Workers Not Wasters
Subtitle: Masculine Respectability, Consumption and Unemployment in Central Scotland (Edinburgh Education and Society Series)
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: May 26, 1994
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780748604449
Subjects: Gender studies; Social groups & communities; Work & labour; Work ethic; Scotland; Sociology Of Men; Unemployment; Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy; Sociology; Social aspects; Economic Conditions; International - Economics; Journalism; Language Arts & Disciplines / Journalism; Consumption (Economics); Lowlands
Description: Regular employment has a central place in the definition of masculine respectability in western industrial culture, and Workers Not Wasters describes the employment ethic in an ex-mining community in central Scotland. To be deemed respectable, however, appropriate consumption is as important an obligation as employment, and this study provides an ethnography of working-class consumption, using men's drinking as a case study.

It explores the strategies that men develop to retain their self-esteem in a period of recession, and examines how the experience of unemployment differs between generations, particularly highlighting the social deprivation of poverty. The result provides a rare glimpse into the cultural factors governing a community's response to unemployment.