Abstract
[Truncated] Houses in Perth, Western Australia, are built and
renovated by workers hired as subcontractors and known
locally as 'subbies.' Subbies are independent, self-employed
workers who are engaged only as their particular services
are required rather than being the employees of builders who
contract to do such work. In this thesis I examine the
processes by which houses are built and renovated, 'cottage
work,1 and the ways subbies interpret and understand their
shared industry. This presentation takes form as an
ethnographic analysis of the working lives of subbies in
this sector of the building industry; it is not an account
of the entire building industry in Western Australia.
analysis of subcontracting in the Perth housing
industry is an interpretive account which focuses on
temporal aspects of social life. Subcontracting work
produces what is best described as a labile social
organisation: groups of individual workers come together as
action sets, for particular purposes and for what are
commonly quite short periods of time, and are not
constituted as perduring social structures. "Subbies"
identifies a category of individuals engaged in the same
relationship to their respective work; it does not indicate
the existence of a corporate group. In labile social
organisations it is time, the temporality of making and
breaking social relationships, which is analytically more
significant than the space occupied by a culture or a
society. The central analytical task in understanding labile
social organisations addressed in this thesis is two-fold:
(1) to identify the social distribution of understandings
among those so engaged; and (2) to identify the social
processes by which individuals organise and accommodate
themselves to the often unknown others encountered. In
adopting this processual approach to social analysis, the
social organisation of culture, the symbols of shared
understandings and knowledge, are all analysed as produced
and reproduced in the diverse interactions constituting
everyday social life rather than as existing, concrete
"social facts."
renovated by workers hired as subcontractors and known
locally as 'subbies.' Subbies are independent, self-employed
workers who are engaged only as their particular services
are required rather than being the employees of builders who
contract to do such work. In this thesis I examine the
processes by which houses are built and renovated, 'cottage
work,1 and the ways subbies interpret and understand their
shared industry. This presentation takes form as an
ethnographic analysis of the working lives of subbies in
this sector of the building industry; it is not an account
of the entire building industry in Western Australia.
analysis of subcontracting in the Perth housing
industry is an interpretive account which focuses on
temporal aspects of social life. Subcontracting work
produces what is best described as a labile social
organisation: groups of individual workers come together as
action sets, for particular purposes and for what are
commonly quite short periods of time, and are not
constituted as perduring social structures. "Subbies"
identifies a category of individuals engaged in the same
relationship to their respective work; it does not indicate
the existence of a corporate group. In labile social
organisations it is time, the temporality of making and
breaking social relationships, which is analytically more
significant than the space occupied by a culture or a
society. The central analytical task in understanding labile
social organisations addressed in this thesis is two-fold:
(1) to identify the social distribution of understandings
among those so engaged; and (2) to identify the social
processes by which individuals organise and accommodate
themselves to the often unknown others encountered. In
adopting this processual approach to social analysis, the
social organisation of culture, the symbols of shared
understandings and knowledge, are all analysed as produced
and reproduced in the diverse interactions constituting
everyday social life rather than as existing, concrete
"social facts."
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Awarding Institution |
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| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Unpublished - 1991 |
Take-down notice
- This thesis has been made available in the UWA Profiles and Research Repository as part of a UWA Library project to digitise and make available theses completed before 2003. If you are the author of this thesis and would like it removed from the UWA Profiles and Research Repository, please contact [email protected]