Description
This book arises out of a project financed by the Social Science Research Council from 1972 to 1975 on the transition from school to work of non-academic working class boys. The methods used were case study work, interviewing, group discussions and participant observation with groups of working class boys as they proceeded through their last two years at school and into the early months of work.
Part I presents the empirical data and main findings of this study. It is basically an ethnography of the school, and particularly of oppositional working class cultural forms within it, and a practical contribution to the literature on the transition from school to work. Part II is more theoretical. It analyses the inner meaning, rationality and dynamic of the cultural processes recorded earlier, and the ways in which they contribute, on the one hand, to working class culture in general, and on the other, more unexpectedly, to the maintenance and reproduction of the social order. A general objective of the book is to make its arguments accessible to audiences of social scientists, practitioners and general readers. The more specialist arguments and references have therefore been removed to end-notes. Practitioners may be most interested in Part I and the Conclusion; social theorists in Part II.
As the book goes to press the SSRC have agreed to fund a continuation of the research described here to focus on 'the young worker and shop floor culture'. It is intended that this research will be written up as a sequel to the present volume.
ISBN:9780231053570
