the sociological study of work || the sociological study of work: an editorial foreword

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The Sociological Study of Work: An Editorial Foreword Author(s): Everett Cherrington Hughes Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 57, No. 5, The Sociological Study of Work (Mar., 1952), pp. 423-426 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2772322 . Accessed: 13/07/2014 18:54 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Sociology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 31.220.238.160 on Sun, 13 Jul 2014 18:54:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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The Sociological Study of Work: An Editorial ForewordAuthor(s): Everett Cherrington HughesSource: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 57, No. 5, The Sociological Study of Work (Mar.,1952), pp. 423-426Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2772322 .

Accessed: 13/07/2014 18:54

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toAmerican Journal of Sociology.

http://www.jstor.org

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Volume LVII MARCH 1952 Number 5

THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF WORK: AN EDITORIAL FOREWORD

All of this issue of the Journal treats of people at work; not all of it has to do with industry, even as currently defined. People nowadays do indeed speak of the "restau- rant industry," the "advertising industry," and even of the "amusement industry," although I am not sure they would include boxing in it. No one has yet, so far as I know, talked of the medical, educational, and labor-union industries, but I suppose someone will.

The extension of the term "industry" to include so much more than manufacturing is itself an interesting datum. I take it to mean that in the minds of many people the ideal organization for getting work done is the manufacturing industry operated by a limited liability company. Just as certain oc- cupations look to the professions as models, so others look to industry. One raises the prestige of his line of business if he thinks of it and persuades others to speak of it as an industry (the junk-dealers are busy re- naming their business the salvage or re- covery industry). It is not surprising that sociologists who study people at work should go along with the trend and call themselves "industrial sociologists."

Some huge proportion of our working force is hired by the large manufacturing concerns which people generally have in mind when they speak of industry or of big industry. The managements of such indus-

tries are, for various reasons, interested in having social scientists analyze at least cer- tain aspects and certain levels of their or- ganizations; what is more, they have money which can be easily turned to the purpose. Trade-unions, professional and educational institutions, small trades and businesses, have not the money and often not the wish to have their organizations so looked at. Accordingly, it is industrial rather than professional or business or labor-union sociology which has flourished. Some say it has become a fad. So it has. It does not follow that research done under the name is sound or unsound in a proportion or degree different from other sociology. For while there may be connections between the motives for undertaking a piece of work and the validity of the method with which it is done and the honesty with which it is re- ported, such connections are not necessary. A piece of work is not made false by in- sinuating or even by proving that it was undertaken on behalf of the enemy or from a frivolous motive. Industrial sociology needs no apology if it be good sociology.

Social science appears to have a double burden laid upon it. The one is to analyze the processes of human behavior, and es- pecially of persistence and change thereof, in terms relatively free of time and place. The other is to tell the news in such form and perspective-quantitatively and com-

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424 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

paratively-as to give clues for the taking of those chances of which action consists. The balance between these two functions or burdens varies from man to man, from time and place to time and place. Social science thrives on the strain between the two. In- dustrial sociology is pursued in the main by people who lean to the news-telling side. Since the big story about work lies in prob- lems of huge organizations and nearly automatic machines, we may expect most students of human work to try to make sense out of it. This is what C. Wright Mills does in White Collar and Georges Friedmann in 0Q va le travail kumain?

Why, then, give a large part of an issue of this Journal over to such whimseys as the special culture of the few professional boxers who fly up like moths from the morass of the slums and drop back again in a little while and as the disappearing breed of small custom-furriers; to such oddities as janitors and schoolteachers? In the first place, not even a majority of people work in the big organizations and on the new machines. There are still many ways of working besides those which fill the most space in census tables. Some of these other kinds of work are refuges for those who do not want to work in the big system or are rejected by it. Other occupations may be related in various ways to the larger show and to the major trends. The meanings and functions of work are many, not all of them included in the usual questionnaires and classifications. Part of the duty of even the news-telling social scientist is to be the ethnologist of his own time and place, illuminating the less obvious aspects of his own culture.

A deeper reason for the apparent whim- sey is that for an understanding of human work one must look at a wide variety of kinds of work and of their social matrixes. Only so will we get that relative freedom from time, place, and particular circum- stance that is required of those who would analyze processes. Even that part of social science which is a telling of the news for action's (prediction's) sake depends for its

efficacy upon putting of the particular into some larger perspective of other cases de- scribed in generalized terms.

The sample of cases for analyzing proc- esses is one thing; that for telling and pre- dicting the news is another. A small error of quantities in the news sample can send one "Galluping" off at a slightly wrong angle that will land him miles from his de- sired destination. In getting the process sample, one cares less about quantities of each kind so long as he gets that full variety and contrast which will allow him to tell the particular from the general and will, hence, enable him to give his categories just that balance between universality and particularity of reference needed for effective comparison. This issue of the Jour- nal does not, of course, draw into view any great variety of the kinds of work current in our society, let alone those of other societies and times. It does go outside the usual boundaries of industry and the pro- fessions which have so limited sociological students of work. And it does so in quest of a broader, more useful frame of refer- ence for studying work.

Comparison of widely divergent cases may also help break the bonds of con- ventional naming. If the big show in the world of work is large-scale industry, the prestige show is still, in some degree, in the professions. Many occupations have lately tried to pattern themselves after their notion of what a profession is and fight to be so named. Part of the process is to prove to the lay world that the work done is of such nature that the client is no judge either of what he needs or of what he gets; hence, it is work to which the principle of caveat emptor cannot safely be let apply. But if one studies plumbers and janitors, who do not yet claim to be of professional rank, one finds the same basic contention that lay- men are not competent to judge much of the service which they ask and/or get. Furthermore, both the humble janitor and the proud physician have to protect them- selves against the overanxious and importu- nate client (tenant or patient); both must

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THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF WORK: AN EDITORIAL FOREWORD 425

keep their distance in order not to let any one client interfere with one's duties to others or with one's own ongoing program of work and leisure. Now the conventional and evaluative term "profession" carries as connotation the contention that there is no conflict of interest or perspective between professional and client-or at least that there is none between the good professional and the good client. Consequently, doctors, professors, schoolteachers, and their like conceal in various degree from laymen gen- erally, from naive investigators in par- ticular, and from themselves their feelings of antagonism and resistance toward their dear but troublesome patients, students, and pupils' parents. The janitor and the jazz musician are troubled by no such prob- lem of public relations or anxious guilt. Basing one's study upon a conventional term, such as "profession," may lead one to group together and observe only those occupations which, since they cherish and publish a common stereotype of themselves, engage in a common concealment. The social scientist may become the dupe of this common concealment; the more so, since he, too, fancies himself a professional. The study and comparison of occupations without regard for conventional categories may sharpen our sensitivity to certain prob- lems which we might otherwise overlook. Al- most any occupation is a good laboratory animal for some aspect of work control, organization, or culture. It may disclose easily some aspect which is hidden in other cases, or it may show in developed form something which is incipient in others.

I think it a good rule to assume that a feature of work behavior found in one occu- pation, even a minor or an odd one, will be found in others. The fact that it is denied at first by the people in some occupation, or that it has not been revealed by previous research, should not be considered sufficient evidence that it is not there. A generation that knows its Freud should know that the difference between what people do about certain matters is often less than the differ-

ence in what they reveal to themselves and others.

Restriction of production is a good case in point. As it is generally defined, it means the wilful refusal by workers in industry to do as much work as their employer believes they can and ought to do. The latter, having hired a man's time, expects some large power over its disposition. It is assumed by the employer that his will- enlightened, informed, and reasonable- should determine how hard a man should work. If the worker consciously does less, the employer may use the words "theft" and "bad faith." It has long been recog- nized that a withholding of paid-for effort- the British ca'canny-is a powerful means of industrial conflict. Employers blame it on trade-unions. But Max Weber main- tained that putting on the brakes could occur without unions, and without con- scious agreement, as part of the working- man's unending struggle with his employer over the price of his labor-a struggle which he feels in his very body., It can happen in concert either by conscious intent or as an almost instinctive common defensive definition of the situation by workers faced with changes of piece rates, machinery, or other practices.

Mr. Roy gives us a unique record and penetrating analysis of restriction in an industrial shop and of the group interaction by which it is defined and maintained. But why should we not expect some restriction of production to be found in all occupations? In the social drama of most kinds of work, people interact in several established roles. The people of each category have their own conceptions of their interests, rights, and duties toward one another and toward peo- ple in the other categories. An object of these conceptions will nearly always be the

Max Weber, "Zur Psychophysik der indus- triellen Arbeit (i908-9)," in Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tulbingen, I924),

pp. 6I-255. "'Putting on the brakes' will occur in the absence of union organization wherever the working force or even some considerable fraction of it feels some measure of solidarity" (ibid., p. I56).

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426 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

measure of effort and of product of work, both of which will also vary from person to person, from day to day, and even from hour to hour. Even in organizations where everyone is devoted and hard-working, there is often someone whose effort and product are regarded as heroic in scale, and perhaps even more often persons whose punctilious attention to duty is looked upon as queer. Certainly it is hard to think of occupations in which there is no group preoccupation with definition of proper lev- els of effort and product and of those levels which, since they may encourage others in the work drama to expect too much, are potentially dangerous for all who share the fate of living by the given trade or calling. Students, even graduate students, learn from their fellows how many of the too many assigned books to read; they may not, as in a certain normal school, write "D.A.R." (Damned Average Raiser) on the door of an eager student whose examination results tend to skew the grade distribution upward to the disadvantage of most. At any rate, I think it good to start one's in- vestigation of any line of work with the assumption that there is some struggle of wills or of consciences or both over the level of effort and of product. But, to use the assumption, one must state it so as to fit his case. If there be no employer, it cannot be stated as the question why work- ers do not do as much as the employer wants them to or in any other way which uses the employers' will as a criterion. It is better stated, in a general way, as dis- covering the processes, social and psycho-

logical, by which levels of effort and product are determined in various kinds of work and in various kinds of organization for work. When the problem is so defined, better questions can be asked concerning the in- dustrial case itself.

It is of importance for the understanding of human work-in the industrial and in other settings-that we develop a set of problems and processes applicable to the whole range of cases. The terms for de- scribing these problems and processes can be got by comparison of the work drama in various occupations. Each paper in this series was chosen because it deals interest- ingly with one or more aspects of this drama in one line of work. In so studying work, we are not merely applying sociology to work. We are studying work by sociological methods. We do not learn our method in some pure or generalized society or part of society and then apply it and the findings to industry, crime, or religion. Rather, we study group life and process where they occur, learning our method and developing our knowledge of society as we go. We may learn about society by studying industry and human work generally. In our particular society, work organization looms so large as a separate and specialized system of things, and work experience is so fateful a part of every man's life, that we cannot make much headway as students of society and of social psychology without using work as one of our main laboratories.

EVERETT CHERR[NGTON HUGHES

University of Chicago

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