OrientationObservationIn-depth interviewsDocument analysis and semiologyConversation and discourse analysisSecondary Data
SurveysExperimentsEthicsResearch outcomes
Conclusion
CASE STUDY How working-class kids get working-class jobs (Willis, 1977)
In Learning to Labour, a study of how working-class kids get working-class jobs, Willis (1977) attempts to dig beneath the surface of what was seen at the time as a developing crisis in education evident in pupil misbehaviour in schools. Willis was not so much concerned with the 'misbehaviour' as such but rather set out to look at the transition from school to work of non-academic working-class boys. The primary aim of his research was to cast light upon the 'surprising' process whereby, in a liberal democratic society, where there is no obvious physical coercion, some people are self-directed towards socially undesirable, poorly rewarded, intrinsically meaningless manual work. He sets out not by asking what occurs in the classroom, but by asking what happens at school that leads some boys into low-status manual jobs?
Willis used ethnography because of its 'sensitivity to meanings and values'. Willis focused on a group of twelve non-academic, white, working-class 'lads' in their penultimate year of schooling. The subjects formed a friendship network, and were in the same year at a single-sex, working-class secondary modern school in the heart of a working-class estate in 'Hammertown' (in the West Midlands, UK). They were intensively studied during their last two years of schooling, via participant and non-participant observation in classrooms; around other parts of the school; and in leisure activities. Willis attended, as a class member, not teacher, some of all the different classes that the group went to, including careers classes. This direct observation was supported by 'regular recorded group discussion; informal interviews and diaries'. After they left school, Willis undertook short periods of participant observation of each of the twelve in their workplace by actually working alongside them.
His ethnographic work reveals that there is a counter-culture among some working-class 'lads' that denies the expectations, values and social control that make up the 'educational paradigm'. The lads are suspicious and distrustful of schooling; see it as failing their own aspirations; as irrelevant; and they actively ridicule the schooling process. As Joey said:
That's it, we've developed certain ways of talking, certain ways of acting, and we developed disregards for Pakis, Jamaicans and all different... for all the scrubs and the fucking ear'oles and all that. We're getting to know it now, like we're getting to know all the cracks, like, how to get out of lessons and things, and we know where to have a crafty smoke. You can come over here to the youth wing and do summat, and all your friends are here, you know, it's sort of what's there, what's always going to be there for the next year, like, and you know you have to come to school today, if you're feeling bad, your mate'll soon cheer you up like, 'cos you couldn't go ten minutes in this school, without having a laff at something or other (Willis, 1977, p. 23).
In this way, Willis provides detailed accounts of the elements of the oppositional culture. On the basis of interviews with parents and the research in the factories, this oppositional culture is then contextualised as part of a more general working-class culture. It is shown specifically to have profound similarities with shop-floor culture. Willis argues that through this the boys develop a positive image of labour power.
Willis adopts a 'critical ethnographic' approach. His material is based on extensive ethnographic enquiry, but rather than simply report his observations based on the sets of meanings that operate within the group, he is concerned only with the ethnographic detail inasmuch as it provides indicators at the local level of the more general structural questions that frame his enquiry.
Willis argues that the counter-school culture is limited in its 'penetration' of capitalism. It only partially cuts through the (middle-class or dominant) ideological notions embodied in schooling. It is limited by the contradictions and divisions within the working-class culture on which it draws. Notably, the demeaning of mental labour, the sexism and the racism in working-class culture.
The ethnographic data indicated that the lads preferred manual labour and affirmed themselves through it; thus they played into the hands of capitalism, which needs manual labour. However, capitalism does not directly generate this preference; it comes from within patriarchal working-class culture.
The male counter-school culture promotes and celebrates its own sexism. The lads exploit young females and have hypocritical expectations and attitudes towards them. The sexism of the wider working-class culture, evident in the division of labour at work and home and its associated power relations, provides the model for the counter-school culture. It is the gender superiority enshrined in working-class culture that enables the 'lads' to accept their disadvantage as manual rather than mental labourers.
Similarly, racial division serves to further divide the working class, both materially and ideologically. It provides a heavily exploited 'underclass' which is itself partially or indirectly exploited by the working class and which provides a basis for simplistic assertions about the superiority of self among the white working class.
Thus, Willis argues, it is their own culture that most effectively prepares some working-class lads for manual labour.
