4 - Social relationships and the industrial framework

Summary

Long ago Mitchell (1956a: 693ff.) argued that the concepts of stabilisation and urbanisation are used with two frames of reference, a demographic and a sociological, which may heuristically be treated as distinct. A similar point is made by Moore and Feldman in discussing the concept of commitment which, they say, ‘involves both performance and acceptance of behaviour appropriate to an industrial way of life. The concept is thus concerned with overt actions and norms. The fully committed worker, in other words, has internalised the norms of the new productive organisation and social system’ (Moore and Feldman 1960: 1). Chapter 3 has largely concentrated on the demographic component of stability, showing that railwaymen stay in employment and in the urban area for most of their working lives. This tells us only by inference of the values with which they operate. It is this component with which the next three chapters are concerned. To echo a phrase of Gluckman's we are now interested in railwaymen as railwaymen! (Gluckman 1961: 69).

As was stated in the Introduction this monograph does not deal primarily with what happens at work, though that aspect too will be mentioned. Nor does it consider whether railwaymen are efficient workers, though given that efficiency can be defined and measured it would presumably be taken as one of the indices of commitment. Much of the evidence to be discussed relates to relationships between railwaymen outside the work context.