Abstract
The main quality I look for in an ethnography is the extent to which it meets what the late Harold Garfinkel called the ‘unique adequacy requirement of methods’. This states that the researcher should display a mundane competence in the activities reported (weak form) and that the report should eschew any attempt at explanatory theorizing (strong form). Thiel unequivocally meets the weak form, having worked as a painter for several years prior to the year-long participant observation on which this study is based. Those who know the construction industry will immediately recognize the picture he paints. It is a rich one, conveying the texture of life on a building project, both on site and in the office. It is also much needed, as ethnographies of the construction industry are rare.
In the early chapters, Thiel portrays the sometimes vicious economics of risk transfer in construction, which can leave workers unpaid for their work as subcontractors go bankrupt, as well as the buccaneer spirit that sometimes accompanies attempts to ‘put one over’ the client and so make a contract profitable. He delineates the various occupational groups and their position in the sometimes subtle hierarchy, as well as the ethnic groups which tend to correspond to these occupational divisions, due to the importance of informal social networks in matching workers to jobs. These networks and the relationships that constitute them are fundamental to the life of a building site, exercising a great deal of control over the way the work is done, as well as maintaining the workplace culture. Thiel raises the issue of racism on site and the ambiguous nature of potentially racist remarks.
As Garfinkel himself acknowledged, the strong form of unique adequacy is highly controversial and it is no surprise to find that Thiel does not attempt to meet it. Some kind of theoretical commitment is expected of researchers, and rather than assert the sufficient value of insights hard won through their participant observation, ethnographers will usually import some theory into the mix, though it rarely has a deep impact on the nature of the monograph. Here, it is apparent mainly in the headings and in occasional missed insights, as pre-digested theoretical nostrums take the place of a deeper analysis. Thus, the theoretically given categories of ‘class’ and ‘masculinity’, though not for some reason ‘ethnicity’, have their own chapters, while the ‘capitalist’ nature of the building process is mentioned several times. Indeed, Thiel’s principal theoretical resource is Marxist political economy, making it somewhat surprising that he has neglected Ball’s (1988) study.
There is some justification for Thiel’s use of ‘class’, which might be taken to correspond with the site/office divide, where he adopts the curiously illuminating metaphor of commissioned and non-commissioned officers to illustrate the difference between commercial and production management. It also facilitates the consideration of such classic studies as Willis’s account of working-class schoolboys in the 1970s, showing that much of that cultural milieu still survives on Britain’s building sites today. However, given the ethnic diversity of the site, it may have been more appropriate to treat this culture as simply one ethnicity among others, albeit a dominant one.
‘Being working class’ in this context is, Thiel notes, very much tied up with being male, yet the chapter on ‘Building Masculinity’ tells us little about gender relations. Building firms, particularly at site level, are still very much male preserves, yet the very absence of women makes masculinity difficult to discuss in a meaningful way. The chapter centres on the significance of physical strength, violence and the threat of violence, but all these might as easily have been treated as features of the dominant occupational and ethnic culture. This culture is only superficially shared by the Hindu carpenters, while even the white painter ‘Bristles’ implies that a truer and more gentle masculinity exists beneath the bravado of his workplace persona, remarking that ‘no-one on this site knows me really’ (p. 111).
Thiel fulfils his aims of delivering ‘a slice of an otherwise largely invisible section of social history’ (p. 155) and showing how economic factors play a part in the reproduction of the cultural relationships involved. If, however, his intention was to establish the primacy of neo-liberal capitalist relations in this reproduction, he has failed to convince. The character of site culture owes as much to the nature of the actual work involved as it does to the commercial relationships which surround it, while informal networks are integral to all forms of organization, not just markets.
Notwithstanding these minor theoretical distortions, I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand the British construction industry, or simply to read a thorough and illuminating ethnography. Ultimately, the purpose of an ethnographic monograph is to ‘tell it like it is’; and in this Thiel largely succeeds.