Workers Not Wasters

the long version

Regular employment has a central place in the definition of masculine respectability in western industrial culture, and Workers Not Wasters describes the employment ethic in an ex-mining community in central Scotland. To be deemed respectable, however, appropriate consumption is as important an obligation as employment, and this study provides an ethnography of working-class consumption, using men's drinking as a case study. It explores the strategies that men develop to retain their self-esteem in a period of recession, and examines how the experience of unemployment differs between generations, particularly highlighting the social deprivation of poverty. The result provides a rare glimpse into the cultural factors governing a community's response to unemployment.