in dialogue with ob jec t s over the life cour se and in e veryday life
As for Terje (in Chapter 4) Stig’s sense of mastery at entering into dialogue with objects was first experienced through taking toys apart, and was then further fuelled by intergenerational work cooperation.
Cooperation across generations and the
occupations, did mostly male-dominated work at home as well. It was through inclusion in specific types of household work that many of them first experi-enced a sense of mastery at entering into dialogue with objects. This was facil-itated by what is termed an inclusive approach to household work – a type of mixing of purposeful activity, childcare and learning.
Harald: skilled as an industrial plumber, born in 1951
At the time of the interview, Harald was the owner and manager of a medium size plumbing company. This job was highly time-consuming. In the following section, it was noted that Harald’s jobs seemed to have taken up a large portion of his time. This spurred him to enter into a long description of his fathers’
approach to work. He illustrated this description with examples from house-hold work he had done in cooperation with his father.
K It sounds as if the various jobs you have had through the years have taken up a large portion of your time.
Harald Yeah. I suppose they have, yeah. I was brought up to believe that it was important to work. “Work!” That’s what my father used to say. “Work!
Show what you’re good for!” Even when I was doing my apprenticeship in town and came home, and the old man was in his late thirties and had suffered a heart attack, he’d be standing on the veranda. He’d spent the day figuring out what I could do when I came home. Cause he couldn’t lift a shovel, what with his heart problems. Just looking at a shovel was almost enough to get his heart racing. And he’d just built his house.
There was a lot needed doing on the outside, lawns had to be laid, grass cut. Walls had to be put up. And all day he would sit at home in his arm-chair thinking about this, down to the last detail. From the moment I got out of bed in the morning. And then when I came home, the old man is standing out on the veranda. “Harald! As soon as you’ve eaten, then get started on that, and you can begin over there, and then you do this, and then you can spread fertilizer on the earth there, and move those stones over there”, and so on and so forth. Even after I was married. He’d still be standing on the veranda. Cause I’d built my house right next to his.
So working, yeah, I’ve learnt that at my father’s knee, so to speak.
in dialogue with ob jec t s over the life cour se and in e veryday life
As in the other cases, Harald’s household work was carried out in coopera-tion across generacoopera-tions, and served as a venue for interaccoopera-tion between father and son. What is atypical about this is that Harald’s father had fallen ill at a young age (his late thirties), and could no longer participate physically in this work himself. He therefore needed to include Harald in order to get any of his own household work done.
The following section shows how Harald continued to do this type of house-hold work throughout his life course. As with most of the cases in the older cohort, he had gone directly from living with his parents to moving into a house he had built largely by himself.5 The house was built in 1977, when Harald was 26 years old. Up until then he had lived in a basement flat in his parent’s house, with his wife and two children (aged 1 and 3 when the house was built). In the following extract it is especially interesting to note the non-specialised nature of the work tasks that Harald had done himself, and that he did all this work in addition to his ordinary full time job as a plumber.
K Your house, did you say you built it on the lot beside your parents’
house?
Harald Yeah. I bought about half of my father’s property, and a bit of the neighbours’. I did the excavation and drilling work, then got a blasting contractor in to remove the rock and level the plot. And then I laid the foundation slab, built the foundation wall and installed the plumbing, and helped a mate of mine who did the electrics, and painted and … yeah, I did pretty much everything on my own. Then we moved in November the same year. That was a tough year. Started in a new job as well in ‘77, at the same time as I was building the house. But, we got by somehow.
Harald’s father had clearly been successful in getting him into the habit of working a great deal. His approach to work seemed to be just as valid in waged work as it was in household work. In other words, it transcended the
5 Whereas the older cohort mostly found cheap property and commenced to build a (mostly) self-built house from the foundation and up (like Harald) the younger cohort mostly bought new houses and put in a great amount of “do-it-yourself effort” (egeninnsats) in the last stages of the building process.
employment-home boundary. This was evident in the following section.
After his apprenticeship test as an industrial plumber in 1971, Harald worked for a half a year at the shipyard where he trained, but resigned vol-untarily after half a year, after having secured another job. The large ship-building company he worked for kept its staff on the job, despite a shortage of assignments, and the “hanging around” that this entailed did not suit Harald very well:
Harald I resigned because working there had become a bit difficult, cause there were days when there was no work coming in at all. Me, I can’t sit around scratching my arse … So I handed in my notice, and that was unheard of. So I said (to the personnel manager) that there was too little work. It’s not for me, that, sitting around and not working.
I’ve got to be busy.
In sum, it seems that Harald had fully internalised his father’s message about the virtues of “work!”, and that this message was equally valid in paid work and unpaid work. This message (that work was the most meaningful activity in life) had been instilled in him through cooperation with his father in his childhood and youth, and still had an influence in Harald’s everyday life.
Tor: skilled as an industrial mechanic, born in 1979
At the time of his interview, Tor was 31 years old and employed with a large company in the oil industry, in an offshore job as an industrial mechanic.
He had been in a long-term relationship, but was single at the time of the interview. Like Stig (above), he now lived alone in a house he had sought out together with a girlfriend (whom had since left him). His job on an offshore oilrig meant that he worked two weeks intensively, and then had four weeks off. During this non-employment time, he did work which was less special-ised than his employed work. He was introduced to this non-employment work by his father during childhood, and still carried it out in cooperation with his father.
in dialogue with ob jec t s over the life cour se and in e veryday life
Most of Tor’s non-employment work was voluntary work at a local tram club, where he worked with the maintenance and operation of old trams.
Tor had been included by his father in this organised unpaid work as a young boy, and they would still work together at the club:
K Oh, really? Is that a hobby you’ve had since you were young?
Tor Yeah, you could say I was born and bred into it, I tagged along as soon as I was able to walk. Through my dad, of course, so he’s there as well.
Tor spent around 15 hours a week volunteering at the tram club during those weeks when he was not at his offshore job. When it was noted that this unpaid work resembled his paid work, he added that he did not only do mechanical work in his non-employment time.
Tor Take what I’m doing now, for instance, I’ve been working with a digger on the outside of my house. That’s fun. And I’ve always enjoyed that, to be honest. … work where you see the results, that sort of thing. So, moving earth around, that’s great stuff. So that’s what occupies me for the time being. And a bit of carpentry and building … so you see I don’t actually have to be working with mechanical things all the time.
The great variety of work that Tor did in his non-employment time all con-cerned entering into dialogue with objects (making and manipulating things).
This was the type of work that enabled him to see the concrete results that he liked. He appreciated the results he could bring about with his digger outside his house. He liked the large scale responses from the objects that the digger put him in dialogue with. When probed about this, he contrasted this work with work done in front of a computer:
K Right. So what you like doing best when you’re at home, is work where can see you can see concrete results?
Tor Mm. No doubt about that. So you can say that, sitting in front of a computer screen, fiddling away at some document or other, I don’t get as much pleasure out of that as sitting at the controls of some machine or other (laughs). Cause then I can see things happening – I see that I’m making a difference.
As for the others, Tor’s interest in and competence for entering into dialogue with objects had its background in early father-son cooperation. As he said:
“I tagged along as soon as I was able to walk.” The following section indicates how Tor had been included in a wide range of household work as a young boy.
Tor’s father was employed as an electrician, but seems to have been less special-ised in his non-employment work.
K … what’s your earliest memory of work?
Tor (laughs) Well, I wouldn’t like to say. Well, it would have to be down at the Tram Society, tagging along with my dad and getting stuck into something. And going along with him wherever he was working. For example, we built the house in those years, and the cottage. So there was plenty of work like that to help out with.
Sawing and hammering and … in addition to everything we did at the Tram Society, both the mechanical repairs and maintenance of the buildings and so on.
Tor’s father was not only still active in the same voluntary association as Tor, the Tram Society, they still worked together in a family context as well. When he was younger, he had helped his father build both a house and a cottage.
More recently, he was helping his father build a garage. They were both helping Tor’s sister by building an addition to her house.
in dialogue with ob jec t s over the life cour se and in e veryday life
Tor The garage, we built that ourselves. I helped with that. And now it’s my sister and her boyfriend’s turn to build their house, so it’s all hands to the pumps there now. They’ve got in builders to put the house up, but we’re all doing our bit on the inside … Yeah, my dad is very active there now. He’s there all the time, and I’m there a bit less (laughs).
Lars: skilled as a bricklayer, born in 1979
At the time of the interview, Lars was 31 years old, and co-owned and co-managed a small bricklaying company. During childhood, his parents ran a small farm on a part time basis. Previously they had cattle, sheep and horses.
Now only the horses were left. Lars and his wife had recently bought a semi-detached house close to his parents’ old farm, and he and his father shared the job of tending to the two horses. Lars’ case demonstrates cooperation across generations, like the two above. But his case is of greatest value in the current context because he formulated an explicit rationale for practices which were evident in many other cases. He formulated a rationale for what is termed an inclusive approach to household work.
Lars had two children at the time of the interview (4 and 7 years old). The following extract shows a remark he made concerning why he included his children in the work he did in the stables with his father. This work was time-consuming, and for that reason, Lars tried to include “the whole family”.
K How much time do you use on that (tending to the horses)?
Lars Well, when I’m in the stables, I’m in there a couple of hours, at least.
But me and my dad divide it up between us, so I’m not there every day. Say three or four times a week. And I take the kids along. I try to get everyone involved, you see. Since it’s so time-consuming it’s important that the whole family is included.
These last remarks have a wider significance for understanding the questions discussed in this chapter. Because, in addition to describing Lars’ thoughts, they provide an explicit rationale for practices which were more widespread.
Whereas all the cases show boys included in their father’s household work, Lars was the only one to provide an explicit rationale for these practices. He formulated a rationale behind what is termed an inclusive approach to house-hold work. The core of this approach is that it is necessary, or at least desirable, to include children in household work if it consumes much of the parents’
non-employment time.
When Lars was young, his mother had a part time job in addition to the work on the small farm. His father had worked first as an unskilled shuttering carpenter and then as an unskilled window-framer. In the following section, Lars was asked an open question about what his father had typically done when he wasn’t at his job. Like many others, he replied that his father “did some work outside”. Then, a spontaneous probe (unique to this interview) about whether his father had watched much television, yielded information on Lars’ approach to work.
K What did your father do when he wasn’t at work?
Lars Well, he did some work outside on the house.
K Not the type to sit and watch television?
Lars No. And neither am I to be honest. It drives me nuts. I mean, I like to relax of course if I’m worn out but …
K Yeah, tell me about that …
Lars … it’s not for me. Every day when I knock off work at four, I can’t just go home and … sit in a corner of the sofa. I have to keep myself occupied. … There’s always something that needs doing. The sta-bles always need a bit of work doing to them, of course, mainte-nance and that sort of thing. And if I look around here, I’ve put in a new kitchen, and I’ve repaired the veranda and … There’s always something to keep you busy.
In terms of how he spent his non-employment time, Lars had become very much like his father. He confessed that he liked to “relax” whenever he was
in dialogue with ob jec t s over the life cour se and in e veryday life
“worn out”, but normally – in everyday life – that was not how he spent his time.
His non-specialised competence for entering into dialogue with objects was in great demand around the clock: “there’s always something that needs doing”.
However, a significant point here is that Lars viewed this positively. Others might have viewed such an endless workload as a tiring and hopeless. But Lars had a strong drive to do exactly the type of work that was constantly asked of him. The work that needed doing was exactly the work Lars needed to do.
He was the right man in the right place.