In the Norwegian context, the novelist and sociologist Seljestad has argued that manual work has fallen victim to a type of invisibilisation: “One of the things we as a society have grown blind to, is that there are still manual workers and a working class in this country”11 This observation is difficult to validate empirically, but in public discourse one can find evidence which corroborates it. Not infrequently, newspapers commentators write things like: “the new world of work has no use for men with low levels of education. They neither have the accuracy that information work demands nor the social skills that are important in care work”12 This type of commentary implies that manual work has become a thing of the past. Statistics can have a sobering effect in the face of such a vision. The following section briefly examines some statistics con-cerning relevant changes to the Norwegian employment structure.13
11 In Norwegian: “Ein av dei tinga, vi som samfunn, nærmast er slutta å sjå, er nettopp dette, at det fram-leis finst arbeidsfolk og arbeidarklasse i dette landet” (Klassekampen 19/08–11).
12 In Norwegian: “Det nye arbeidslivet … har ikke bruk for menn med lav utdannelse. De har verken den nøyaktighet som kreves i informasjonsyrkene eller de sosiale evnene som er viktige i omsorgsyrkene”
(Egeland i Dagbladet 21/04–2007).
13 It has not been possible here (or necessary for the current purposes) to produce a more exact overview of people employed in manual work in Norway. Obviously, the number of people employed in manual
backg round and conte x t : prog re s s , educ ation and m anual work
As indicated already, the presumed disappearance of manual work is often tied to a presumed disappearance of industry. However, the number of peo-ple employed in “industry” has only been reduced by approximately 30 per-cent over the last 25 years (Hjellbrekke and Korsnes, 2012: 90). In addition, it should be noted that a number of relevant changes create confusion when dealing with historical developments in the employment structure. The numbers above may actually exaggerate the degree of de-industrialisation.
In a discussion commissioned by Statistics Norway, Farsethås (2008) pointed out that the declining share of workers employed “in industry” should be seen in relation to the fact that many jobs that were previously included under the label “industry” are now classified as service work. This relates to the spread of practices of outsourcing and downsizing. Jobs such as clean-ing, accountclean-ing, caterclean-ing, transport and maintenance work were previously often integrated parts of the industrial companies. Farsethås argues, there-fore, that it is misleading to present highly aggregated statistics as evidence that supports the simple story of industry yielding to services (Farsethås, 2008: 50). Changes relating to the construction of categories and classifica-tions can serve to exaggerate the impression of fundamental changes in the nature of work performed.
In its infancy (1962–71), the Norwegian oil industry employed mostly for-eign workers, but this changed in its second phase (1971–85). The historian Sejersted has termed this period the Great Norwegianisation (“den store for-norskingen”) of the oil industry. This process was aided by the fact that Norwegian policies favoured Norwegian sub-contractors. Consequently, dur-ing this period, the oil industry made extensive use of competence developed in the well-established and advanced ship building industry. However, in 1986, this Norwegianisation policy was abandoned, mostly due to a fall in oil prices.
Management of the oil industry was “de-politicised”, cost-cuts were empha-sised and foreign producers were welcomed back (Sejersted, 1999).
The rationale for the sampling used in this project is explained in the next chapter. However, in the current context it is relevant to provide infor-mation on how many people are actually employed in the occupations.
work (for instance) depends upon the definition used as well as the available data to categorize accord-ing to the definition. Were such an overview to be produced, it would be useful to question the fact that physically demanding female-dominated work has tended to be regarded not as manual work, but as service work, or care work.
17 percent of men active in the Norwegian labour market are employed in
“crafts and related trades” (håndverkere). The male-dominance in these occupations remains over 95 percent. Furthermore, over half of these men are employed in the specific occupational categories relevant to the current project. This means that the occupations that the men selected for this project had been skilled in employ 10 percent of all men active in the Norwegian labour market.14
The empirical scope of the study is limited to Norway, but the sociological questions at its core are of much wider relevance. With respect to the funda-mental parameters investigated, Norway is similar to other western countries.
For instance, patterns of social mobility and recruitment to trades are similar to other western countries, and so are the underlying notions of social progress and trends toward credentialism. When manual work is portrayed as a thing of the past, as requiring very simple (if any) knowledge, this too reflects recent societal changes that transcend national borders. A firm understanding of these changes require empirical investigation of the interrelations of history and biography (Mills 1959). The current project has been designed precisely in order to understand such temporal processes, and is uniquely able demon-strate and discuss various types of continuity and change, over both historical time and over the life course, on an empirical basis.
14 These calculations are based on data from Statistics Norway for the year 2011, published in 2012 (Yrkesdeltaking 01, tabell 3: sysselsatte etter kjønn og yrke. Årsgjennomsnitt 2011) and (Registerbasert sysselsettingsstatistikk 2011). In 2011, 131,334 persons were employed as bricklayers, builders, plumb-ers, electricians, industrial mechanics and platers. This constitutes approximately 5 percent of every-one active in the labour market and 10 percent of all men active in the labour market.
chapter 3
Methods and research design
“‘Method’ has to do, first of all, with how to ask and answer questions with some assurance that the answers are more or less durable. ‘Theory’ has to do, above all, with paying close attention to the words one is using, especially their degree of gen-erality and their logical relations. The primary purpose of both is clarity of concep-tion and economy of procedure, and importantly just now, the release rather than the restriction of the sociological imagination” (Mills, 1959: 120)
Introduction
This chapter is central for understanding and assessing the content of all the subsequent chapters, and for evaluating the merit of the research project as a whole. It describes how the data on which this book is based were gener-ated and analysed. This study employs a contextualist life course perspective with a biographical grounded case-study approach. The first section begins to un-pack, piece by piece, what this rather long and wordy label is meant to signify. The second part of the chapter describes the research process step by step. It explains the sampling rationale, how the survey and interviews were conducted, and, finally, the analysis process.