don’t so just pick up an armful of rubbish. ‘Leave it to me,’ someone says immediately. I feel useless again.

There are two clear sections to the stand. One end is run by Billy, Roger’s right-hand man. This is where most of the large fish are – halibut, grouper (brown and spotted), all sorts of snapper, tilapia, red bream, conger eels and salmon. Plus some fish from the Indian Ocean, pomfret and other things I’m not familiar with, such as doctor fish and rabbit fish. At the other end, which faces one of the exits, there’s a big selection of other smaller fish and seafood. That’s where the squid are, and smaller farmed sea bass (10 for £12), plus sardines and all sorts of other things. The effect is of abundance. Between the two is the section with the prawns, then there’s another stretch before Roger’s ‘office’ (a space to write orders underneath the phone) and the ‘till’ (a drawer!). This is my patch for the day.

Everyone sells actively. ‘I want to hear you selling,’ Roger says, ‘not waiting for people to ask you things. So, what’s your pitch?’ Now I’m comfortable, I can do this. There’s a lot of cod, £3 per kilo. ‘I want to see all that gone,’ he says. Then there’s wild sea bass, £12 but I can go down to £10, I’m told. Next to that are chunks of tuna, £12, swordfish, £10, and marlin, £9, all vacuum-packed in clear plastic. In front, there are lobsters, £16. On the side, there’s a pile of razor clams, £5, and along the top, clams, £18 for a 2 kilo box, scallops (out of the shell, £18 for a 1 kilo tub, £29 for a 2 kilo one), dover sole (small, £7, and medium, £12), and packets of crabmeat, £2, and smoked salmon, £5 – but £25 in Harrods as Roger is fond of saying. I write out the prices either on the back of one of the boxes, or on a polystyrene lid as a reminder.

When the customers come, I talk about the eyes and where everything’s caught. I spot the middle-class people and tell them that the sea bass is wild, what a treat it is. I aim the cod at the Londoners, emphasise how it’s a bargain. The quantities are not small. I talk about how you can feed a lot of people with this fish, and realise that I’m saying that more to the tired-looking white middle-aged women and young and middle-aged black women. I emphasise sociality and play on their roles of being a host or provider. None of this is planned, this is what comes out, what I find myself doing when I’m not thinking about it. Of course it’s young and not so young men who want to flirt. Three people say they want to buy me. Yeah right, I reply flatly.

Lots of people seem to buy second time around, after checking out other fish and prices at other stands. A French couple buy the largest Turbot on the stall for £50. Then they come back for 2 kilos of scallops, £29. They know what they want, and don’t treat me as if I might be a source of knowledge. Others do, however. ‘What do you do with those [razor clams]?’ ‘How do you cook a sea bass?’ Now I am really in my element![1] I offer recipes and wise-sounding guidelines: ‘With fish,’ I pronounce, ‘the principle is always not to do too much’, and so on. I am getting into my stride and thoroughly enjoying myself. One man remarks, ‘You’re in the wrong line of work, you should be a TV chef!’ I’ve been laughing at that ever since.

When I think back on the day, I have a strong image of myself swinging a cod! I’m really getting the hang of it after a while and start to be able to feel the weight. ‘This one’s heavy, more than 2 kilos,’ I say to a customer. ‘Yeah, 2.4,’ Roger states after no more than a glance at the fish I’m throwing on the scales. He knows so well through sight and hold over the years he can now bypass the weighing altogether. He’s always right.

I get faster at mental arithmetic quite quickly. The first time something weighs 3.2 kilos I can’t calculate the 0.2. I’m embarrassed by this but own up and Roger gives me a calculator. Then I get the hang of how they round up and down and I more confidently let myself know the price, taking a few moments to check it in my head – or with the calculator if someone is buying several items – while I’m weighing the fish. No one challenges me. In fact, more generally, people treat me like a fishmonger assuming that’s what I do, seeing the role ahead of the person. I’m quite chuffed that I can carry this off, at least to the general public. I’m not selling to other fishmongers, Roger deals with them.

Roger tells me to tidy up at some point as gaps start to appear in the display. ‘Presentation is everything,’ he proclaims after getting out more tuna and swordfish, ‘line those up,’ he says. I do so then repeat the process with the cod and even reach under the stand to rearrange the sea bass. Water drips down my neck. I must smell of fish all through by now. By the end of my shift, the front of my coat and legs are soaked.

It’s gone quiet without me seeing it coming and I’m sorry it’s nearly over. Some of the stands are back to their bare metal frames as some merchants leave as soon as the market officially shuts at 8am. In other places there are large amounts of rubbish and people hosing things down. I’m tired now and a bit frazzled. Roger asks me to count up the money in his drawer, a pile of assorted notes and handfuls of change. At around 9am he says I’ve done enough. ‘So, what are you going to give me for dinner?’ I say. That was the deal. ‘Whatever you want,’ he replies and sounds as if he means it. I end up with 2 large cuttlefish, 4 dover sole, and a kilo of scallops. This feels like a good exchange. I drive home very happy. And grateful that I don’t have to do this every day.

The project aimed to explore labour as a social activity and the forms of work involved in a building refurbishment of this kind; and to explore the building as an object/product of labour that is transformed by it so to map visually the material and spatial changes in the building which is being worked upon, the social/physical construction of place.

The project was based on ethnographic work undertaken in collaboration with Peter Hatton (a visual artist and lecturer at the University of Kent) from March to October 2007, the period during which the building was being refurbished. Photography was central to the methodology but was one of a bundle of related techniques, including informal observation on-site, participation in site meetings, and interviews with the project’s builders, architects and engineers.

The work that people do produces a different kind of relationship to space/place. Builders monopolise the physical manipulation of the building – as process and object. They live and breathe it, quite literally, as its dust and paint and debris get under their nails and skin, and into their hair and eyes. In contrast, engineers and architects know the building as a conceptualised space, through drawings and measurements, reports and schedules, and observed it as a ‘landscape of viewing’.

Lived Space

Conceptualised Space

Building projects are characterised by multiple sequential and co-existent work activities which produce a place such as this building anew, and in which some forms of work are literally covered by others. Indeed, it may be that the product of the labour is the finish that conceals it. Or, the mark of quality of labour is that the finish is unmarked.

When building work was started, the building itself ‘was a complete shell’ comments Michael: ‘We were talking about it the other day, how you can see the end product now.’ Another of the builders, Grant, talks about satisfaction with the job, with the end product as he calls it, since ‘you can see what you’ve achieved,’ he says. As someone who’s in wet trades doing plastering and brickwork, this is true for him. However, this is not the case for all. Ground-workers for instance, never see the end product and their own work is concealed even though it underpins the rest of the project, they’re ‘unsung heroes’ according to some of the other builders interviewed.

This makes us ask: what means of representation can we make use of to hold onto the recognition of the labour involved in the production of place? We came up with the idea of projecting the building back onto itself. The images seek to pull apart what has been remade and expose the building in different states thereby implying the labour of its reconstruction. 

Dado Rail

The juxtaposition of the images below shows co-existent and varied perspectives. It brings different moments into the same moment of seeing (now) and offers a way to re-view what might be taken for granted in a single image. In the second set of images, by stretching and superimposing them in specific ways, our attention can be drawn to what we are not necessarily conscious of in a single image, for instance, the movement involved in the labour in the upper body, and the weight and discomfort of the position of the lower body (kneeling on the wood).

Laying Screed 1

Laying Screed 2

A gain of the visual, especially for the sociology of work, is in getting at elements of complexity it is difficult to grasp with other methods, especially in workplaces that are not familiar to us all, restricted spaces, such as building sites.

Whilst there is considerable innovation in data collection and research practices in visual sociology, there remains reluctance to be similarly innovative in ways of telling and representing research (through image, sound and text). Putting things together in novel ways, e.g. collage, allows us to gain different insights — there is therefore analytic potential in working with the visual as data and representation.

To download the leaflet from the exhibition that was one of the outcomes of this project, go to: http://www.kent.ac.uk/sspssr/staff/academic/lyon/rochester.pdf.