โ Scribed by Dan Clawson; Richard Fantasia
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
is an important book, in certain ways even a brilliant book, filled with insights which contribute greatly to our understanding of the labor process in contemporary America. The book is a tightly argued theoretical tour de force, built out of a case study interesting in its own right. But while Burawoy is original and insightful, his approach is fundamentally a-historical and non-dialectical. Instead of considering how the labor process is shaped by the dynamics of the struggle between labor and capital, in Burawoy's analysis all social processes benefit the capitalist class. Though Burawoy includes a chapter on class struggle, in his analysis it does not shape, and never threatens, the system. He offers what is, in effect, a version of elite theory, in which all events strengthen the control of capital.
In July, 1974 Burawoy began ten months of work as a machinist in the small parts room of "Allied" corporation in South Chicago. While doing his field work, he read Donald Roy's classic 1945 case study of a machine shop, and the similarities between the two workplaces were striking. At first Burawoy simply viewed this as an indication of the great similarities between all machine shops, but the further he read the more the evidence began to mount that he had by chance stumbled upon the same machine shop which Roy had
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