Based on an extended period of research in two local steel factories, this descriptive account offers a wide-ranging critique of post-industrial capitalism. Its central argument is that recent government attempts to engineer Britain's transition to a post-industrial have instead created volatile post-industrial spaces marked by informal labor...

Acknowledgements Introduction Anthropology of Labour Bourgeoisie and Proletarians History and Class Technological Fetishism Class and Kinship Notes on Fieldwork PART I: ARTISANS Chapter 1. Morris Ltd The Factory as Socio-technical Space The Shop Floor The Market The Formal Organization Informal Organization A Short Social History of the Machines The Social Distribution of Knowledge in Morris Discussion about Value in the Break-room Political Economy Conclusion Chapter 2. The ‘Return’ of the Informal Economy in Endcliffe The Informal Economy Debate in Anthropology Informal Production Informal Exchanges Sex Market: the Elysium Khaled’s Conclusion Chapter 3. Working-class Homes Working-class Families and Poverty The ‘Post-kinship’ Turn Governmental Families and New Extended Households Conclusion Chapter 4. Welcome to Political Limbo Local History of Working-class Politics Folk Models of Class From Steel Town to Leisure Centre Cutlers versus Developers Fish, Fishermen and Steelworkers Reclaiming the Body: Sickness Benefit Conclusion PART II: PROLETARIANS Chapter 5. Unsor Ltd The Place The Production Process and Formal Organization A Normal Day at the Smelting Shop ‘Every Furnace is like a Good-looking Woman’ Stories of ‘Gods’ and ‘Donkeys’ during Break-times The Rolling Mill The Grinding Bay Health and Safety Politics at Bay 2 Farewell to Manual Labour Conclusion Chapter 6. A Divided Proletariat Charlie Moody: from Working-class to Nursing The Strange Disappearance of Charlie Moody Being Italian in Worksop: Antonio Masso Pepperoni, Lampascioni and Vino Rosso: A Food Journey from the South of Italy to South Yorkshire Returning ‘Home’ Epilogue Conclusion Chapter 7. Community Unionism, Business Unionism – Two Strategies, the Same Phoenix Transmutations of Labour Representation The Phoenix Flies on the ISTC Divisional Office The ISTC in UNSOR Political Meeting at the ISTC or Community Unionism in Action The Same Phoenix, Different Trajectories Reorganization The AEU Factory Branch Business Unionism in Times of Reorganization Conclusion Conclusion Farewell to the Working Class? Labour and Alienation as Relational Values Relational Consciousness as the Basis for Class Struggle Bibliography Index

“The tale that Mollona tells is not a pleasant one…However, it is an important tale, not least because it reminds us that anthropologists in Britain have a long history, now mostly lost to mind, of research in the heartlands of industrial capitalism. Mollona shows us, once more, that we have worthwhile things to say about the lives, work, and situation of the British working class, and through these the political-economic situation in which they find themselves. One can only hope that other anthropologists will follow his lead.”  ·  JRAI "His narrative of the embodied lives of the factory workers and their tools brings the theory of local and transnational networks of production to life. The book's real triumph lies in this subtle layering of experiential ethnographic narratives of production and economy. The political theory underpinning the account whilst challenging is, however, illuminating for a deeper reading of Mollona's argument. The reader's 'work' is rewarded by an argument which presents a valuable contribution to the field of political and industrial ethnography in contemporary neoliberal Europe."  ·  Durham Anthropology Journal