Conclusion: Feminization and Globalization

Abstract

Richard Rorty, debunking the pretensions of certain types of social theory, states that ‘insofar as political situations become clear, they get clarified by detailed stories about who’s doing what to whom’ (Rorty, 1994). The aim of this book has been exactly that: to explore the politics of class and gender in workplaces in contemporary Britain by telling just such a set of stories about the specific and detailed experiences of certain groups of people. The stories, drawn from the accounts offered by my respondents and seen through the filter of my own interpretation, offer inevitably a partial view of contemporary social change. Those addicted to statistical testing and large data-sets might object that these accounts relate only to specific people in specific contexts; of course, they are correct. None the less, I would argue, with the ethnographer Geertz, that such specific accounts, ‘particular events and unique occasions, an encounter here, a development there’, can be woven together in the light of previous studies, factual material and interpretations to produce a sense of ‘how things go, have been going, and are likely to go’ (Geertz, 1995, p. 3).