Tim E Strangleman | University of Kent (original) (raw)

Books by Tim E Strangleman

Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery, 2019

Imagine a workplace where workers enjoyed a well-paid job for life, one where they could enjoy fr... more Imagine a workplace where workers enjoyed a well-paid job for life, one where they could enjoy free meals in silver service canteens and restaurants. In their breaks they could explore acres of parkland planted with hundreds of trees and thousands of shrubs. Imagine after work a place where employees could play over thirty sports, join one of the theatre groups or dozens of other clubs. Imagine a place where at the end of a working life you could enjoy a company pension from a scheme you had never contributed a penny to. Imagine working in buildings designed by an internationally renowned architect whose brief was to create a building that ‘would last a century or two’. This is no fantasy or utopian vision of work but just some aspects of the working conditions enjoyed by employees at the Guinness Brewery established at Park Royal West London in the mid-1930s. Voices of Guinness tells the story the company’s London brewery from pre-cradle to post grave after the site’s closure in 2005, showing how the history of one plant reveals a much wider picture of changing attitudes to work and organisations in contemporary society. Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as archive and photographic sources Voices of Guinness explores the experience and meaning of work, the ultimate loss of employment and deindustrialisation for Guinness workers. It will be crucial reading for anyone interested in work history, contemporary organisations and industrial loss.

Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as archive and photographic sources the book shows how progressive ideas of workplace citizenship came into conflict with the pressure to adapt to new expectations about work and its organisation. Strangleman illustrates how these changes were experienced by those on the shop floor from the 1960s through to the final closure of the plant in 2005. This book asks striking and important questions about employment and the attachment workers have for their jobs. It will be crucial reading for anyone interested in contemporary organisations and deindustrialisation.

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This is an introduction to the book Topographies of the Obsolete, ed. Neil Brownsword

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The first time I presented a paper at an academic conference, I was accused of being nostalgic. M... more The first time I presented a paper at an academic conference, I was accused of being nostalgic. My mistake, as my fellow academic pointed out, was that in my bid to find some value in working-class occupational cultures I was guilty of backward looking romanticism. It wasn't meant to be constructive criticism, but over the years I've developed a longstanding interest in the idea of nostalgia which is often attached to working-class life. So I've been especially interested in the ways that political developments on both sides of the Atlantic have involved nostalgia as the backward-looking voters supported Brexit in the UK and Trump in the US. We may see more of this in France, with support for Le Pen later this year. Charges of nostalgia in these situations refer to a whole range of stances and attitudes, from the more benign sentiments of those who want a return to full industrial employment or desire a greater sense of community to those who more darkly 'want their country back', which too often is code for freedom to discriminate. Looking beyond recent elections, we can to detect a backward-looking trend in television, in programmes such as Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, Endeavour, or the new Netflix series, The Crown. In politics and popular culture, many seem to be happiest when living in the past. However, by using the term nostalgia as a catchall criticism we often miss the complexity and nuance involved, and class often has a big part to play here. Those who study nostalgia note that it almost always tells us more about attitudes toward the present than views of the past. It is precisely because people feel unsettled about their current unstable situation and unknowable future that they seek solace in the comfort of the past. Scholars also point out that nostalgia is very rarely 'simple' in the sense that people want to live in the past. They are almost always critical, even reflective, about both the present and the past, and they find something of value in that past that may have been lost. Finally, while it is true that nostalgia is often portrayed as an anti-progressive, anti-modern conservative emotion, it can also have a more creative, progressive, even radical side. I think it is this aspect of nostalgia that can help us think more critically about working-class culture. Reporters and commentators explain voting behaviour using the familiar tropes of 'smokestack nostalgia' and 'rustbelt romanticism'. But dig a little deeper, listen a little more carefully, and it's easy to see why people might want to return to the past when industrial workers earned $28 per hour and enjoyed

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La désindustrialisation: une fatalité? This paper makes sense of the process of deindustrialisati... more La désindustrialisation: une fatalité? This paper makes sense of the process of deindustrialisation in the UK over the last three decades. These thirty years have seen tremendous shifts in the make-up of basic industry with the complete closure of staples like coal, ship building as well as rapid downsizing of iron and steel and manufacturing. This paper looks at the way this process has been understood socially and culturally. It raises questions as to how places have been shaped by deindustrialisation, how this process has been represented both by communities and others. In particular it focusses on the question of how industrial culture is memorialised and marked and the extent to which we can think of this memory work as industrial nostalgia. In addition it examines how sociologists and others have dealt with the question of industrial change. This paper is based on the author's research in to a variety of industries which have undergone profound change over the period of the last thirty years including railways, coal, brewing and paper making. The paper will draw on a number of projects and will include visual material.

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Papers by Tim E Strangleman

Sociology, Apr 1, 2023

This article argues that in order to engage sociologically with the future the discipline needs t... more This article argues that in order to engage sociologically with the future the discipline needs to rediscover its historical imagination. It makes three main points. First is the idea that sociology needs to be more historical and to illustrate how this has been done well before. Second, it explores ideas, concepts and theories used in thinking about the past, which are in turn useful in organising how we imagine the future – in particular nostalgia, and especially that surrounding industry. Finally, it offers ways of thinking about the sociologically mediated relationship between past, present and future through the burgeoning field of deindustrialisation studies.

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Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2004

At a little before 12.30 pm on 17 October 2000, a Great North Eastern Railway express travelling ... more At a little before 12.30 pm on 17 October 2000, a Great North Eastern Railway express travelling from London to Leeds crashed just outside Hatfield in Hertfordshire. The cause of the accident was a faulty rail, which shattered into more than 300 pieces as the train passed over it. Four people lost their lives and many more were injured. As the full implications of the crash became apparent, Britain’s railway system nearly ground to a halt. Railtrack imposed speed restrictions on 1,200 sections of the network after a further 3,200 cases of Gauge Corner Cracking (GCC) — the immediate cause of the crash at Hatfield — were discovered. Some journey times were quadrupled, Scotland was cut off from England for a time and the media was dominated by sensational stories of disgruntled passengers and railway company incompetence.

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John Eldridge, and the generation of sociologists of which he is a part, are important for the co... more John Eldridge, and the generation of sociologists of which he is a part, are important for the contemporary discipline in many diverse ways. John’s career in particular demonstrates the rich and varied breadth of interests from industrial sociology, through social theory, to cultural and media studies. This scale and scope, this ambition to stretch the sociological imagination, is partly a product of a very different era of academic practice, but is also a function of individual and collective ambition and vision. This vision and ambition is something I think we need to recapture as part of our practice as sociologists. In this chapter I want to explore how this stretching of the sociological imagination might be achieved in my own part of the sociological jungle, that of the study of work. I want to reflect briefly on John’s writing and research in that subfield, but then make the argument that the development of his interests into theoretical and cultural areas has to be understood as an extension rather than break with his earlier work. In the remainder of the chapter I use my research on the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal to show the kinds of ways in which John’s ideas and broader vision have informed my own thinking — one that combines classical approaches and ideas with cultural questions and approaches.

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Sociology, Aug 7, 2022

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Palgrave Macmillan eBooks, Oct 1, 2013

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Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 27, 2005

This article considers how an important social scientific concept became a management fad. It beg... more This article considers how an important social scientific concept became a management fad. It begins with the idea of culture and its history in organizational studies. It then looks at contemporary debates about the way that an understanding of culture may contribute to successful management and concludes by considering whether there are differences between public and private sectors that are relevant to this task. Anthropologists have traditionally seen the study of culture as a defining feature of their discipline: Social anthropologists, in studying the institutionalised social relationships that are their primary concern, have found it essential to take account of the ideas and values which are associated with them, that is, of their cultural content. No account of a social relationship in human terms can be complete unless it includes reference to what it means to the people who have it. Culture does not have a material existence, although physical objects may be treated as cultural artefacts, by virtue of the meanings that people assign to them.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2004

If, as L.P. Hartley (1958) remarked, the past is a foreign country, then the last two or three de... more If, as L.P. Hartley (1958) remarked, the past is a foreign country, then the last two or three decades have seen the development of mass tourism amongst the British political class. While 1979 has been viewed as a major watershed in British political, social and economic life, it has not prevented the near constant plundering of the past as either a warning or a guide for future conduct, for in that past there is much that is useful. The collectivism of the era of political consensus, and in particular the policy of nationalisation, have been carefully nurtured as icons of failure by neoliberals in both the Conservative Party and most recently New Labour. The period from 1945 is portrayed as an aberration, an era in which the country lost its way, when managers were cowed by overpowerful trade union dinosaurs, when individuality was crushed by collective provision, and imagination and creativity were held back by the inertia of bureaucracy and red tape. However, the past has also been drawn on as offering a model for future behaviour. In this reading of history, change is necessary in order to return to a utopian past, a ‘golden age’ marked by entrepreneurial endeavour, when workers were loyal, dependable and committed, and finally when the market was the organising principle behind all aspects of life.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

British Journal of Sociology, Feb 24, 2016

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The journal of transport history, Sep 1, 2002

Focusing on railway workshops, this paper highlights the importance of working-class autobiograph... more Focusing on railway workshops, this paper highlights the importance of working-class autobiographical accounts written by those employed in the railway industry. Historians' criticisms of popular railway history are outlined; in particular, that it is often overly romantic and nostalgic. While some of this criticism is justified, the enthusiast audience stimulates the publication of writing by former railway workers that is of great value to academics. The paper also examines accounts of working life in railway factories, discussing the characteristics of such literature. Lastly, it locates the literature in wider debates on oral history and autobiography.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Voices of Guinness

This chapter looks at the process of closing the Guinness Park Royal Brewery, from the announceme... more This chapter looks at the process of closing the Guinness Park Royal Brewery, from the announcement by management in 2004 through the actual last brew, which was made in the summer of 2005. It looks at how the workers experienced this process and how they reflected on not just the closure announcement but also their wider feelings about work at Guinness. The oral histories contain moving reflections on the meaning of work for Guinness workers and for their children, who face an increasingly uncertain work future. It puts what happened at Park Royal in the wider context of deindustrialization and rationalization.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery, 2019

Imagine a workplace where workers enjoyed a well-paid job for life, one where they could enjoy fr... more Imagine a workplace where workers enjoyed a well-paid job for life, one where they could enjoy free meals in silver service canteens and restaurants. In their breaks they could explore acres of parkland planted with hundreds of trees and thousands of shrubs. Imagine after work a place where employees could play over thirty sports, join one of the theatre groups or dozens of other clubs. Imagine a place where at the end of a working life you could enjoy a company pension from a scheme you had never contributed a penny to. Imagine working in buildings designed by an internationally renowned architect whose brief was to create a building that ‘would last a century or two’. This is no fantasy or utopian vision of work but just some aspects of the working conditions enjoyed by employees at the Guinness Brewery established at Park Royal West London in the mid-1930s. Voices of Guinness tells the story the company’s London brewery from pre-cradle to post grave after the site’s closure in 2005, showing how the history of one plant reveals a much wider picture of changing attitudes to work and organisations in contemporary society. Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as archive and photographic sources Voices of Guinness explores the experience and meaning of work, the ultimate loss of employment and deindustrialisation for Guinness workers. It will be crucial reading for anyone interested in work history, contemporary organisations and industrial loss.

Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as archive and photographic sources the book shows how progressive ideas of workplace citizenship came into conflict with the pressure to adapt to new expectations about work and its organisation. Strangleman illustrates how these changes were experienced by those on the shop floor from the 1960s through to the final closure of the plant in 2005. This book asks striking and important questions about employment and the attachment workers have for their jobs. It will be crucial reading for anyone interested in contemporary organisations and deindustrialisation.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

This is an introduction to the book Topographies of the Obsolete, ed. Neil Brownsword

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The first time I presented a paper at an academic conference, I was accused of being nostalgic. M... more The first time I presented a paper at an academic conference, I was accused of being nostalgic. My mistake, as my fellow academic pointed out, was that in my bid to find some value in working-class occupational cultures I was guilty of backward looking romanticism. It wasn't meant to be constructive criticism, but over the years I've developed a longstanding interest in the idea of nostalgia which is often attached to working-class life. So I've been especially interested in the ways that political developments on both sides of the Atlantic have involved nostalgia as the backward-looking voters supported Brexit in the UK and Trump in the US. We may see more of this in France, with support for Le Pen later this year. Charges of nostalgia in these situations refer to a whole range of stances and attitudes, from the more benign sentiments of those who want a return to full industrial employment or desire a greater sense of community to those who more darkly 'want their country back', which too often is code for freedom to discriminate. Looking beyond recent elections, we can to detect a backward-looking trend in television, in programmes such as Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, Endeavour, or the new Netflix series, The Crown. In politics and popular culture, many seem to be happiest when living in the past. However, by using the term nostalgia as a catchall criticism we often miss the complexity and nuance involved, and class often has a big part to play here. Those who study nostalgia note that it almost always tells us more about attitudes toward the present than views of the past. It is precisely because people feel unsettled about their current unstable situation and unknowable future that they seek solace in the comfort of the past. Scholars also point out that nostalgia is very rarely 'simple' in the sense that people want to live in the past. They are almost always critical, even reflective, about both the present and the past, and they find something of value in that past that may have been lost. Finally, while it is true that nostalgia is often portrayed as an anti-progressive, anti-modern conservative emotion, it can also have a more creative, progressive, even radical side. I think it is this aspect of nostalgia that can help us think more critically about working-class culture. Reporters and commentators explain voting behaviour using the familiar tropes of 'smokestack nostalgia' and 'rustbelt romanticism'. But dig a little deeper, listen a little more carefully, and it's easy to see why people might want to return to the past when industrial workers earned $28 per hour and enjoyed

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

La désindustrialisation: une fatalité? This paper makes sense of the process of deindustrialisati... more La désindustrialisation: une fatalité? This paper makes sense of the process of deindustrialisation in the UK over the last three decades. These thirty years have seen tremendous shifts in the make-up of basic industry with the complete closure of staples like coal, ship building as well as rapid downsizing of iron and steel and manufacturing. This paper looks at the way this process has been understood socially and culturally. It raises questions as to how places have been shaped by deindustrialisation, how this process has been represented both by communities and others. In particular it focusses on the question of how industrial culture is memorialised and marked and the extent to which we can think of this memory work as industrial nostalgia. In addition it examines how sociologists and others have dealt with the question of industrial change. This paper is based on the author's research in to a variety of industries which have undergone profound change over the period of the last thirty years including railways, coal, brewing and paper making. The paper will draw on a number of projects and will include visual material.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Sociology, Apr 1, 2023

This article argues that in order to engage sociologically with the future the discipline needs t... more This article argues that in order to engage sociologically with the future the discipline needs to rediscover its historical imagination. It makes three main points. First is the idea that sociology needs to be more historical and to illustrate how this has been done well before. Second, it explores ideas, concepts and theories used in thinking about the past, which are in turn useful in organising how we imagine the future – in particular nostalgia, and especially that surrounding industry. Finally, it offers ways of thinking about the sociologically mediated relationship between past, present and future through the burgeoning field of deindustrialisation studies.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2004

At a little before 12.30 pm on 17 October 2000, a Great North Eastern Railway express travelling ... more At a little before 12.30 pm on 17 October 2000, a Great North Eastern Railway express travelling from London to Leeds crashed just outside Hatfield in Hertfordshire. The cause of the accident was a faulty rail, which shattered into more than 300 pieces as the train passed over it. Four people lost their lives and many more were injured. As the full implications of the crash became apparent, Britain’s railway system nearly ground to a halt. Railtrack imposed speed restrictions on 1,200 sections of the network after a further 3,200 cases of Gauge Corner Cracking (GCC) — the immediate cause of the crash at Hatfield — were discovered. Some journey times were quadrupled, Scotland was cut off from England for a time and the media was dominated by sensational stories of disgruntled passengers and railway company incompetence.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

John Eldridge, and the generation of sociologists of which he is a part, are important for the co... more John Eldridge, and the generation of sociologists of which he is a part, are important for the contemporary discipline in many diverse ways. John’s career in particular demonstrates the rich and varied breadth of interests from industrial sociology, through social theory, to cultural and media studies. This scale and scope, this ambition to stretch the sociological imagination, is partly a product of a very different era of academic practice, but is also a function of individual and collective ambition and vision. This vision and ambition is something I think we need to recapture as part of our practice as sociologists. In this chapter I want to explore how this stretching of the sociological imagination might be achieved in my own part of the sociological jungle, that of the study of work. I want to reflect briefly on John’s writing and research in that subfield, but then make the argument that the development of his interests into theoretical and cultural areas has to be understood as an extension rather than break with his earlier work. In the remainder of the chapter I use my research on the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal to show the kinds of ways in which John’s ideas and broader vision have informed my own thinking — one that combines classical approaches and ideas with cultural questions and approaches.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Sociology, Aug 7, 2022

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Palgrave Macmillan eBooks, Oct 1, 2013

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 27, 2005

This article considers how an important social scientific concept became a management fad. It beg... more This article considers how an important social scientific concept became a management fad. It begins with the idea of culture and its history in organizational studies. It then looks at contemporary debates about the way that an understanding of culture may contribute to successful management and concludes by considering whether there are differences between public and private sectors that are relevant to this task. Anthropologists have traditionally seen the study of culture as a defining feature of their discipline: Social anthropologists, in studying the institutionalised social relationships that are their primary concern, have found it essential to take account of the ideas and values which are associated with them, that is, of their cultural content. No account of a social relationship in human terms can be complete unless it includes reference to what it means to the people who have it. Culture does not have a material existence, although physical objects may be treated as cultural artefacts, by virtue of the meanings that people assign to them.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2004

If, as L.P. Hartley (1958) remarked, the past is a foreign country, then the last two or three de... more If, as L.P. Hartley (1958) remarked, the past is a foreign country, then the last two or three decades have seen the development of mass tourism amongst the British political class. While 1979 has been viewed as a major watershed in British political, social and economic life, it has not prevented the near constant plundering of the past as either a warning or a guide for future conduct, for in that past there is much that is useful. The collectivism of the era of political consensus, and in particular the policy of nationalisation, have been carefully nurtured as icons of failure by neoliberals in both the Conservative Party and most recently New Labour. The period from 1945 is portrayed as an aberration, an era in which the country lost its way, when managers were cowed by overpowerful trade union dinosaurs, when individuality was crushed by collective provision, and imagination and creativity were held back by the inertia of bureaucracy and red tape. However, the past has also been drawn on as offering a model for future behaviour. In this reading of history, change is necessary in order to return to a utopian past, a ‘golden age’ marked by entrepreneurial endeavour, when workers were loyal, dependable and committed, and finally when the market was the organising principle behind all aspects of life.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

British Journal of Sociology, Feb 24, 2016

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The journal of transport history, Sep 1, 2002

Focusing on railway workshops, this paper highlights the importance of working-class autobiograph... more Focusing on railway workshops, this paper highlights the importance of working-class autobiographical accounts written by those employed in the railway industry. Historians' criticisms of popular railway history are outlined; in particular, that it is often overly romantic and nostalgic. While some of this criticism is justified, the enthusiast audience stimulates the publication of writing by former railway workers that is of great value to academics. The paper also examines accounts of working life in railway factories, discussing the characteristics of such literature. Lastly, it locates the literature in wider debates on oral history and autobiography.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Voices of Guinness

This chapter looks at the process of closing the Guinness Park Royal Brewery, from the announceme... more This chapter looks at the process of closing the Guinness Park Royal Brewery, from the announcement by management in 2004 through the actual last brew, which was made in the summer of 2005. It looks at how the workers experienced this process and how they reflected on not just the closure announcement but also their wider feelings about work at Guinness. The oral histories contain moving reflections on the meaning of work for Guinness workers and for their children, who face an increasingly uncertain work future. It puts what happened at Park Royal in the wider context of deindustrialization and rationalization.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

La désindustrialisation : une fatalité ?, 2017

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Journal of Working-Class Studies, 2021

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The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, 2019

This chapter examines how the experience of work is embedded in multiple ways in place and places... more This chapter examines how the experience of work is embedded in multiple ways in place and places of work. Drawing on two research projects it looks in detail and the affect of work. It draws on and contributes to literature on the place of work, nostalgia and memory

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Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies, 2020

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Sociology Compass 2014 8 411 421, 2014

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